Flowers and the Flowershow

It begins!

My hives seems to have survived the winter, and they were bringing in all sorts of pollen. Despite off and on snow storms (with some more on the way even!) crocuses and some willow trees have started to flower. Snowdrops are also in bloom here but not as abundant as the others. I see maple tree buds are starting to swell so it's good to see spring is coming. 

Also: I normally do a yearly post on the Philadelphia International Flower Show. While I did go this year I have to say I've never found flowers to be so sedating. A lot of the displays were over designed, using plants more as a material to display color and texture, than anything practical in a garden. Here was a chance to make the Mona Lisa with flowers and instead they plucked the peddles and leaves off of the plants and glued them to the wall.

Balls?

Knitting needles with doughnuts?

Some of them came off as craft projects there didn't seem practical as works of art nor as flowering displays.

 The most successful designs I felt were ones that were made to be glorified vases, that played with light and color to great effect. 

The theme was "Articulture" which combine the thrill of art with the boredom of wandering an art museum. But it lacked the history and signatures of the great minds that helped create. Art museums tend to be laid out in a specific way, grouping like-pieces together from parts of the world or periods in history. It's interesting to see in the older pieces how subdued and orange-like the reds are because no one knew how to make the ruby red lipstick shades we have today. It was somehow more practical to use real gold instead of yellow at the time too. No one knew how to draw three dimensional spaces yet and portraits were generalized, almost caricature-like. Eventually we see more colors coming into play, and portraits start to look more and more like people. Sadly there wasn't a whole lot of that going on except for one area in the back.

This was my favorite display there. It's a shame the rest of the art show wasn't more like this. It pays tribute to the artiest in different styles but could have done more to incorporate the flower theme a little better.

I actually liked this display for its design but unfortunately I can't help shaking his feeling that I've seen it before at the Philadelphia Flower Show on past years.

There was a painting to go along with this display. Basically the painting was the blueprint for the design here which was mostly brown with a blue pool and half circle in it. It's a good representation and I like that they used ... it looked like almost all native meadow plants in winter. It suggests that the painting could appear in different colors at other times of the year.

I actually hated this design because of how impractical it would be to plant. It's a nice collection of evergreens in a nice display but you might as well have planted a topiary garden because most of these trees want to grow 25' tall.

Show me Dutch Wave, Cottage Style Garden, Naturalistic Style and turn that into a painting so it doesn't just look like another landscape.

It was an okay theme this year, just not fully envisioned to its potential or perhaps taken in more by the idea of modern art. Paintings as a commodity, a speculative bubble waiting to burst just as the Tulip craze did so many years ago.

The Annoying Process of Publishing a Book

So back in October and November I decided that I had enough photos, information, and creativity to start writing a book... and finish it this time! "Writing a Book" has been my answer to the question "So what are you doing?" for the past nine years or so. So it's great to finally start something and get it done to completing this time. That being said, I have some praise and complaints to dish out for the whole process.

If you go to Amazon.com, and scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll find something like "Self Publish With Us," and that takes you over to Create Space, which is what I used to self publish. My logic there was I wanted a physical copy of the book I wrote which was important to me. Barns & Nobel will only offer your book as a digital copy. Some other places are happy to publish your book too but you have to order your copies and sell them yourself.

So here's the process I went though.
Fill out all your author and title information, get an ISBN, pick a size you want and you're ready to roll.

Once you have all that settled, spend however long it takes to type your book. Learn about adding Table of Contents, Graphs, and Page Numbers, which should all be standard in whatever typing program you're using.  

Interior: Your file needs to be at least 24 pages (I think) in order to upload and preview. You'll probably be uploading and replacing the previous file a lot just to make sure things look right. This can take several minutes depending on how big your file is. You're then given a nice looking pdf preview with page turning animations that I really likes with Create Space. Here is where all the little flaws are pointed out. What was 4 by 6 inches in your typing program (Word, Office, etc...) might not be the same 4 by 6 in their format, and you may need to tweak things.

Something I got annoyed with was, I'd have a paragraph below my images, but because their format saw there was space after the image to fit a letter, they'd break up the first word in the sentance to put those letters beside the image and I don't know why. So "There are flowers..." would become


[PICTURE] "T
here are flowers..." 

So you want to look out for that kind of stuff. Adding an [Enter] or enlarging the photo slightly made this go away. 


Now here's the pain. You have to "fix" it in your file which might not have the same problem, and then upload it again. I would love to have been able to just fix it in their program so I wouldn't have to upload, but oh well. 

