Flower Show!
We are entering the zombie phase of flower show preparation where the day after day of bare-rooting, bagging and label-making until 10 or 11 at night is starting to catch up with us. Our friends are starting to take pity on us and are bringing us food and volunteering to help work. The immortal Stephanie works the 6:30pm until we fade out shift and Beverley is here right now helping Sue bag by cutting and folding labels and stapling them on to bags. This was the year that I was finally going to help in the bagging operation by getting all my label descriptions done early and printed out. This was the year where this show prep was actually going to done at a normal pace and be kinda pleasant.
It was no shock at all to Sue when she discovered that my promises during the year once again did not materialize. It is always easier to find work outdoors or in the greenhouse with real live plants than to sit in front of the computer and write about plants. And Sue is such an amazing bagger and has done it for so many years now that I am hesitant to intrude upon her domain and I certainly don't want the quality of the bagging to suffer by my being involved. (At this point I am mentally ducking a bagged plant being hurled at me) So even though it might appear that I am a bit negligent or not holding up my end, it is really out of concern for maintaining the highest possible quality that I have distanced myself from the process.
Truth be told, it is that we have an unprecendented number of new offerings this year - over 100! - that necessitate new label descriptions and photos. That quantity totally taxes the creative juices and required a trip to see Joe at the Wine Seller downtown to see what he thought would be nice pairings with Crocosmia 'His Majesty' or Trillium albidum or Ranunculus aconitifolius 'Flore Pleno'. We did bring home a nice Cabernet Sauvignon which went beautifully with the Chocolate Cosmos.
It takes an insane amount of time to dig or unpot or divide and then bare-root thousands of plants but we just can't bring ourselves to buy everything in from Holland a few weeks before the Show. It just doesn't feel like we are really a nursery doing that. We are hung up on growing most of what we offer ourselves so we can control the quality and set ourselves apart with a much larger diversity. The main comment we hear from customers is "It is so nice not to see the same plants that you see in every other nursery". True enough.
Administrator
It's all good - we're are ready for the Show except for some manageable loose ends. We've actually been able to walk the dogs on the beach every afternoon for an hour which has been amazing. Pretty windless, great sand thanks to bluff sloughing, surprisingly warm, killer sunsets, lovely views of the San Juans and Mt Baker and we had to watch an eagle try and steal a fish from an otter family out on a rock in the water today. It's tough living here in Port Townsend!
We were out in our growing beds a couple of Sundays ago digging some trophy Lilium sargentiae bulbs for the show and enjoying the sunny afternoon when a lone Trumpeter Swan came flying low over the nursery with a rhythmic "Wonk! Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!" as it headed towards town. One of those moments that is hard to improve upon.