PEMBERVILLE - This year's fair flower show is literally a fair within a fair.
Creativity blossoms throughout the 80th annual event, which invites visitors to "Picture Yourself at the Pemberville Fair."
The entries leap from "Amusement Rides" to "Concessions" and on to "Frog Jumping Contest," a design featuring the color green, and "Produce Exhibit," a design including fruit or vegetables, just to name a few.
There are 456 entries in all, which handily tops the tallies from the last two years - 441 in 2008 and 445 in 2007.
Included in that number are 86 arrangements, 13 of them junior entries.
Area gardeners also submitted 370 specimens for judging, of which 35 are by junior (youth) exhibitors.
Renee Wendt, who admitted to feeling both "nervous and stressed" in her first year as flower show chairperson, was thrilled with the result.
She happily held up a sheet of comments by the judges, who commended the Four Seasons Garden Club-based planning committee for an "excellent show" in which the "titles of classes carried out the show (theme) in a superior manner." They also noted with approval this year's "many junior entries of high quality."
Visitors, who began filing through the American Legion Building at 5 p.m. Wednesday, had to agree.
Winning "junior best of show" was Emma Read of Oregon for a pink and rose arrangement depicting a "Swine Scramble." She paired carnations, mini carnations and Queen Anne's lace with gorgeous evergreen, boxwood and yucca greenery. A small toy pig was perched two-thirds of the way up the arrangement which cleverly depicted swirling, vertical motion.