Cover: For the cover Create Space has you covered. They have a wonderful program that I really enjoyed playing with. You just upload the picture you want, pick a few colors, and fill in the text boxes. I actually found this really enjoyable and easy. However, if you need to upload your file again, it assumes you might have changed the size format, so you need to sift through your cover again. This was a minor annoyance but not really a problem in the grand scheme of things. 

File Review: So you think you're finished. You're all proofread, everything is the way you want it laid out, and it's "perfect". You're probably wrong, but that's where this step comes in. You submit your book to them, and they get back to you sometime a day later. One thing they caught with my book was for Author I had my middle initial in some places but not in others. Some things they fix for you but other things you're responsible for. 

Proof Your Book: So you've been approved, Great! You get the final say in whether or not to go forward. I highly recommend buying a proof copy (this is usually an at cost price) before moving forward. This is a dramatic difference between reading a paragraph on your computer and holding it in your hands. I found I was far more aware of the paragraph overall when holding a physical copy than when I read it on my screen. As soon as it arrives, Get the red pen out, and go to town giving it a final read through. I thought I was already done by this point, but I kept finding maybe one mistake every few pages.

Also get a few friends and people who's opinions you trust to read it too. English teachers are especially valuable as they tend to remember all the little rules to everything. And hopefully they can give you a short sentance or two long review for the back cover.

Channels and Pricing: This is self explanatory. My book is on Amazon for $29.99. Unfortunately I went a little overboard with photos and the 216 pages at an 8 by 11 size drove up the cost. Had I written a novel say 4 by 6 and used fewer photos or made them all black and white, it would be cheaper for them to produce. Not surprisingly I make more money from the $9.99 Kindle version because it doesn't really cost anything to produce. Enabling the preview for both is done just after it's available. Getting it on the Kindle is submitted after it's published and available on amazon, though you can enable on or the other as you like.

2013 Philadelphia International Flower Show

I'd give this show an overall 3.5 out of 5, which is okay. I didn't feel like it was a waste of time but there wasn't a whole lot that thrilled me either. I saw a lot more green this year than in previous years and that's a problem for a flower show. Something else I learned is that the best time to go is just after 4:00pm on the weekdays.There was barely any crowd at all, and I can recall in year's past when you were elbow to elbow.

The British theme was a nice one, with lots of royal looking flower arrangements, but these were a little sparse.  

The centerpiece of the show is a short replica of Big Ben, which is actually a video screen of an animated clock. Every hour, on the hour, it played a mildly offensive video that really shoved the British theme in your face. Still-images of British comedians, rock stars, and members of the royal family were cheaply animated, like someone making an internet joke and I wondered if they even had the rights to use these images. Having them all salute the flag of England painted on someone's ass would have fit in perfectly.

Birch Trees lined the isles though I'm not sure what they have to do with England. (Aren't they native to North America?)

So I started to walk around looking for inspiration, which sadly I don't get a whole lot of. Most of the displays were colorful and had some plants that I found impressive, but I wasn't sure about some of the combinations.

I think a lot of the props had a greater impact than the plants did.

Holy hell, where am I again? I think the designer to this one committed suicide. Hidden in the corner of the show there was a display that seemed to be more about artistic emotion and design than anything to do with gardening. I actually started to like it as an artiest. One women commented that this was a tribute to Jack the Ripper.... I'm unsure if she was joking, and can't imagine why anyone would ever promote a murderer like that.

The walls, floor, and ceiling to this little room were padded with roses, their thorny stems coating a bed, the perfect cell for a mad gardener to sleep.

An interesting take on a hanging garden, I guess. I liked the stone hands.

The display next to it was a more traditional garden setting. A path leading up to a house and a tribute to the sport of Cricket.

This display was a lot wider, but I felt this statue caught my eye the most. Once you've seen a well flowered front to a house, you've pretty much seen them all.

This display failed in a lot of ways. There are almost no flowers, though I think the pink umbrellas are made out of them. The black ones were actually fountains, though the trickling one gets from a garden hose was all that came out. I don't get it.

They had smoke machines, but they failed to hide the pool of water, and all their electrical cords were in plain view. Maybe they had it foggy for the judges, but I thought it was tacky and surely someone else could have done better. 

Beside it was a tropical paradise. Orchids and assorted trees and plants of the rain forest seemed to be all that were used. 

Orchids are so bright and vibrant sometimes.

