esrosedotblog

WILTED

Just the other day, I told John that I miss the New England Flower Show.

This was prompted by seeing some trees (growing wild) that looked to be acacias. The Flower Show made a big deal of placing acacias along the walkway into the Show each year.

No more.

Economic Crisis Takes a Toll on Flower Shows

(The acacias are mentioned in the second paragraph)

They will have to come out here to see their acacias.

Now, to be honest, I have to say that I did not really enjoy the Flower Show that much. It was just something that we had to do every year. Like it or not.

You can miss something you don't particularly like especially if you did it over and over again.

We would get up early and go stand on line to get in before the big crowd. That was the main thing. I hate crowds.

Right after the crowds, I hate standing in line.

Nevertheless, we stood and then went in and moved as swiftly as possible to the exhibits, mostly man-made tableaus (I have used this word two times now in the last three days) of various settings.

The main point was the flowers of course. The smell. The warmth and humidity. The pure fug of dense flora, artificially assembled or not.

We would ooh and ahhh and then go to the arrangement competitions. Dead boring. And then the sales area where we would always buy something that we did not need and, as it turned out, that we were not able to use.

Altogether a negative experience all around. But we kept going every year.

Now, for now, it is over.

I put an article in the blog yesterday about economic dislocations. This is probably one of them.

The Flower Show had long since transitioned from an activity of the Horticultural Society for its members. It had morphed into an exhibition for the garden and landscape industry.

This is not one of those industries that I would want to be in right now. The idea of high artifice is likely to disappear from many of our activities.

So, nostalgia or not, another time honored tradition falls to the wrecking ball.

Maybe it will come back in a form that is more humble and less extravagantic. Perhaps "do it yourself" gardeners will again prevail. Maybe we will begin to let nature be nature and that will guide us around larger environmental issues.

For one, I am taking another look at growing grass and petunias in the desert. We are 90% there already. Maybe we will go the last ten.

Labels: environment, flowers, horticulture, nostalgia