So Much to Learn, So Little Time!

The NCW Dahlia society sponsored its annual Dahlia Education field trip by taking the members and guests to the Seattle Dahlia Show at the Lake City Community Center. One of our members, Fernie, had been in Kent the weekend before, and she brought copies of our show program to share with other dahlia growers, including our prospective judges for our show on Sept. 18-19. She told them about our upcoming field trip, and they asked if we were planning to enter any of our blooms in the Seattle show. Since everything is late this year, Fernie said that we probably would not have anything to enter. They encouraged her to invite NCW club members to bring something if at all possible, that it would be a great learning experience. Hearing that, I started to seriously consider bringing something from the DeRooy Garden on Russell Street as well as my own tiny little garden at home. I swallowed my pride as I decided that Yes, I would bring something, no matter how inferior I believed it to be. One flower that was particularly interesting to me was one that sprung from tubers developed from Dad's last seedling (during his lifetime) called Cascade Myrt. He entered one bloom in the 2006 NCW Dahlia Show, just months before he passed away. He received the trophy for "Best Seedling in Show," as well as an ADS seedling rosette ribbon. Since that time, no one has really had anything grow from the tubers, although we have shared tubers among club members every year. This year, we had what I thought was a very lovely bloom, just in time for the Seattle show.

So, at about 6:00 am on Saturday, I clipped one bloom (Valley Rustbucket) from my garden, and several more from the Russell Street garden. When I arrived at the bus, prepared to see blooms from other members, I was surprised to see that I was the only one to bring flowers to enter! We carefully situated the bucket holding the flowers in a cool spot in the back of the bus, and took off. When we arrived in Seattle, we had only 15 minutes to get the flowers staged and labeled. Five or six people from our club helped get the blooms in the cans, and Fernie and I worked on tags. I ended up enter just 5 blooms, including the seedling, Cascade Myrt. After this, we had to leave while the judges did their thing. We spent the rest of the morning at Volunteeer Park, walking through their rain-misted dahlia gardens (so impressive!) and then we had lunch in Lake City. Imagine my surprise when we got back to the show, and found that of the five entries, two received red awards (2nd place) and three received blues! Maybe not all that big a deal for long time dahlia growers, who are always hoping for big awards like medals, rosettes and national recognition.....But for me, a novice who had NEVER entered in any show except NCW, I was delighted! I'll post more on our field trip later....Right now I have to get ready for our show committee meeting....