Notes on the CDS Summer

From Russ Allen, President

CDS Summer Picnic –Our July 8th picnic was at the home and garden of Mary Drews in Haddam Neck, Connecticut, and if you didn’t attend you missed both great food, wonderful company, and a beautiful daylily garden indeed! Don’t miss this coming year’s picnic which is scheduled for Sunday, July 14th , 2013 with details to be announced later.

AHS National Convention in Columbus, Ohio – For those of you who couldn’t catch this year’s AHS national convention, you missed a most inspiring event. Despite the drier than desired weather, the display gardens were spectacular and the landscaping which accompanied the daylilies was also very impressive.

One of the display gardens had special daylily garden displays of leading female hybridizers from around the country, and included beautiful cultivar displays from Region 4 hybridizers Lori-Ann Jones, Melanie Mason, Ellen Laprise, and Charmaine Rich.

During the Daylily Auction part of the national meeting, it was most encouraging to note that Rich Howard’s contributions of a fan of “ H. Augie’s Unique Beauty” went for $75.00, and a two-cultivar offering of his own “H. Pawprints On My Heart” and “H. Wallingford Woolly Bully” went for $150.00. There also was an impressive new toothed tetraploid seedling from Ohio hybridizer Jamie Gossard which was sold with rights to name the cultivar in a heated auction for $2,500! Needless to say, those of us attending the national got to see a lot of drop dead gorgeous daylilies!

September 8th Meeting – If you missed our CDS meeting on Sept. 8th you missed a great presentation by Julie Covington, President of the AHS, on how to take fabulous photos of our favorite flower! Her daylily photos were breathtaking and her tips on photography were most useful. Julie particularly stressed the importance of sound composition – e.g., framing and cropping of the photo to eliminate distracting background elements, clarity of focus on the flower, and the awareness of the varying shifts in color during the day – with morning and late afternoon photos usually having the “truest” color balance. She reminded us all to check out the AHS Portal which now has so many interesting and helpful features. In recognition of Julie’s visit to our club, we awarded 11 trial memberships in the AHS to folks attending our meeting…which will hopefully encourage them to become long term AHS members as well. We also encouraged folks to attend the Sept 15-16 Region 4 Fall Meeting in the Finger Lakes area of New York.

Other notable events at the meeting included the appointment of a chairman for our Membership Committee (Regine Randall), and the election of the Nominating Committee for next year’s officer elections (Tina Cotter and Richard Daniel).