After 20 + years of showing daffodils, I have found that some old time daffodil people think me a fraud because they think I simply took over Marie Bozievich’s show wining daffodils and went on from there.
Let me set the record straight: I won my first Gold Ribbon, and my first Purple Ribbon at WDS, and my first Irish Collection of 5 at the ADS National Show in Baltimore two years before Marie Bozievich gave up daffodils and gave them all to Fran and I. Of course I have been helping Marie those years, including making daffodil beds, planting, digging, and helping her select and stage her daffodils for the show. She taught me a lot. When she gave them to Fran and I she insisted that I dig them all before I used them, which I did with the help of Tom Taylor who later on was President of WDS. So technically, it was the same as when you order daffodils from a provider. They come to you in bulb form and what you do to the bulbs to get them to bloom the following year is up to you.
It was staging daffodils for Marie Bozievich that gave me the “Yellow Fever.” Particularly it was at the end of a staging when we had only a few daffodils left that Marie told me she was tired and to pick one that I liked and stage it myself and enter it under her name. It was ‘Romany Red’ and it won a blue ribbon. I was hooked.
clay
Clay, Is everything okay?
Clay: If you’re a fraud, we all are! Everyone I know who loves daffodils started with a pass a long from someone’s garden. If they were lucky enough to get a few prize winners all the better. We all need to work harder at passing along more our knowledge as well as our bulbs to stimulate the next generation of daffodil enthusiasts. My love of daffodils started with a bunch of wild jonquils I Later found out were sweeties. That little clump dug from the side of the road is still my most valued clump bc it started a 20+ year love affair with daffodils. When I went to my first show in Atlanta several people helped me, answered my questions, took time away from their own staging to show me what to try to do. Those people are friends I would have never met had they not shared their knowledge at that show. I value every friend I have met through the ADS including you. I look forward to seeing all my daffodil “frauds” at the upcoming shows.
Janet.
Thanks. Hope to see you at the Atlanta Show this spring that Fran and I plan on attending. I will be coming with mostly my seedlings. (I’m making a list for the show chairman since no one can read my writing.)
You are correct, many different daffodil generations have inherited from their parents and continued the daffodil fever. Marie Bozievich just gave them to her daughter that happened to be my wife. The next generation continued the growing and showing.
Let us put this to rest.
Clay