Entries Time/Got My Watch!

The show room is slowly starting to fill with plants as people are getting their entries in! George McDonald is grooming his, and says "Hi!"

Check out the watch with Lenny's photo on it! It looks great and is selling out rapidly.

Work!

And the photos to prove it, haha! We're helping Rob and Olive from The Violet Barn unload allllll the boxes of stuff outta their van.

Hello From The 2011 AVSA National Convention

Jenny and I are busy bees registering people!

I didn't update when I got here 'cos I was in a pretty bad mood after I got outta the car and fell on my azz onto the curb in front of the hotel and MY BOX OF SHOWPLANTS GOT DUMPED UPSIDE-DOWN! Ugh.

I'm feeling better now because lots of awesome friends are here. It's hard to be feeling bad at National!

Convention, Here We Come!

Well, we're on the road making our way to Cherry Hill, NJ! Keep checking fuzzyfoliage.com for lots of convention updates--I'll be blogging the whole time, I promise!

Packing 'Em Up...

Well, tomorrow I take the bus to Connecticut to stay at Nancy's for the night so we can get an early start the next day to drive down to Cherry Hill, NJ for the 2011 AVSA National Convention.

I just fixed up my "fancy traveling box", a priority mailing box (with holes cut in it for pots to sit in) fitted inside bigger box to cover/carry the 8 plants I am taking. Don't know which, if any, will actually be entered into the show.

The most bloom in have on a single plant is five flowers, and one of those is about to drop so make that four. It's embarrassing, really.
Of course there are still like 5 days left until judging, but with 2 days of that being traveling (meaning limited light and just different environments) I just don't see any chance of a miracle happening.

But I know once I get to convention and see a million friends I will forget all about these dumb plants and how mean they've been to me!

BLOOM, DAMMIT!

I'm almost ready to throw these things out of my 4th floor apartment window, change my name, and take up a new hobby. Maybe skydiving. Jumping from an airplane has to be more relaxing than the last week leading up to the biggest African violet show in the world when your plants aren't doing what you want.

This one might get 5 blooms or so.. But the girl foliage is growing very weird and tight. Dunno if I like it.

Finally yesterday ONE flower opened on this one. But if all those other buds that are mature enough start to open, it's only gonna be blooming on ONE SIDE!

Still my best contender. Foliage still irritates me.

COME ON, ALREADY!

This very special plant will probably have 4 open flowers max. It had another bloomstalk but I broke it off by accident. Yes, I sent myself to bed with no supper. The bloomstalk was very small and more than likely wouldn't have been ready in time, but still. Anyway, if I do enter it, if anything, I'll get a red--possibly even a white. But it's such a special plant I really can't not enter it... (I'm not gonna say the name here, but you might be able to guess by the blossom color that is already showing on the buds)

That ONE FLOWER took 4 days to fully open. I am very angry with this plant.

I'm starting to think someone snuck in here and swapped out my Optimara Little Moonstone with an Optimara Neverfloris. Yeah, so I said the name of the plant, who cares? These flowers will never be open in time.

Strange Things That Happen: Flowering Sucker Crown At Violet Barn / Facebook Stuff

Check out this crazy pic that The Violet Barn posted on their facebook page the other day!

They wrote:
Today's oddity....a decrowned (chimera) African violet. It's produced a few suckers (which we will root), as well as a number of blooms. It seems that it just cant wait to get started! The variety, by the way, is 'Ma's Lavender Prince', which grows much nicer if one doesn't cut its center out.....

Isn't that crazy?? I've never seen anything like it, but I love the weirdness!

Speaking of facebook, Fuzzy Foliage now has a facebook page! Don't worry, this blog isn't going anywhere, but the facebook page will show in your newsfeed when the blog is updated, and followers can connect and post pics, discuss stuff, announce club meetings & shows, etc.

An even MORE important facebook page to go click "Like" on is this campaign someone started to get one of my photos on a cover of the African Violet Magazine. Sorta like the campaign that got Betty White on SNL. I didn't start it, but I do appreciate the support!

ANYways, enough facebook stuff.

