Ibsley & District Horticultural Society

It is that time of year again when the evenings have become noticeably shorter, a dampness hangs in the air and the leaves are beginning to fall. Of course, it must be autumn or 'fall'.

The season when the cooling soil is adorned with fallen leaves. That time of the year when we try to recall those days of summer when they were long and we could feel the warmth of the sun on our skin.

A time when gardeners who, regardless of the size and shape of their gardens, be they acreages, garden plots, allotments, pots on balconies or windowsills can harvest the fruits of their labours. One thing gardeners do like to do is see how what they have produced compares to that of others and also have their produce judged impartially against others at local horticulture and produce shows.

Our local show takes place at Ibsley Village Hall in the New Forest on the first Saturday of every September and is organised by the 'Ibsley and District Horticulture Society. Much like countless similar shows taking place across the length and breadth of Britain in rural village halls, urban community centres or on allotments.

They are timeless and inclusive.

Neither of us are great gardeners who grow huge varieties of fruit, vegetables and flowers. So our main focus is on the photographic classes and treating the horticultural classes as secondary.

We do follow the briefs for each class but for at least one of them, purely in the interests of art and freedom of expression, we do like to push the boundaries a little bit. This year one of the categories was 'fungi'. Believe me there is a lot of it around in the New Forest so to work within the brief conventionally we went for a walk the other evening looking for some fungi.

In the half light of a wooded glade near a brook we found what we thought was an unusual species of fungi. We both took pictures of it and wondered what it could be. Not that either of us are experts at identifying fungi.

To get a clearer picture I started to clear away some of the autumnal detritus on it and around it. It was then that my tactile efforts told me it was not a fungi but a used tissue someone had shoved into the crook of the roots of a tree. 'Aaaaaagggghhhh! And I had touched it as well.

After this most traumatic of discoveries we did find some real fungi whose pictures we entered into the show and this is the one we entered that did push the boundaries of the brief:

We figured we wouldn't get anywhere with this one when we stuck it on the competition board and overheard the judge say 'Oh dear...oh dear'.

One of our friends commented that 'We got a bum deal on this'.

Our respective interpretations of the brief had quite obviously been divergent.

We did get a place for our entry into the class for garden statuary:

Remember I said that neither of us were great gardeners? Well, we have a ballerina apple tree in our back garden and it is groaning with fruit. I handpicked some of them and took them to the show.

A couple of years ago I did the same but misread the brief as it stated the apples must still hav their stalks attached. In my rush to get to the hall in time I misread this and thought it wanted the apples attached to the bough. Oh the utter embarrassment when I saw the neatly presented apples in place waiting to be judged. Even further embarrassment when later in the afternoon in the hall people in the crowd mentioned the apples on the bough. Even friends of ours knew it was my exhibit without even looking at the label.

Well, let me tell you something. This year I was no longer the village idiot. The apples I had carefully selected, with their stalks, and arranged as carefully as I could on a plate of the right size to the best advantage were judged as the best in class and were awarded a 1st place.

'Yeaahhhhh! I won. I won. I won. And against perfectly matching clusters of other apples such as Discovery, Braeburn, Cox's Pippi and Pink Lady. My very own apples came first!