Minneapolis MN ‘exhibition’ May 5-6, 2018

Last weekend, May 5-6 2018, the Daffodil Society of Minnesota held a spring ‘exhibition’, rather than a judged daffodil show.  After two late-season blizzards and record cold throughout most of April, our gardens were all 3 weeks behind.  We had put out an appeal for blooms from elsewhere, emphasizing they would be used for an educational exhibition rather than being judged.  The Tuesday and Wednesday before the ‘show’, I received large boxes of dry blooms from Mary Lou Gripshover and Joe Hamm.  We want to give a shout-out to everyone involved in picking and packing the blooms: Joe Hamm, Sara and Pete Kinne, Fred Lawlor, and Fred Fettig, plus Mary Lou, who has perfected refrigerating and packing blooms!  We Minnesotans cannot thank enough all who were involved in the intense labor of picking, labeling, and packing nearly 230 beautiful daffodils!  Almost all arrived in Minneapolis in good enough condition to be revived (see photos of blooms after stems have been trimmed and spending several hours in water!)  Then I popped them in to refrigerators to hold them until Friday.

On Friday, May 4th, our members converged at the venue, and low and behold, after several days in the 70’s and 80’s, most of us also had some blooms!  I had a whopping 5, but some had as many as 50!  We found that those who live on the east side of our metro area had the most open – maybe they didn’t get as much April snow as the rest of us did?  Whatever the reason, we ended up with 205 of our own local blooms!  On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning we popped them in to blocks and tubes, put the cultivar and color code on index cards, and added yew. We separated the shipped-in blooms from the local ones, so visitors could see what grows locally.  With 200+ shipped-in blooms, and 205 local ones, we had a very respectable educational exhibition for our visitors.

Part of the education consisted of a display (put together by my husband Gary Cohen) showing a ‘normal’ spring in my garden vs. this year.  Visitors liked the contrast shown in the photos.  We also displayed a photo of Mary Lou’s box, to show people how daffodils are shipped – people were amazed!  We did invite photo entries and had a popular-vote contest, won by member Deb Wheeler.  Deb had also secured 10 pots of ‘Yellow Cheerfulness’ from the local Como Conservatory, to add color and fragrance to the exhibition.

We are glad we didn’t cancel, and we are also glad we had already decided to ‘exhibit’ but not judge.  We had only two local judges available, and one of those (Michael Berrigan) had brought many of the blooms.  Since he couldn’t judge his own, we went for educating the public.  We distributed information to many visitors about the 2019 national convention and show – we hope the dates get on to folks’ calendars!  It was a fun weekend, very different from usual, and much less stressful than a judged show!  All and all, we were pleased how it went.

Joe Hamm’s blooms, after stems trimmed and time in water

Mary Lou Gripshover’s blooms, ready for refrigeration

Local blooms began opening after a few days in the 70’s and 80’s!

Display showing normal spring vs. 2018

Two tables of shipped-in blooms

Most of the crew (Stephanie Digby, Gary Cohen, Kathy Julius, Steve Horan, Peggy Fitzpatrick, Deb Wheeler, Margaret Macneale — not pictured: Michael Berrigan and Sue Nyhammer)

3 comments for “Minneapolis MN ‘exhibition’ May 5-6, 2018

  1. Looks great, Margaret!  It’s always better to have an “exhibition” than to cancel.  At least I think so.

  2. Great job putting on an interesting and beautiful display!  I”m looking forward to the convention there next year.  We in the Nashville area are already talking about late blooming varieties and how late we should plant to have flowers for the 2019 ADS show.  I need to look back at my records, but I still have a few daffs just coming into bloom.  I believe that bed was planted January/February, something we can do in our area.  The blooms don’t last long when they open in the 90 degree temperatures, but they do OK if you pick and refrigerate them.

  3. I was happy to be of help, Between the five of us it was fun and our FIRST TIME ‘dry shipping.’ blooms.

    Mary Lou give us instructions, and seeing  flowers dry containers at shows/ conventions we managed to do the job… Thank You Mary Lou..i hope you had help..

     

     

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