A highlight was they actually had a chocolate tree with fruit on it.

Nods to the beetles were scattered through the show, but I thought they were almost too expected given the theme.

I loved this owl. I think it's made entirely out of plant material.

Witch Hazel. This plant is actual flowering at this time of year, and there are many color variations of it now. 

This one had some neat furniture.

I'm actually curious where they bought this one.

Rounding back to the clock, we found some odd egg shaped statues. This one is made out of pipes. (This is a flower show right?)

Garden hose. That's what mine looks like right now out in our shed.

More traditional displays had an emphasis on bulbs. In years past I'd complained about how over used they were. They're just too easy, too common, and with the exception of last year having nothing but orchids, they were prominently featured in every display.

Lupines and Delphinium.

Hyacinths... I don't have anything to say about these. The blue ones look nice with whatever yellow fringed evergreen that is. Besides that there's just lots of color.

Tulips... lots and lots of tulips... and a cold frame that's growing bulbs for god knows why.

Tulips and Grape Hyacinth. The shoes are appropriate considering they hale from the same general part of the world that most bulbs come from.

Daffodils, Rhododendrons, and maybe one or two other things. This actually works for me. If you're going to do bulbs, make it a rocky hillside, like the slopes of a mountain but then COVER IT IN COLOR!!! This sort of does that. One year I'd love to walk through the show and feel like I were walking the center of a valley and all around me flowers grow.Or even imitate a bulb farm but make it stretch a sizable portion of the show! Avoid the "Garden Zoo" effect and make things look natural.

Our native pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea.

Sarracenia purpurea flower.

The Power of Poop.... and they have sunflowers for their display.

Lots and lots of sunflowers.

Orchids. Lots and lots of colorful orchids. This part of the show focused on individual plants which I noticed had improved from previous years.

Panda Flowers. This is an Asian relative of our native Wild Ginger.

Ant Plant! In the wild this plant attaches itself to a tree and grows a fat hollow cavity for ants to live inside. Some of them even produce food bodies for the ants to eat.

Philadelphia International Flower Show 2012

I just got back from the Philadelphia International Flower Show 2012. This year's theme was an Orchid Orgasm! 

Actually this year's theme was Hawaii: Islands of Aloha, which is news to me because up until I arrived I thought it was Waves of Change or something. Anyhow this is easily the best flower show I've gone to so far.

Let's begin by discussing my strategy of showing up as early as possible. Despite being Sunday morning I was surprised to see how many old ladies skipped out on church to come see the show. Even then the crowds weren't as awful as they have been in the past and I wish the best of luck to anyone thinking they're going to be able to walk comfortably after twelve noon. The main theme exhibits are where all of the traffic jams occur. Supposedly more than 10,000 people are expected to show up the first day, and I can say from past experience that it's not an unrealistic goal for weekdays either. One women was practically forcing my hand into her purse as she pushed me out of the way to take a photo. The artistic, floral, and educational exhibits don't draw nearly as big of a crowd, so beyond the main exhibit everyone disperses nicely.    

You enter the show under curved view screens that display waves which help set the tone. They're lined with white orchids and something else that's rich with the fragrance of pollen. This sudden hit of fragrance at the entrance has always been a key point to making a good show, but wasn't as strong as in past years.

From behind, the big wave isn't nearly as impressive but it's nice to see the use of technology. 

The main theme exhibit is a massive waterfall which I wasn't able to do justice to. It's as tall as the Aggro Crag but covered in Orchids and has a waterfall down the front!

This is so much more impressive than a mary-go-round and two legs of the Eiffel tower that highlighted last year's show. 

Orchids take the place of Rhododendrons which where almost completely absent from the show itself. And it took me a good hour of walking before I saw my first bulb which is really saying a lot for the designers of this year's show. 

Exhibits were happily growing pineapple right in the scenery.

Star Fruit, Honey Melon, Bananas, I love it when food plants are used in these displays. (I would have centered this picture better but there was this women in a wheel chair who fought a lot harder than me to get a better angle.)

All I recognize here are Paradise Flowers and I'm not even confident with that ID.

I'm also unsure why some of them were growing hair.

Apparently this table won some awards. I have to admit I'm completely ignorant to the judging process or even what categories there are. Stopping to read anything just isn't practical at these crowded shows. 

This is the end of an exhibit who's line was moving to slow to even bother with. I liked the flowers here but the rest was manikins dressed in native Hawaiian attire standing around huts and surf boards, and at a glance looked stereotypical and offensive, despite its educational attempt. 

