AIS: Dallas-Good, bad & no Ugly

Evenin' all...  

Back from three days in Dallas, both in and around the AIS National 
Convention...  Twas a great time that more should have taken advantage of 
attending from start to finish, (myself included)...  

A short rundown on what I saw.  All GOOD, only one bad thing, and no ugly!  
I'll elaborate on the huge lists of irises I drug home with me tomorrow.  

First, the Dallas/Addison/Farmer's Branch Crowne Plaza (used to be a Harvey 
Hotel) convention hotel was really really nice.  Way nicer than the Biltmore 
(used to be Radisson, used to be Hilton, used to be etc. etc., that OKC used 
last year.)  And the hotel was perfectly placed so as to avoid traffic 
congestion and be really centrally located to all the gardens and shopping 
and airport and everything.  The Boutique was in a huge multi-level room and 
seemed to be full of wondrous goodies, but I had plans right before as well 
as after Linda Miller's judging school last night and had to miss getting the 
grande Boutique tour...  

Both of Perry Dyer's Tuesday night judging schools on Louisianas and also 
TB's was (as always) very well done and both fairly well attended.   A 
rollicking 3 hours of wit and wisdom and easy Garden judges credit!   

Decided to stay over another day (a couple of times) and hear Linda Miller's 
judging school Wednesday night, since it was on medians and that's where my 
emphasis is going to stay with TB's taking up way too much of my limited 
space.  Linda restricted it to IB's and it was phenomenal.  Probably the BEST 
IB median school I've been to.  She was in a really cheery mood and even 
showed a few slides including STARTLE a cute little yellowish IB with horns 
of hers...  She had a huge turnout for the school...  

Of course, I saw lots of old friendly familiar faces and met some neat new 
ones to boot...  I especially enjoyed getting to meet or at least see some 
iris internet folk.  Came really close to getting to meet Heather Pryor, but 
the line was just too long.  She, too, draws a crowd!  

It was strange to see so few Dallasonian Irisarians in my travels...  Guess 
they must have been really busy behind the scenes!  From what I could see 
everything was going quite well...  

The main garden I snuck into was down in Grand Prairie at Tom Burseen's TB's 
Place.   I must be mellowing...  I didn't see one ugly iris!  And I HAVE seen 
ugly iris before...  I saw one that was very Soap Opera'ish that I even 
LIKED!  And if you are a Space Age Lover, Burseen's place is the place to be! 
 I've never seen such a phenomenal collection of hooks, horns, spoons, flips, 
flounces, and other adornments.  Not a single WEED on the place, either, and 
it just had to be a full 3 (three) acres of near total iris bloom...  For a 
moment (had it not been for 90 degrees and the high winds) I'd of thought I 
was in Oregon!  I'll speak to the irises in his garden I'll be dragging home 
in a later post tomorrow.  The list is extensive and I even took really good 
notes on most every iris I saw!  See, you can make do when you FORGET and/or 
don't THINK to take ye olde Canon, Kodak, Minolta, etc...  

And the BAD...  Only one complaint and the Dallas Convention Committee had no 
strings in this department...  The GASOLINE prices!  OOOOOoooooeeey!  When I 
left OKC we were down to $ 1.16 a gallon for unleaded...  For the past 
several weeks, it's been steadily dropping from it's OKC record high $1.49 of 
a month ago...   I should have known when Purcell showed $1.29 and Ardmore 
$1.39, but it just didn't snap.  So, when I hit Lewisville and could only 
find $ 1.54 on every sign, I thought I might have to cough up a lung or 
something to be able to afford to tool around town in my usual  Dallas 
fashion...  <BG>   In their defense, I guess they had highs of $ 1.79 a 
gallon and their prices have dropped a bit already too...  

Probably best I spent the extra money on gas...  Everytime I go down there 
these days, I'm tempted to go by the tatoo parlour and get a little iris & 
daylily tatooed inconspicuously on my shoulder...  Probably comes from it 
being illegal to get tatoos in Oklahoma more than the fact I want to 
permanently mark myself...  Although it does help on corpse recognition...  

I heard wonderful things about ALL the Texas gardens from my friends who were 
there for the duration.  I am glad I was able to make it down for the small 
parts I did and certainly had a wonderful time.  Hats off to Bonnie Nichols 
and her committee and all the warm Texas folk...   For those that I told it 
would be hot, I hope they listened.  I never got out of my shorts as the 
temps hovered way too close to 90 for me!

Cheers to all!     Kath BACK in OKC... =^.^=  alias Kathy Poore   Region 22 
Zone 7

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