The second wave of two buses was scheduled to arrive around 2pm. They were a tad late. This wave had some folks I knew from the iris world. There were a couple I knew from the first buses, but they were from my local iris society and were in fact "Bus Captains". This might have been my job, but I could not commit the time as I was unsure of getting the time off.
The second wave brought Rick Tasco, Paul Black, Lucy Burton, & Roger Duncan. I somehow managed to miss Lucy altogether. I did not know she was at the convention. Missed opportunety indeed! I did talk with Rick Tasco and showed him where his plants were in the garden. His collection was in pretty good shape considering how the other "guest" irises were doing. The only issue was nothing was in bloom. I would say 1/3 did not bloom this season. 1/3 had already bloomed; and 1/3 were going to bloom. I think the location in the garden was subpar ; so the performance was affected. I also had a nice talk/discussion with Paul Black who I met back in 2009 when he came to give presentation to our region.
I spoke at length with Roger Duncan and it was nice to catch up. He commented on the nasty humidity/temps of the day and that this was one of the reasons they moved to California. 90 degree temps with humidity at 15% is a far cry from temps in the mid 80's and humidity over 75%. Yuk! I think Roger had two guest cultivars, but I can only remember "Go West". I don't know if it went "West" or not, but it was GONE! Just a sign marking empty space. There was alot of that at this garden for the guest cultivars.
