I hope you are enjoying your garden as much as I am enjoying mine. For me that includes roses, dahlias, berries, tomatoes and more right now. I hope you had a chance to relax and enjoy your garden this “off month” without a Peninsula Rose Society Board or Member meeting. For those of you who came to my garden and yard for the PRS Picnic on July 14th, I hope you enjoyed it. The food was great and plentiful, the weather cooperated, and my garden looked about as good as it has except maybe in full spring bloom. I mentioned to some people the last time I had an open garden for PRS was 1992 (I found photos). This time I made a huge mistake, I was so busy talking, visiting and showing people around I did not take photos until afterwards! I include some photos in the Photo Gallery which I took the next day, but they are missing the most critical ingredient, the people! It was a nice day because it was also Marlene Bollhoffer’s Birthday.

Next is an update on the continuing discussions with Filoli for a Fall 2020 District show and meetings of the NCNH District. We are still in talks with Filoli and have met with Filoli staff and looked at venues inside the property. It is a splendid venue and looks possible, but costs will need to be considered carefully. The most likely dates are weekends early in October 2020. This could be a great “draw” for the district and between getting donations and charging appropriately we may be able to manage finances. We have people who have already started helping to look at housing, judges and at the venue at Filoli. We will be getting pricing for room and day combinations and will be doing detailed layouts soon to see how we can fit in their space as well as getting all the required events in place and have room for entries. For those of you wanting to see how one of these is done, why not attend the Auburn Sept 27-29 event “Gold Rush Roses” this year. More information is here.

If you want to enter roses in the Fall conference (or in PRS shows) you may want to cut back a bit harder than normal to stimulate new growth and give the roses extra water and fertilizer for more bloom starting about 6-8 weeks before the show. I look forward to seeing you at our next general meeting August 20th.

Happy Gardening,

Stu Dalton