Sunday, March 17, 2013

Flower and Patio show wrap up

Today I hit the Flower and Patio show at it's close at five o'clock. At this time I pick up whatever had not been sold as well as the vases and fixtures I provide and it looks like it has been another good year. I also picked up a couple of chairs and a coffee table that I put in Stoneycreek Farms booth.

The end of the show is like the looting of a shipwreck. Hordes of people come in after the show closes and haggle with the garden owners to buy the plants that they have used in their displays from small daffodils to large trees. What had been a lovely serene landscape of spring, is now being rammed by bulldozers and dumped on trucks. Diesel fumes, dust, people haggling, carrying items to be loaded and taken away, cars trucks and vans parked in a crazy patchwork of desperation and frenzy, everyone eager to get loaded and away after 96 hours of the nine-day show.
Twenty foot tall trees being carried down the aisle by fork trucks.
Sales were little bit less than last year, but not much less. I like everyone else am glad it is over for another year. The last two weeks are the most intense time of my year and it is good to have met the challenge once again.

Before going down to the show, I had several visitors in the shop. I will be glad to cut up the rest of the pussywillows ( oh yes,there are lots more, to be sold throughout the year.) My workshop is filled with a whole van load of pussy willows from the last two trees I trimmed in Arcadia. I will bundle them up, but I will not have to be in such an intense crazy frenzied hurry.

The next challenge will be the Indiana Artisan Marketplace April 5-6-7. This has become my favorite show.

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