Victory at the Village show!

I’ve been working so hard on Catherine’s garden design that before I knew it, the Northmoor Village show was on and my friend Elaine threatened me with unfriending, (only joking), if I didn’t enter some category. Also my friend Julie asked me to take photos for the village archives and so, at the last minute, I entered my map in the painting category and this morning I baked a flammekuche on puff pastry as a savoury flan entry.

I got to the village early and there already was a lot of stuff there. Check out the little spider hitchhiker on Elaine’s geraniums. 🙂

Everyone was bringing in their entries and the tables started filling up.

There were so many vegetable entries it looked fantastic.

The crafts were amazing. How can people see to do these fine stitches? Wow!

There were flower arrangements, preserves, baking of all sorts, adult and children’s crafts, limericks, paintings and a men only category of lemon meringue pies.

The rosettes and awards were all waiting to be placed and everyone had to leave for the judging.

And wait a couple of hours.

I snuck back five minutes early to get some photos of the judging…

And then everyone was allowed back in.

There were awards, and jokes and smiles and laughter.

I was anxious to see how my painting fared and when I saw my painting, it had a huge red rosette and a best of show sign! Wow.

Here are second and third prize winners.

Then I brought the map and rosette home and photographed it to show you.

Here it is! Meadow seedpods and gold finch.

You know the most gratifying part of this whole show was sitting at a table within earshot of the paintings and overhearing people say lovely things about my map. That was absolutely golden for me. 🙂