Flower Show

I just had to blog and brag about my friend Linda Tenney who won a blue ribbon--and the New Hampshire Federation of Garden Club's "LadyBug Novice Designer Award"--at yesterday's Peterborough Garden Club Show held in Dublin, New Hampshire. Her entry was in a group of table settings with floral arrangements as part of the "From a Painter's Palette" theme. She used some of her collection of bold Polish pottery with its predominantly blue tones and it made for a lovely display. There were several other categories and individual entries too, including a particularly grand leaf of the "Sum and Substance" hosta, also a blue ribbon winner.

I would have brought my camera but Linda didn't want me to for fear I might jinx things, perhaps. But I did manage to take some pics after the show and she even gave me the floral arrangement that she used on the table. Garden clubs have reputations for fierce competition so I am very proud of her win!

Meanwhile, our husbands went off to Fort Ticonderoga for a Revolutionary battle reenactment with my two boys and Linda's oldest grandson. So I visited Linda's flower show and we had a great take-out dinner later on her porch overlooking their farm. Five fat barn spiders poked their way down each of their screens along the porch while we talked. The air was humid and waiting for more rain. We looked at some cookbooks and magazines and enjoyed a salmon Caesar salad and shared a fig tart and a slice of pineapple updside down cake, all from Fish Tales in Peterborough.

Linda is a librarian for the local school system and also runs Tenney Farm, a local produce farm in Antrim, New Hampshire, along with her family. She told me that each couple in each marriage for which she has done flowers has stayed together. After her daughter was off to college, Linda also got her degree in counseling psychology. In her "retirement" she wants to study pastry making more intensely, or perhaps different kinds of flower arranging or judge flower shows. Something tells me, however, that Linda will never be retired from anything.

Bravo, Linda!