Just wanted to thank everyone for their contribution to our very successful mum sale. I don’t have any figures yet as our treasurer is away. Not all the helpers are on this list so I will thank them at our next meeting. It was a lot of fun and our stock and variety of plants seemed very pleasing to our patrons.

Our public plant sale will be March 28th (Saturday) from 9-1:30 at Furney’s Nursery in Des Moines. 21215 Pacific Hwy South is their address. Phone is 206-624-0634.
Early blooming English mums, as well as late blooming varieties will be available. All of our varieties will be represented- incurves, reflexes, spiders, charms, anemones, singles, sprays and cushion mums in every color including green. Come early for best selection. They will be offered in 2 inch pots and will sell for $2.00 each . Membership into the ECA and growing directions will also be available. A mum seminar detailing how to grow beautiful mums may be given at 2:00. Living door prizes will be made available.

Membership into the Association cost only $15 annually and family membership is only $20.New members will be given 10 free plants and a family membership provides 15 free plants. Meetings are held the second Thursday of each month starting at 7 and ending at 9 PM.They are held at the Seattle Police Athletic Pavillion at 11030 East Marginal Way South Tukwila.

Have you been watching the Winter Olympics? What is the cultivar?

There’s quite a story behind the Olympic flowers
By Trey Kerby

After every Olympic event, rather than receiving their medals, athletes are given a
bouquet of flowers. At the Beijing Olympics, roses dominated the bouquets. In
Turin, it was rhododendrons, azaleas, and camellias. This year, it’s green
mums and hypericum berries.

The bouquets come from Just Beginnings Flowers and Margitta’s Flowers in Surrey, British Columbia.
Their entry was chosen from 58 contending florists. June Strandberg, the bouquet designer and owner of Just
Beginnings, teaches floristry to women who have left prison, are recovering from addiction, or have been victims of violence. It’s a pretty amazing program, and Strandberg has even taken it behind bars, where she educates
convicts. She believes it’s her work with these correctional programs that secured the Olympic contract.

For the Vancouver Olympics the florists made 1,800 bouquets, 1,707 of which will be given to medal-winning athletes in the Olympics and Paralympics. The flowers are grown locally, but they aren’t in season during February, so additional supplies were flown in from Ecuador. The flowers were chosen to represent British Columbia and Canada, and are intended as keepsakes for the athletes.

There are even strict regulations for the bouquets presented at the flower ceremonies. Per IOC protocol, bouquets must be 20 to 30 centimeters tall and about 25 centimeters across. Though these flowers might look like something you give your mom at a homecoming football game, a lot of thought and planning goes into choosing and making these bouquets. When you consider the societal benefits behind these flowers,
it almost makes the bouquets as valuable as the medals.

More info at this link:

What was that Mum?