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The Club’s Annual Camellia Show turned out to be a rousing success, with over 2,500 blooms in competition and on display. We had entries from all over the south-east U.S. and a very experienced group of highly qualified judges to perform the difficult task of picking the very best blooms for the sparkling crystal awards the Club provided in each category. The education area was busy with grafting demonstrations going on most of the time. The Camellia Club table was a hive of activity, manned (womanned?) by a hard-working group of members selling camellia plants, giving out information on their cultivation and signing up 35 new members. Activity at the Mall seemed to be down from past years, but since Dauphin Island was holding the first Mardi Gras Parade of the season, the NFL was having playoff games to determine who would be in the Super Bowl and all the TV stations advised everyone to stay home due to a forecast of cold really wet weather (which didn’t occur until Monday), we really did quite well. Our heartfelt thanks to all who helped make our 67th Show such a success, including all those men who gave up some NFL game time to tear down the Show on Sunday - we started the tear down at 4 p.m. and I think we were all done by 4:15 p.m. - those guys were fast... or maybe they were just were just taking out their frustration at the Saints

losing... (Maybe the Super Bowl MVP being the son of a former Saints quarterback will slightly make up for that!)

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FEBRUARY MEETING

The Club’s February Meeting will be held at Bellingrath Gardens on February 11, usual time of 2p.m. with meeting called to order at 2:30.

Jim Smelley, grafter par excellence, will be on hand to demonstrate his grafting technique. A total of 15 plants will be grafted at this meeting

and will be available for purchase. However, we would like to request that new members be given the chance to buy these grafts first, one

per person. If there are any left over, these will be sold all other members. Remember, the point of this grafting demonstration is to teach

and encourage everyone to do their own grafting! If you want to try your own grafting, the Club has some grafting stock available for sale.

If you are not yet confident to try this technique (I’m having my first bash at it this year!) and really want a specific cultivar, call Kyle McCaskey

at Camellia Nursery, 10380 Hwy 613, Lucedale, MS at 601-508-1272 0r 601-766-3031. He will graft anything you saw at the Show and will

have it ready for pickup last week of August - this only costs $15.00 per graft. Kyle is a generous supporter of our Club.

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CAMELLIA SHOWS IN FEBRUARY

10 & 11 February Birmingham Camellia Club, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Lane Park Road, Birmingham, AL. Open to public 2 p.m. Saturday, entry time for blooms

is 8 - 11:30 a.m. on 10 February..

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The February 4th tour of Brenda Litchfield and Jack Dempsey’s garden near Dog River was very well attended despite the gloomy over-

cast day and that many blooms were not out due to the recent cold weather. Members enjoyed the tour given by Brenda, they admired the tall old camellia trees and all the other plants in the large garden. Many members went home happily clutching pots of burgundy bromeliad

and horsetail that Brenda had given them. A peek in the greenhouse revealed the biggest stag-horn plant most of us have ever seen!

Brenda was ably assisted in her walk-through by Taco, a charming tabby cat who made sure that he (she?)met everyone!

Next tour is of Ronald & Vaudine Driskell’s garden at 23145 McPhillips Road, Loxley. It will be on Sunday, 18 February 2007, 1:30 pm

The directions are on our website - Ronald’s tel. no. is 251-945-6016 if you get lost! Lots of camellias here, new and old, plus a new

greenhouse with reticulatas. Loads of other interesting plants, too. Well worth a visit.

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CAMELLIA CHAT

At our last Meeting in January, we were pleased to meet William Gralapp, son of the late L.E. Gralapp, Jr. L.E. was a past President of our

Club and had a vast amount of knowledge about camellias. I met him at the first Camellia Meeting we attended and he warned a rather

sceptical me that camellias were addictive... Over 125 cultivars later, how right you were, L.E.!!!!

Had a great time at the 67th Show - the Camellia Club information/sales table was manned by super volunteers, ranging in age from 13

to 82! One visitor remarked that “you camellia people are a happy lot” - but that may have been because we were all hooting with laughter

at Maggie Fleming’s tale of her grandmother Marguerite Miller’s disgust at her family forbidding her to use her chain saw any more.