Despite the lack of flowers here, this was one of my favorite of the theme displays.

It shows more of a Hawaiian badlands area. Actual volcanic rocks were used throughout. The large tower to the left is made of stacked break pads and train wheel-like parts.

It's reminiscent of a meadow and I think that's why I like it so much.

 The landscapers this year seemed to be confused where to focus their attention. The main theme of the show is tropics so they have the option of going with that theme or staying true to what works around here. I might be mistaken and this could be an artistic exhibit but they've tried to create a lava effect. (My map has this labeled as a landscaping exhibit though.)

 For lack of a better image I like how this one was more casual in showing off an ideal back yard get away. They used actual white sand for their entire exhibit which expands far off to the right out of frame.

This was probably the smartest of the designs, as far as stirring up local business is concerned. Change out a few of the plants and I could see this being someone's back yard.

Also something I noticed about exhibits with ponds in them. Everyone keeps throwing money in them!

 

 To me this was as eye catching as the main theme exhibits. Note that some of the buildings have rooftop gardens. It's begging for a topiary Godzilla ... or lawn mower... or topiary Godzilla vs. the Lawnmower! 

 The models are well made, and the tiny plants are almost perfectly scaled to be trees.

 Sure the roads look a little cheap but that's a pretty good representation of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

 

 There was one there which a memorial to the Battleship Arizona, complete with names of the officers who died as the focus of their design.  

 

As a side note I noticed the really tall Snapdragons were in one of the artistic exhibits.

These are my two favorite staged designs. There were other art exhibits surrounding but I don't follow them that much. Paintings of flowers, dresses made of flowers, tiny window boxes of flowers... it all starts to look the same after a while. 

  

 The EPA had an exhibit on display featuring all native plants! I didn't have time to stop and read the labels to all of them but there were lots of small blue phlox coming into bloom.

 Rhododendrons (I think the only ones to appear at this year's show) were also part of their exhibit along side blueberry plants in flower.

Carnivorous pitcher plants were also flowering.

Blueberries in flower.

Fothergilla grande.

An issue with using natives is fewer nurseries grow them and aren't willing to expend their stock by forcing them to flower out of season. The result is often green and brown being the most common colors at this time of year. In years past I think they used witch hazel, and berry plants in their exhibit.

Onto what I'm calling the orgasm of orchids. What seemed like more than a third of the Horticultural part of the show was comprised of nothing but Orchids!

I knew this was a big family of plants but there was a ridiculous amount of variety here. 

 One of the prettiest pictures I took at the show.

 This one actually grew like a tree or Rhododendron with all it's flowers atop the taller stems.

 

 

 

 

 

 Here's an Orchid that wants to be a Trillium.

 

 Talk about out growing its pot.

 

 Pineapple!

 Ipheion... Why don't people just use Blue Eyed Grass?

 Didn't get the name of this one but it's nice. 

Someone had an Amorphophallus titanum at the show! This is a great big tropical plant that takes something like 50 years to make a very awful smelling flower. 

 And last of all there's the area reserved for the usual crap. Crocuses, Daffodils, Irises, Narcissus, Tulips, Hyacinths have all been included in the main theme exhibits in the past 4 years that I've gone to the show. While there's something wonderful to say that you can see them in professional designs buy them at any garden center, it eventually begs the question why anyone would ever pay money to see them at a show if that's all they're going to use. The fact that they were didn't use them at all is what makes this the best flower show I've ever been to.

Now a brief moment of shopping.

This vender was a crazy person. They're selling snowdrops in individual pots. You can buy them normally at any garden center by the bag for a few dollars. Some of them are 'cultivars' but it's hard to justify buying them this way. The pot and dirt are probably more expensive than the bulb inside of them. Having slightly more green spots, or a stem that's slightly shorter than normal on a plant that's barely noticeable to begin with ... Like do any of these honestly look that different from the norm!? They're Snowdrops! It's not uncommon for them to flower in the snow. No one is laying down in the mud or snow just to see how this cultivar differs. The effing flower even faces the ground! I don't even think they're double flowering!

 

Orchids, 3 for $20. If I knew how to grow them these properly that sounds like a great deal.

Seed packets for Thistle. It's a nonnative currently invading the west coast but thistle all the same. 

My only real complaint was that I didn't get laid at the show, though they were selling them. So that was the show this year. LOVED IT! 

Also Fun Fact: A Hawaiian Luau doesn't get the same result as Mardi Gras beads.