Tag Archives: other people’s Toils

County and State Fairs – Scratch that Competitive Itch

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Runner-up beans at the 2012 Montgomery County Fair

Do you love the county fair?  Did your parents ever take you to the state fair because there was more fair there?

Remember wrist-band day?  It was caution-to-the-wind as your parents said, “Meet me back here at the grandstand at 6:00.  Sharp.”

You – two bags of cotton candy.  Your best friend – dares you to ride the Gravatron for the fifth time.

We were just at the Montgomery County Fair in  Gaithersburg, MD yesterday.  I’ve been to many fairs and this one blows me away.  Aside from the delightful animal barns with their wooden stalls and open-air construction that encourage you to admire the livestock, the farm, garden and flower contest entries will make any gardener flush with envy.  Tomatoes beckon like seed catalog illustrations and impossibly plump pole beans lay alongside sun flowers that cast shadows.

The Montgomery County Fair just happened to fall on the week following the 2012 Summer Olympics.  I can’t help but wonder if the non-ribbon-winning contestants for Corn – Feed Grade feel it’s an honor just to compete, or, if like McKayla Maroney, they are not impressed with the category’s blue ribbon winner.

What about us in the city?  Can we podium with the spoils of our summer labor on our balconies, tiny front yards and sidewalk tree boxes?  County fairs have strict rules that competition entrants be raised or grown within the county, likewise for state fairs.

Our own DC State Fair answers that call to celebrate – and compete – in agriculture and craft of the urbanite.

If 80 percent of success is showing up, then the 2012 DC State Fair’s broad spectrum of twenty+ contests has a little something for everyone – pick one and show up.

From homebrewing to photography, kid’s art & poetry to beekeeper honey, pie baking to cupcake-ing, knit & crochet & sewing contests to bike accessory making, home pickling & fermenting to vegetable growing – pick your favorite hobby (or learn a new one!) and see how easy it is to register to compete.

Some contests have limited registration capacity, others will accept entries the day of, but plan ahead and envision what you’ll do with that blue ribbon.  (Can you say Instagram gold?)

If your main hobby is socializing, join the fun and cheer on the ag-athletes!  The 2012 DC State Fair will be held Saturday, September 22nd, as part of the Barracks Row Fall Festival along 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill.

Do you live nowhere near DC but want to get in on the grow-your-own and make-it-yourself competitive spirit?  Find your state agricultural fair here or simply Google your county fair for dates and location.

Get the kids involved, or cultivate your own blue ribbon wishes, the fair is for everyone.

Blue ribbons for days at the Montgomery County Fair

Travels – Photosafari in Florida Garden

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My birthday: The toddler and I boarded a plane for a long weekend down to Neal’s parents’ house in Atlantic Beach, Florida.  We stayed over Mother’s Day weekend while Neal worked in DC.

Her gardens awe visitors.  Neal says his mother’s garden at his childhood Atlanta home inspired the same lush and peaceful embrace, everything existed together as though it always was.  I better understood patina my first visit to their Florida home a few years ago, everything outside settled into place and welcomed its fate, wearing with time and showing the elements.

The plants and fixtures grow into one another creating a continuous scene with nothing stopping the show.  Blooms call you over, scented flowers lead you further, the Loquat canopy draws you around the corner and, wherever you are, you love it.

People pay money to go to places like this.

I grew up in Florida, about two hours southwest of Neal’s folks’ address.  The smells, sounds, humidity, birds, lizards, bugs, thunderstorms, sandspurs and landscape are all familiar.  The most welcoming sight is seeing how these two non-natives have adapted to it all.

Gardenspotting – Dogwood Walk

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I love how the dogwoods wait until the cherry trees are done stealing the spotlight.

We also spotted some little orange flowers that were worthy gardenmates to a lovely dogwood.

The dogwood flowers are nice and sturdy, great for holding tight in these blustery April days of late.

Walking – A Month Ago in Florida

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Out on a walk in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

It’s near Jacksonville along the beach.

Walking – Sunny Dupont

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Dupont Circle begs me to hang out and people watch under its huge tree canopy.

No matter how long I live in DC, I suspect the years I lived in Dupont will hold my favorite walking memories.

Swimming in Tulips

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I can’t get enough of this tulip sea bed.

Photos with Hipstamatic.

Walking – Tulip Stalking

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Winter has been a bad boyfriend this year – not around when he’s supposed to be, shows up unannounced for a night only to leave before breakfast.

Winter was here for a few hours last night.  I covered the cold frame and root veggie pots with due diligence given the wind and the freeze warning.

By noon today it was a fabulously warm 50 degrees with the clearest, most brilliant, sunshine.

I stopped in my tracks when I spotted my favorite yard-o-tulips completely awash in 1000 watts of tulip shine.

Winter – I’ve blocked  your number.  Don’t come around here again.

Photos via Pop Camera app.

Into the Green

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The dopey sentimentality of gardening does not speak to me or my gardening friends.  The little “I’m in the Garden!” sign hanging near the front door is nothing I would ever hang by my front door.  And that’s OK.

I’m not sure where in the twentieth century gardens turned from a place to be connected (either through laboring for food or reclining among evening jasmine) to a place to fill with wooden cutouts of cat posteriors.

Gardening in the Lines shares a lovely find: ‘the Armchair Book of Gardens’ by Jane Billinghurst.

As winter keeps coming and going this season like a bad boyfriend (on his way here right now with a keg for this weekend), Erin’s post captures the it of the toil:

They are places where life can be lived – secret spaces explored, romances started, books read, friends entertained. Those with patience and an artistic turn of mind can absorb themselves in the task of beautifying their gardens.

Indeed.