By Carol Wong, President

Have you ever made a BIG Mistake? Well we almost did not have a May membership meeting due to my neglect, but alert members corrected the omission, so please plan to COME to the May 17 membership meeting at the Veteran’s Building. The program will be power point programs with membership input. As there is no speaker, there will not be a dinner ahead of time at Harry’s Hofbrau. Instead, PLEASE COME BY 7 P.M. if you are showing any roses or arrangements, as it takes time at the tables outside the hall to check your entries before bringing them into the room for correct placement.

Roses should be in their own clear glass bottles, groomed to be free of bugs, and with a filled-out ARS label showing the section, class, variety, and your name and address. We will have the labels and the show schedule available for you to pick up and take home for the next show. If members are not showing a rose and you know the rules for showing, we would appreciate your stopping by the work tables to see if someone needs some help in preparing their show roses. Your mentorship will be highly appreciated! It takes time to learn how to prep roses to show at their best. All entries and arrangements should be in place before the 7:30 start time in order to give the judge adequate time for judging.

Many members participated in April’s first monthly rose show, making the stark room a rainbow of colorful roses, arrangements, and raffle prizes. The multitude of blooms showed that the winter’s rains were much appreciated by our plants, and it made a glorious sight. Jolene Adams gave a fine program on classic shrub roses, which expanded knowledge of these hardy roses including rosa rugosa, kordeseii and moyesii. Cynthia Chuang, ably assisted by Priya Kamath, not only judged the blooms and arrangements, but also gave brief critiques which could help us improve. Thrilling though this first show was, we hope everyone will make the effort to bring roses to share or create an arrangement! Isn’t this why we joined other rose lovers?

Preparations for our exhibit at the Filoli Flower show are ready. Please call and bring your show-ready blooms to these people so we can include them: Priya Kamath, Pam Schenk or me for Thursday, May 5 by 8 a.m., Eleanor Rakonitz on Friday, May 6, Jerry Georgette by Saturday, and Anne Quincy by Sunday, May 8. Janet and Russell Bohne have offered to help dismantle the exhibit on Sunday at 4 p.m. If you go to the flower show, do check out our exhibit.