i was a middle-aged flower show entrant

When I first started buying daylilies, I figured that I'd never be the kind of person who uses markers in his garden.* Eventually, though, I started using marker stakes and labels.** But I figured I wasn't the type of guy who got involved with the flower shows. Then I started clerking.*** But I figured I would never actually enter a flower show. And that wall fell yesterday.

Having signed up as a clerk, I was pretty confident that I had an excuse not to enter flowers in the show. But I was reminded that clerks can enter. And we really need entries—this being the first show since COVID, there was real concern about whether we'd have enough entries to fill the venue.¹ So, with reservations, I got up early this morning, hoping that, despite the rain last night, I would find sufficient good-looking blooms to enter. At that point I had no interest in winning ribbons; I was primarily interested in helping the club with entries.

I know that lots of people cut scapes the night before, guessing which ones look likely to bloom. Maybe that approach makes sense. But for me, I decided to cut in the morning. And cut I did, until we were running out of time and had to go. I had cut fourteen scapes in all, though the flower broke off one of them before I could do anything, so I brought 13 with me for the show. I would lose another one—Spider Man (Durio, 1982)—while grooming it, so in the end I had 12 entries.

While I had started out with no interest in how well my entries would eventually do, my competitive juices started flowing when I got there and saw others grooming their scapes for the show. Suddenly I was struck by the idea that maybe I could win something. Someone had to win Best in Show, so why not me? And there would be all those Best in Category winners. I could have a shot. But what got me most was the thought of coming away empty-handed.

So I started grooming. I've never groomed scapes before, so I made mistakes. I mentioned above that I lost Spider Man in the process. I was trimming the site of an old bud and got too close to the base of the bloom. It snapped off. And I know -- yeah, I can't prove it, but I just know -- that that Spider Man would have won Best in Show if only it hadn't broken off. But that wasn't my only mistake. I scraped some brown spots too much. And I missed others. None of my entries were perfect, but I felt they were good enough. They would be pleasing to the eyes of the general public, even if they provoked disdain from the judges.

Clerking was largely the same experience as before—except for when the judging panel I was working for was judging my entries. It took all my willpower to maintain control as they evaluated the first one—Mynelle's Starfish (Hayward-M., 1982)—and commented on how it could have been groomed better. But I heard that and similar comments a lot as they evaluated the various entries, so I was not the only insufficient groomer. That first one won a red ribbon, so I felt a bit of pride. I wouldn't go home ribbonless. Then I noticed that the other judge's panel had awarded one of my entries—Harem Scarem (Millikan-B., 1992)—a blue ribbon. Hey, this was getting cool! And so we went along, as I struggled to keep my yap shut. Watching as flowers were judged, keeping in mind how long before the next time they'd get to one of mine. The names of the entrants were hidden, but I could tell from the handwriting which ones were mine.

In the end, all 12 of my entries won ribbons. I scored two purple ribbons, four blue and six red. I list them below for posterity. Sadly, neither of my purple ribbon winners won Best in Category, so I didn't win Best in Show. Maybe next year.

My entries:

• Purple
• Dublin Elaine (Joiner, 1987)
• Missy Moo (Sayers, 2006)
• Blue
• Harem Scarem (Millikan-B., 1992)
• Little Granny (Faggtard, 1981)
• Red Rain (Whitacre, 1988)
• Whispering Violet Water Waltz (Sayers, 2014)
• Red
• Becky Lynn (Guidry, 1977)
• Bed Head (Howard-R., 2017)
• Dietmar's Wisdom (Elliot-D., 2016)
• Elizabeth Salter (Salter, 1990)
• Exotic Love (Stevens-Seawright, 1987)
• Mynelle's Starfish (Hayward-M., 1982)

For what it's worth,  Best in Show went to the Turkiew family (again) for Garden Fairy (Reed, 2018).

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*Technically, not true. When I first bought daylilies I was blissfully unaware that that labels and such were a thing. But please humor me and play along.
**And that has generally gone well. With some hiccups. The worst hiccup was a couple years a go when a herd of feral backhoes ran wild in my yard.
***In an early post in this blog I wrote about my experiences clerking. Reading it now, it makes me cringe.
¹The Horticultural Center at Planting Fields Arboretum.
²As much as I'd like to claim that this makes me a superb flower-show enterer, the fact is that in this venue and under these conditions, you have to try hard for a flower not to win any ribbon. Or you have to have the misfortune of being the fourth-best (or worse) entry of a given cultivar—in a field in which most entries were the only examples of their cultivars.