Sipping Wine and Sniffing Flowers
Truth be told, I’ve been meaning to write this post for days now. I was hoping to scrounge up some photos to illustrate it with, but it turns out none of us here at East of Eliza are the type to drink and photograph… so you’ll just have to take my word for it that what happened happened and this is how it happened…
Last weekend, we had a wonderful garden party. We were celebrating our How Does Your Garden Grow? contest’s conclusion, the end of summer, and the beginning of autumn. The garden centre was filled with bulbs, blooming mums, bright pepper plants, swaying grasses, and other autumn classics. The back table was laden with a small feast to nibble on and wine to sip. We’d all contributed our specialties, so there were goat cheese and nut canapés, herb scones, crisp bruschetta, chocolate filled maple cookies, samosas, bowls of spicy chips, and slices of baguette with a variety of spreads.
We wandered about pouring wine for our guests-who-meant-to-be-there and some bewildered customers who hadn’t known there was a party but we’re happy to join in. We chatted about gardens and life in general. We have remarked on more than one occasion how lucky we are to have such nice customers. It’s true – you guys are great. It’s nice when we get to know you a little better.
On the stroke of five o’clock Reed made a speech and announced our winners. So, our congratulations go to:
Lucille Crighton ~ winner of the Best Container Planting award
Jill Witherspoon ~ winner of the Best Garden award
Their gardens are stunning, testimonies to their artistic eye, green thumbs, and vast amounts of dedication and hard work in creating living beauty. We’d love to see and smell their gardens in person – if we ever stopped by, would you open the garden gate for us?
There was also a third award:
Julian ~ winner of our Best Budding Gardener award
We hadn’t meant to have three awards, but Julian inspires us, so we in turn wanted to inspire him. Julian has been coming into the garden centre since he was very small. He asks a million and one questions, and like a helicopter parent, he fusses over, worries about, and cares about every plant in his garden. He designed and planted a native garden on grounds of his high school. When he grows up we imagine he’s going to be a landscaper, a botanist, a master gardener, or at the very least, one of the East of Eliza crew. He’s one of the next generation of gardeners and that seed of passion he has for gardening is definitely one we want to see bloom and grow.
