Color Me Blue

Last year when I attended the NJ Flower and Garden Show, I noticed that they had added a photo competition. There were some really nice pictures. I wondered how one went about entering the competition and if my photos were good enough. This year the Garden Club of NJ sent out a notice that they were opening their flower arranging and photo competitions to Master Gardeners. I jumped at the chance to enter some of my photos.

The rules limited entries to one per category. I agonized over which photo to submit for the digital black and white division, finally settling on a photo of a wall at Rutgers Gardens that I had taken for the newsletter I created for their Open House in July 2006 and converted to black and white. I had no problem deciding on a photo for the digital color division. I submitted my favorite photo from last year of the bench in the herb bed at Rutgers Gardens.

In the teeth of the blizzard yesterday, I took my photos to the convention hall to be entered into the competition. Then I went to work. The original plan was to get off at my usual time of midnight, get a good night's sleep, work from 11 AM to 2 PM at the Rutgers Gardens booth and then enjoy the flower show until I had to leave for work at 4 PM. As noted in my previous post, the extreme weather conditions prevented the nightshift person from relieving me and I was forced to remain at work until 9 AM this morning. That gave me just enough time to drive home, feed my cats, pour a pot of coffee into myself and change my clothes so that I could arrive on time for my 11-2 shift at the flower show.


Despite not having slept for over 24 hours, I stayed on after my shift ended to tour the show. I'll do that post tomorrow. I also went over to the photo competition to see how my pictures stacked up against those of more experienced and better trained photographers. I was thrilled to death when I saw this:

That's an Honorable Mention ribbon for my black and white entry. How exciting is that????? This the first competition I have ever entered. Go me! Then I moved on to the color entries. I could not believe what Iwas seeing. I looked again and again:

That's a First Place Blue Ribbon! (The pink ribbon belongs to the photo above mine). I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I ran back to the Rutgers Gardens booth to share the good news. The Head Hatter and the volunteers took turns leaving the booth to see my ribbons and share my joy.

And now I can sleep.