Camellia Club of Mobile Inc

All our Club members are reminded that our Meeting on Sunday. January 10^th will involve preparations for our 76^th Camellia Show which will take place the following weekend, January 16^th & 17^th at Bel Air Mall. Our perennial Show Chairman Walter Creighton will be in charge of the Meeting. He will tell us all about the various tasks and jobs that go into making our Show one of the very best in the U.S. We hope everyone will volunteer to do something at the Show, we need people who are willing to spend some of their Saturday morning with us, whether it be half-an-hour or half a day. Do not feel you need to have “Show experience” to take part, we all learned by jumping in at the deep end and believe it or not, we all ended up as Show-class swimmers! We are planning on having a Mini-Show at this meeting so you’ll learn how to display, fill out entry cards, clerk and place blooms, so do bring some blooms to take part in this, you will find it very helpful and informative with our very experienced members demonstrating tips and tricks.

The Club’s annual Christmas Party and Auction was thoroughly enjoyed by the 40-plus members who attended, the food was delicious, we have so many good cooks in our membership! Star of the festive food show was the roast turkey prepared by David Brackin, just about everyone said it was the BEST EVER turkey they had eaten. The tables were beautifully decorated by rows of gorgeous camellia blooms brought by Jimmy Walker and Leo Brown. There were so many different varieties – but since these guys are much smarter than the average bear, the name of each bloom was carefully written on the back of the leaves. Very clever way to prevent a string of people crowding round clutching various blooms and demanding to know the names! We did miss our Christmas Auctioneer Jim Oates (he had another obligation) but our Vice-President Larry Bush stepped up and did a great job. Our thanks to all who supported the Club by purchasing items, especially Greg and Fran McCaslin, and Beverly Bush who did a great job in supporting her auctioneer husband! Our heartfelt thanks to all who donated food and auction items including some lovely plants.

Northshore Camellia Club Camellia Show – January 9, 2016. Southern Hotel, 428 E. Boston Street, Covington, LA Entry time for blooms 8 – 10:30 a.m. – open to the public 1:30 – 4:30 p.m. This is one of our newer clubs and their Show is always fun to attend, the Club was originated mainly by Jim Campbell, current President of the American Camellia Society. Highly recommended event.

The Pensacola Camellia Club Show was very successful with 1700 blooms on exhibit, particularly for some of our Club members who were awarded a total of 14 trophies, thrilled that Bill & I won with our trio of “Jury’s Yellow”. Bette Hooton was demonstrating how to wax camellias at this Show, she said she was using our Club’s recipe – her waxed blooms certainly looked lovely.

The weird weather we have had the past few months has provoked all sorts of strange stuff in the garden (oops, yard!) My lovely crimson azalea “Red Ruffles” has bloomed its heart out all November – it usually blooms in March! Azalea “Coral Bells” also showing her sweet little faces. If you want to see some lovely camellias, visit the Camellia Garden planted by the Pensacola Camellia Club at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. We went the Sunday before Christmas, lots of beautiful blooms, spotted a huge bush of Camellia transnokoensis not quite in bloom – went back the following Sunday and it was a glorious mass of tiny white flowers with a gently sweet scent. Interesting section of this garden is the portion allocated to varieties that originated in Pensacola, I saw “Margaret Noonan” in bloom just before my own small plant produced her first flowers in the New Year. All the plants in the UWF garden are of a considerable size and blooming well, there was a superb “Lauren Tudor” just covered in dessert-plate size flowers.

Mark your calendar for the following events in 2016: Sunday, February 21 – 1:00 -4:00 p.m. Camellia Garden Stroll at the Hammond Research Station in Louisiana. This is free and you will get to see many plants originated by Hody Wilson, very interesting. Also not to be missed is John Grimm’s March Madness Tour of Camellia Heaven, his garden at Bush, Louisiana. This is on March 5 & 6. There are 5,000 varieties and thousands of plants. Info on both these events will be in the Newsletter closer to the times.