Have you had any strange occurrences among your African violets that you'd like to share? Who among us doesn't love to stare at a freak once in a while? Please email me your pics with a blurb to: m3rma1d@gmail.com Remember--Weirdos make the world a more interesting place!

Freakout Update

Well, today I had to run an errand, and that led me to have to walk by Jesus & Pals. So I yelled up at them, "Ready for blooms now!" I live in a crazy neighborhood, so nobody looked my way.

It's pretty much impossible to capture how awesome this building looks in just a picture.

I wrote "judgement day" on the 19th of my awesome 2011 Betty White calendar that hangs next to my plant stand, and I'm marking the days off now...

Betty's muffin is remarkably velvety!

It took me a really long time debating whether to use a green Sharpie or a pink one. Pink, of course, is my favorite color in the whole world. But I thought green is associated with plants and maybe it'd be lucky for them or something, so I chose the green.

Of course, now I wish I had gone with pink.

Maybe I shoulda used blue, for hopes of blue ribbons... because right now all I'm thinking I'll get are reds or whites. Ugh, horrible thoughts.
(And yes I know red and white together make pink, all you smarty pantses out there. Yer sooooooo funny.)

It's just that the more I look at my plants (which I spend A LOT of time doing, I can practically hear them growing I hover over them so much at this point) the more I am seeing all the flaws in the foliage. It sucks. At this point I think it doesn't matter if I can get them to make flowers. I can't get them to grow better leaves.

It's not even symmetrical, look at that gap! And there's a little brown scar thing on the leaf at 11:00.
Not that it matters, there's not gonna be any flowers.

This is pretty much the only perfectly symmetrical one with no weird spots on any leaves. But it has weird long leaf petioles that annoy me. I call this plant a "wagon wheel".

This one just... I dunno. It has issues.

I'm getting very sad. 

I'm On A CD Cover!

Well, one of my African violet photographs is. Also, the CD actually dropped over a year ago, but I didn't have a blog back then. In the old days (before 6 months ago) I was pretty much limited to bragging on facebook.

So today I went to the new-age hippie-dippie store (it's a guided meditation CD) to get a pic of it on the shelves to show you. It was a cool feeling seeing my work on the shelves like that! Even if it was at the new-age hippie-dippie store. Haha!

There it is! Wedged between the 'Celtic Healing Music' and 'Manifesting Prosperity Vibrations'.

The name of the CD is Affirm: I Am and it was made by my friend Tracie O'Keefe who is awesome. If you want to meditate but don't know how to go about it and need some guidance, you should check it out! Or even if you DO know how and wanna try something new.

You know... If you're one of those new-age hippie-dippie types. ;-)

Results of April 2011 Poll

(Does anyone else besides me really care about these polls? If you do, submit me some poll ideas via email, because I am starting to run outta ideas here!)

The question for last month (April) was: "Are you attenting the 2011 AVSA National Convention next month?" ("next month" at that time meaning "this month" now! AHHHHH!!!)

There were 55 total votes, and the majority aren't going (or aren't able) which is too bad, but 30% of those who voted ARE going, which I think is pretty good! And then there are the 4 people who are gonna try.. I hope they can make it!

If you are there and you're a Fuzzy Foliage African violet blog fan, please introduce yourself to me if I don't already know you. (Or even if I do! haha) I'll be working a lot at the registration desk, and working at the Cape Cod Violetry table (and the Violet Gallery table, but only briefly during the lunch auction).
Also, Andrea Worrell called Bill Foster yesterday and got me in for clerking! OH EM GEE!! I mean, I have clerked a few shows, but never at a NATIONAL show! This will be exciting for sure.

So yeah say "hi" if you see me, and let me know you're a blog reader--it makes me feel good. I'll have m3rma1d on my name tag, I have loooooong brown hair, and I'm just kinda everywhere like a fly buzzing around annoying everyone. You can't miss me.

Back to polls. This month's question is about lights. What kinda lights do you grow your African violets under? Mine are under florescent, but the stand is next to an east window that gets good sunlight so I answered "A little of this, a little of that..." because they definitely get both artificial and natural light. How about yours?