Great weekend!
The show and sale went well this last weekend! I entered 21 plants and all but three got ribbons. Of course, Chuck didn't show at all this year, so there were more ribbons to go around, so to speak! But we had a decent turnout of show plants (I think Kathy said it was around 140) and it drew in a lot of people and the vendors seemed happy.
So here's the ones I showed... Hoya krohniana had an umbel of flowers open, and it's total cuteness brought me a blue ribbon...
I also showed Hoya retusa as it has turned into an adorably weird plant in the last year or two. It got a red ribbon...
Wish it would bloom for me! I've seen photos of retusa's blooms and they only bloom one flower at a time!
I showed both sp. Nong Nooch and finlaysonii. They're very similar, but they were both budding up and I put NN in the Asclepdiadaceae group and fin in the "hanging plant" category. NN got a red ribbon and NN got a green (3rd place) ribbon. NN is first here:
The fin flowers were starting to open. The NN flowers actually had newer buds pushing behind the buds that were still unopened!
Hoya rotundiflora (formerly "Square Leaf") got a 2nd place ribbon. It was blooming for the very first time!
One of these years, I plan to show my deykeae - it looks SO fabulous, I think it could steal the show. But I've always been SO careful with that plant because everyone I've talked to finds it hard to grow and I'm afraid if I breath wrong on it, it'll decide it doesn't like me!! LOL! When I water plants, I almost always take them to the kitchen to give them a good bath and a good look-over, but this is one I rarely do that with. I want it to remain undisturbed, and it has always grown in the same spot even though the plants that grow around it have changed over the years. Here's what it's looking like this year:
There's something about deykeae that has a LOT of eye-appeal to me!
I entered 3 Dischidias in the show - nr. Burma (won 2nd place), hirsuta (won 3rd place) and ovata (won first place, best specialty container). Here they are:
The ovata photo at the bottom is an older photo - it's grown a lot since then, but I wanted a photo that showed the shell.
Time flies!
Well, here it is nearly August. So much has grown, bloomed - new plants, cuttings, so much to report... I figured I better get going and get some of this stuff down so I have something to look back at for the "goings-on" this summer!
Last time, I showed lucardensiana budding up. The buds never made it to maturity, dropped, and it tried to rebud and dropped again. Apparently it gave up, but it did decide to start growing, so that's very exciting! It's a neat little plant and I've been anxious for it to grow, so I'm ok with it deciding to put its energy into growing right now...
Paulshirleyii is another that tried to bud up. It has 3 peduncles (which is a lot for such a small plant!!) and it keeps budding and dropping, budding and dropping, so it seems hell-bent on getting it done. I hope it does!
Let's talk about what has been blooming! Bicknellii decided to bloom:
Love these blooms! They're pretty small for the size of the plant, but they remind me of little candies, like star-shaped red hots, sitting on a fluff of cotton candy or something. Very cute!
'Krinkle 8' has been blooming up a storm - more than ever in the past. It's got long vines growing up across the GH and the flowers are all over the place...
They're so pretty, like fungii... But weirdly enough, the new vines have leaves that are losing the "krinkle"...
They're starting to look more like carnosa than 'K8'... I'm wondering if it tends to happen as the plant ages. I'm pretty sure I got this from Yale - maybe I'll have to e-mail him and ask him about that...
My noID that I THINK is Ngong Ngoy bloomed again...
It's a stunner! The white edges make it SO striking!! It's a lot like... I think it's 'Red Buttons' that has the white edges...
Fitchii bloomed again as well...
More about the show...I had two Echevierias in the show - derenbergii won 2nd place:
And Echevieria agavoides cv. 'Lipstick' got 3rd place:
Sedum rubrotinctum aurora got 2nd place. I guess I don't have a photo of that one... I had one of the big Thai Crown of Thorns that got 2nd place:
More about the winners tomorrow!!
