-Posted by Jayne

Do you ever watch Portlandia?  Have you seen the Nerd PSA?  

Today I was feeling very nerdy.  I have one hobby that is a bit more dorky than the rest.  I enjoy entering flowers into the Pickaway County Fair flower show.   As a business owner with 4 kids under the age of 8, I don't really have a lot of free time.  So it is a guilty pleasure to spend several hours cutting and arranging flowers, but it does bring me a lot of joy.   We started our day at Blossoms At the Bend, a pick-your-own flower farm just south of Williamsport, Ohio.  

After filling a bucket of flowers, we came home and I arranged a playdate to keep these four busy.  As 7 children ran screaming up and down the halls of our house and through the yard (I do not exaggerate here), I calmly analyzed the exact spot to place each flower to create the perfect arrangements.  Here are a few:

The theme for this arrangement was "Millersport: Sweet Corn Festival" and required me to use all yellow flowers.

This arrangement called for "A fresh design of roadside/hillside materials."  I had a lot of fun scanning the roadsides over the past week to search for beautiful weeds.

The theme for this arrangement is "Cy Young Days" - a design of fresh flowers using a baseball motif.

And the final (odd) one required: "A fresh design in the abstract manner... incorporating duct tape" (In honor of the "Avon" Duct Tape Festival).  This was quite a challenge and honestly, I'm sure this is not abstract enough.  But it's the most clever thing I could come up with.  I used duct tape to connect the willow branches with the dried "love-in-a-mist", and floated little balls of duct tape on the water.  Now if that isn't nerdy, I don't know what is.  

Maizy entered these arrangements on Sunday in the youth division.  She received best of show with the tall Flint Ridge bottle arrangement.  It required a Native American theme.  We hung a small feather from the neck of the bottle and used curly willow and clary sage, also pick from Blossoms at the Bend.

Mason also entered his lego house in the competition, as well as his "recycled art" project he made Isaac for father's day:

In defense of "real nerds" everywhere, I will resist calling ourselves a nerd family.