OR WAS SOME ONE ELSE HELPING?

Last year a great young fella who had recently come back in to my life after many years told me a sad tale. Chris, who lives just across the road with his wife Lesley said  a friend his mother knew from church had an operation last year which sadly didn't go according to plan, and she passed away shortly afterwards. Ray Old her husband wasn't a regular church goer, but had become a visitor on occasions after the death of his dear wife Christine, and although I didn't know either of them, unbeknown to me I had actually had dealings with the dear lady when I started sending dahlias to the church she and Chris's mum attends. You see Christine was responsible for doing the flowers, and after the first two buckets had been deposited two Harvest Festival's ago she had written to thank me. It appears Christine had been backwards and forward to the hospital a number of times, and was eventual admitted for this operation. Tragic tales like this we hear about from time to time, and wonder how people ever cope. I remembered reading it in the Echo but I didn't connect it to Mr. and Mrs. Old at the time.

Anyway as I said when Chris told me about her death last year, he suggested if I had a suitable seedling,  would it be prudent to name it Christine Old,  you see this guy is not only built like a barn door, but has a heart to match. I told him I'd do my best, and later that year the Christine Old dahlia came into existence. This Spring after the frost had departed I gave Chris a plant to give his mother to pass on to Mr. Old who rang soon after to thank me.

I thought know more about it until last Tuesday week when the door bell rang, and there as large as life stood Ray Old. I asked him in to the conservatory and we chatted for almost an hour, and he asked quite a few questions regards dahlias telling me when he first got the plant it sat in the kitchen, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. At one stage even thinking he should pot it up because he thought it was a pot plant. A few days passed and after finding out the dahlia was a flowering plant, and probably the finest flowering plant in the world he planted it in his garden and nurtured it as well as any champion would. Wanna see what a good job he done of it? I thought so.

	THE DAHLIA CHRISTINE OLD

Remember he had only one plant, and it has been the worse dahlia year I can remember, with every type of weather to adjust to, and every known pest trying to ruining the plants in our care. And here's this rank amateur growing a plant, and making it look like a million dollars. All I can say is if God helped him Ray hadn't seen him, but I'd like to think perhaps God had.

Anyone wanting to grow the Christine Old dahlia can buy it at Gilbert's Nursery, and judging from the form it could well feature in a winning exhibit or two in the coming years. My share of any money it makes in its first year in 2010 can go to the Holy Epiphany flower arrangers fund.

I hope to add a photograph of Ray's wife Christine as soon as he's asked his son what he thinks, but maybe it's early days yet, we'll see. Photo.

By the way a late notice telephone call from Ray saying he had several stems of his wife's name sake prompted me to take it with five others to Wisley for assessment. The Floral committee has several meetings a year to allow breeders to show them what new varieties they've created. Unfortunately they rejected the variety probably because they hadn't been tied up sufficiently and had ended up with wonky stems, but the flowers were excellent, none the more for that I've seen worse on many occasion. For my part one of my variety was rejected also called Magenta Magenta (so good they named it twice) which I thought was a stone cold certainty, because it has been flowering  since the start of July, and was still full of flowers. In other words a true garden dahlia, the type Wisley usually drool over. Wanna see them all in a photo my son-in-law Mike took? I thought you would. Photo.