MIFGS & Beyond - April 6, 2009

Well MIFGS is over and I am utterly whacked. I came home this evening after the clean-up and slept for about an hour before I was able to even think about dinner, let alone engage in conversation with humans.

Before I move on to the flower show, I've remembered that when we were in Kapunda, one of the ladies from a local sewing shop had requested all of her customers to offer something useful for bushfire survivors. She had an enormous response including a sewing machine which she offered to Ros, knitting machines, quilting materials and books, magazines and sewing and quilting accoutrements. Once again demonstrating the enormous generosity of ordinary people there was far more than we could possibly carry, so it has gone into storage. In the meantime, Ros will try and arrange for the Baptist Church which is now handling the distribution of such items, to have it all transported to Victoria.l

Following set-up of my display for MIFGS on Monday & Tuesday, I have spent about 8 hours daily from Wed - Sun talking to people about my display, answering questions about groundcovers - I reckon I've written "Creeping Boobialla - fine leaf" about 500 times at least and if sales of it and Sea Lavender which was the other great hit, don't go up as a direct result of this, I will be very surprised indeed. Creeping Boobialla or myoporum parvifolium is really an excellent groundcover that wasn't originally included in my design. However only 16 of the 96 trailing
rosemary ordered were delivered and fortuitously, the City of Whitehorse had delivered more myoporum than they required so I was able to use their excess. Wish I'd thought to include it in the first place!

The whole experience besides being exhausting has been very worthwhile. I really like talking to people about their gardens and have three and possibly four design consultations as a result of interactions at the show. I've also handed out a heap of business cards so perhaps some of them may turn into jobs as well.

Some of you will remember that this was also a competition - I didn't win any prizes although my colleague Phil pulled off two of them and he wasn't even going to enter. - bastard! It was a well deserved win and frankly I thought my design would perhaps be seen to be either attempting to capitalise on the recent bushfires or in fact be a little too confronting. This latter view was underpinned by a woman who muttered "This is in very poor taste!" and when I asked why she thought it was in bad taste said that it was too soon after the fires and people would not want to be reminded of the loss and destruction. She was somewhat mollified when I explained that the burned ruins were my own and the design my reponse and hope for the future.

Some people were moved to tears with many standing in silence before moving on without speaking. I received many congratulations and best wishes for having the courage to respond so positively to such a life impacting event. Overall, the responses were many and varied, from "Did you have a fire here last night?" and, "What happend to your display?", to "Gees. this looks just like my backyard! " and "Now I know what to do next time I have a pile of broken bricks to get rid of.".

Of them all my two favourites were from children. One a young girl of about 8 or 9 who said,"Wow this is cool!" and the other a young boy of similar age, whose mother said they'd been talking about it and he made her come back so he could ask if I'd designed it, because it was his favourite! Who needs more prizes than this!?
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