Camellia Club of Mobile Inc. Newsletter  Issue 7  Vol. IX  -  April 2013

FINAL MEETING 2012/2013 CAMELLIA SEASON – APRIL 14th

The Club’s final meeting for this camellia season will be held, as usual, at the Mobile Botanical Gardens, social half hour from 2 p.m. with meeting starting at 2:30 p.m.  We will have a panel of expert camellia growers available to answer any questions members have on taking care of their prized plants, planting, fertilizing, pruning, controlling diseases, etc.  If you have leaves or blooms that seem to show a problem, put them in a zip-loc bag (we don’t want to spread anything) and our panel will do their best to give you a solution. Advice will be given on getting camellias safely through our hot, humid summer. We will also hold the election of Club Officers and Board Members to serve for the upcoming 2013/2014 season.  A slate of proposed candidates will be presented by the 3-member Nominating Committee selected by President Lyman Holland, nominations can also be made from the floor.  In order to vote you must be present at this meeting.

CAMELLIA PHOTO CONTEST: Our annual camellia photography contest will also take place at this meeting.  Members present will vote anonymously on their favorite photo in each of the following categories:

1.     Best photo of camellia                       2.  Best photo of camellia and people

3.  Best photo of camellia in arrangement       4.  Best photo of camellia in landscape

We’ve really nice prizes, so do bring along your photos and take part, no need to frame them, prints can be any size .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Bobby Green’s Super Sasanqua Presentation at March Meeting

If you didn’t attend our March meeting and Bobby Green’s talk and Power Point presentation on sasanquas, you should slap yourself for missing a really great informative program.  The pictures Bobby showed of recently developed sasanquas were quite breathtaking, “Dream Team” & “Dream Quilt” lived up to their names, they were dreamy!  The scarlet and white “Stars and Stripes” was another knockout, so many of the newer varieties have really large flowers.  Do  browse through the greennurseries.com website to see all the lovely new plants.  Bobby, of course, only sells wholesale but I have seen his plants at many of our local nurseries, including most recently at Wilsey Nursery in Baldwin County.

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Camellia Chat....

 

As most of us know our April Meeting sees the close of the 2012/2013 camellia season.    We won’t meet again until September 2013.

The 2014 Camellia Show program will be printed during the summer & for many years now members have been invited to sponsor awards in honor or in memory of loved ones.  We currently have only two awards that are available for sponsorship at $20.00 each:

 

Protected blooms:        Small Japonica runner-up         Miniature runner-up

 

If you wish to sponsor one of these awards please give details to Jim Dwyer or Vera Curry at the April Meeting, you will not be billed until the membership invoices are sent out at the end of August.

 

In last month’s Newsletter I mentioned, I thought, all the members who generously gave their time and talents in demonstrating  various forms of propagating camellias  - however  - since I suffer from ‘duck’s disease’ (my rear is too close to the ground!) I was unable to see over the people crowding around the scion sale table and completely missed that “Team Oyler” were also busy demonstrating grafting techniques.  My apologies to Don & Carolyn, and my thanks to those members who pointed out my omission!  And I thought people didn’t read the Newsletter!

 

If you think plants don’t listen when you talk to them, listen to this story:  Early on the Monday morning after Bobby Green’s talk on sasanquas I stopped and told my little “Reverend Ida” sasanqua that she needed to grow up into a BIG bush like the one Bobby showed in his Power Point presentation  -  about a week later, again while wandering around with my morning cup of tea, I spotted a gleam of crimson down by “Reverend  Ida” and there was one brilliant bloom!    I’ve never had a sasanqua bloom in mid- March!