Inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, it feels like a combination of early spring and Santa's workshop. Delectable smells of dirt and mulch and lots of noise!
I stopped by this afternoon, my first foray into Flower Show madness, and things were well along. Mike Devlin, head of the Camden Children's Garden, was a cool cat. All his flowers had arrived and a smartly-outfitted crew was busily putting them in place. No nonsense here.
They had saw some rocket snapdragons that were loaded with buds, just beginning to open. They should hold off OK, given that the temperature in the convention center was pretty frosty. I ran around without a coat but Mike was decked out for a ski trip. (He was warmer.)
The French Quarter is coming together. This is part of the central feature, done by Bob and Karen Lamsback. I saw both of them there but didn't say hello. They were quite busy. Karen was up on a balcony. Didn't want to catch her off guard. Could be dangerous!
The central feature is looking fine. I like the oversized bass and the wild piano keys. It was hard to imagine just how three-dimensional they'd be from the drawings. Take it from me. They're three.
But mostly this part of the Flower Show process seems to be about boy toys. No, not that kind of boy toy .. the kind that rumbles and rolls, picks up big blobs of dirt and moves them from one side of the room to the other, little front-loaders with DEERE on the side and baby bulldozers moving huge trees.
It's fun to slip silently through the aisles before the show starts and people have their game faces on. To tell the truth, no one seems too tense, although it's only Wednesday ...
I'll pop in again tomorrow, see how the boy toys are holding up. Gotta get my fix of chainsaw sound effects. Go, guys!
