2018 Midwest Daffodil Show Report

After two weeks of wondering whether we would have any blooms, a fairly nice show happened on April 28-29 at the Chicago Botanic Garden. It couldn’t have happened but for much help from outside the Chicago area. The main contributors were Kathleen Simpson, who drove straight through from West Virginia with a car full of flowers, Dan Bellinger, who recovered somewhat from his one bloom entry at his show the previous week in Niles, MI, and John Reed, whose gorgeous entries were collected in Niles and entered by Rose Bradley. Ray Rogers came with no blooms but managed the floor setup and helped out in the judging. The result was a very nice room with 213 entries by 14 exhibitors showing a total of 394 stems.

Kathleen arrived late on Friday and was at it early on Saturday, placing displays bringing her the Mini-Gold, the White, Best Intermediate, Silver (21), a Throckmorton, and Quinn – from West Virginia! John Reed’s blooms brought the Gold, Rose (beautiful 2 Y-P), Mini-White, and R-W-B. Rose won Best Intermediate 3-Stem, Best Classic, and Best Classic Single-Stem. Gail Raith had the Best Classic 3-Stem entry, and Nancy Pilipuf the Purple. Beryl made its usual appearance for Best Historic and Best Historic 3-Stem by yrs trly. An exhibitor in our always excellent Artistic Design section had a stem of Sherborne left over, which was groomed with help from Kathleen and won the Best Small Grower. It was a nice flower, but it’s easy to win when there aren’t many, or any, competing entries.

I doubt that we could have put together a Quinn from all the blooms entered by MDS members, certainly not one so good as Kathleen’s, and it was great to see Windy City, the 5-award winner at our 2009 convention, win again in Chicago.

A personal note about our season:  with a mix of shame and pride I report that I won the Silver at Niles last year. The same week this year I had one entry. Three more days in the suddenly 80 degree sun would have change the local entries enormously.

You may see the show report for the names of blooms by poking around at MidwestDaffodil.org. Rose took pics which will be found at her Flickr account. More about that from her or when I recall.

Our flowers are about at peak now and anyone from down here who makes it to Sheboygan or Minneapolis tomorrow will likely do well.