So we survived another garden show. I always enjoy doing it but it really is a grind. We have a half day of set up, five 14 hours days, followed by a half day of take down. Its taken a whole month for me to recover sufficiently to blog about the garden show. Linda has firmly decreed that the Beez Neez will not participate in the garden show in 2012. Yet Sarah has been telling her what a wonderful experience it has been for Rachel and what a shame it is that the other grand children will not have that experience. I've also had several of the volunteers who worked at our booth offer to run it for me next year. At this point I'm still not holding my breath. By the way, grand daughter Rachel did a marvelous job as cashier. Not only was she pleasant and knowledgeable in helping customers, but she was also very accurate in handling the cash and filling out the credit card receipts.
The garden show theme this year was "Once Upon A Time". The pictures above are the three houses from the three little pigs. Somehow I missed getting a picture of the wolf's house which featured his granny flannel nightgown hanging from the clothesline. One of my favorite display gardens had a "Wind In the Willows" theme, compete with the caravan, Toad Hall, and the river. It was very kid friendly as they had a boat for little kids along with little life jackets and a dvd player with the Disney "Wind in the Willows" playing. They had a sign on the boat with a quote from the book, "There is absolutely nothing so worthwhile as simply messing about in boats." I have to admit that messing about in boats is up there with messing about with bees or messing about in a garden as a "good for the soul" activity. I also really liked a dispay garden with a recycle theme that was done by a 17 year old high school senior. She did the display garden as her senior project.
There were several significant changes to the garden show this year. They expanded the plant market such that we were moved off the main aisle leading from the dispay gardens to the food court. I was concerned about that initially but another change more than compensated for it. They have a new much larger larger area for all of their seminars and the path to the seminars lead right past our booth. It was like watching the tide rise and fall as we had waves of customers flow past as seminars let out.
I always get a few things at the garden show as a way to treat myself for putting myself through that much work. This year I splurged on purchases from a new seed company, Irish Eyes Seeds, based in Ellensburg, Washington. They feature 60 different potato varieties. I bought 5 different kinds of seed potatoes, other garden seeds, shallots, a cook book entirely devoted to potato recipes, and a very cool T-shirt with the slogan "If you carrot all, lettuce give whirled peas a chance." The two varieties of potatoes shown above are "Purple Majesty" and "Red Pontiac"I also bought two fig trees for Rachel's new home in Hillsboro and a couple of new grape varieties for myself. The highlight of the garden show for me was having Sarah, Lia, Beth, and grand daughter Rachel all helping out at the show on Saturday.
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