First off, I am new to DaffNet, though not to daffodils 
. Thus far the digests have been interesting reading, particularly as they pertain to Student Judges.
This year I completed School II in Dallas and then School III in Atlanta. I also was in Gloucester, VA for the Daffodil Festival, also the same w/e as Nashville. To give you a time frame, Dallas was the first weekend in March, Atlanta was the 3rd w/e and Gloucester was the 4th. If I had wanted to take blooms to Dallas, I was out of luck, as I didn’t have a bud showing (out of approx. 83 varieties)! When fellow student judge Lisa Robinson and I got to the Dallas Arboretum (beautiful location!), to view the show, we were surprised at the low number of blooms. Two weeks later, Atlanta was a little better off, but not by much. The point being, that there was a 2-3 week bloom delay all across the country. I still had poets blooming the 3rd week of May and I’m 35 miles N of Atlanta.
My pursuit of a collection blue continues . In early Feb I did several sorts to see where I could go with the Ga Daff Society Show collection classes, coming to the conclusion that I might have a hope in hell! But of course the gods laughed at my plans and I ended up with enough (but not good enough) to enter one collection class. We have wonderful mentors at this show. The one who helped me with staging tried very hard to find good things to say … So, I ended up with a 3rd out of 3 entries. The blue and the red went to fellow student judges who both live at least an hour south of Atlanta with slightly warmer weather.
So, the moral of my story is … regardless of what I want, Weather is the ruling factor!
Darrin Ellis-May
President
Georgia Daffodil Society
Milton, GA
I feel that I must add that the Atlanta show two years ago was a wonderful experience and I loved the venue, I felt very welcomed despite bringing flowers from many states away
John Beck
I love your tenacity and your strategizing. Stick with it. And hope and pray we don’t have another stupid season like the last one. It was a disaster for both ends of the show calender and not a lot of help for the ones in between.
Chriss