I felt a little nervous as Wendy, Katy, and I pulled into Adams Creek Farm. We had preassembled a few of the flower arrangements, and there were several items we preassembled that were not flowers. The overarching theme that Susan had come up with was a rustic forest look, so we had taken dried grapevines and molded them into different forest animals and shapes. When Susan had first shown me her idea, I honestly thought she was crazy—mainly because I didn't have an artistic bone in my body. However, we had been able to find patterns on Amazon that had been surprisingly easy to follow. Our display was going to contain deer, rabbits, and a bear, along with trees and foliage that we made with the vines.
We would then take fresh-cut flowers and weave them into the frame so they would pop with color. I actually felt a little relieved that the hard part, in my mind, was over. The festival started tomorrow, which was Friday, and on the first day, a panel of esteemed judges would come by to judge creativity, and the next day, floral choices and appearance. I didn't want to be overconfident, but I really felt that we had creativity nailed. I couldn't imagine someone being even more creative than what Susan had come up with. But then, what did I know?
I parked the car after we pulled up to the barn, and there were already quite a few cars in the parking lot. I wasn't surprised, since Jenni had already told me that Scott was letting people set up early. Seeing people here made it all seem too real. I really didn't want to let my mom down—or Susan, for that matter. We went around the back of my SUV, and I got out the three boxes of decorations, each of us taking one.
"I shouldn't have turned down Cooper and Willy's offer to come help," I said. "In my head, we didn't have as much stuff until we started to pack it all in the back here."
"Yeah, me neither," Katy said. "When we were making it, the pieces all seemed so small that I didn't really think they would take up this much space. And I guess when we put them in the boxes, the thought didn't occur to me either."
"We can just consider it our workout for the day," Wendy said. "All this walking back and forth."
"What direction is the table?" Katy asked as we walked into the barn, and I took in the hustle and bustle of activity going on.
"It's over to the right," I said. “Susan was very particular about what table we had. I'm still not exactly sure why, but at the time I wasn't about to argue with her.”
"Who knows, maybe it's just her own weird idiosyncrasy. Just like when we go to Mi Casa. We prefer to sit in the same spot," Katy said.
I led the ladies over to the table with the label ‘Susan Meriwether and Presley Sands.’ Feeling a slight pang of sadness that Susan wasn't here, I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. If nothing else, I certainly owed Susan the best effort I could possibly give. We set our boxes on the table, and Katy turned to me.
"Wendy and I can go get the flowers from the car—if that's okay with you, Wendy—while you check in with Scott or do whatever it is you need to do," she said.
"That's totally fine with me. We can do the grunt work, and you'll probably get everything organized, Presley, and we can jump in there putting it all together," Wendy said.
"If there's enough room to fit all the flowers in the cooler?" I pointed out.
Susan had assured me that there would be, but after putting everything together, it sure seemed like a lot more than the cooler space we had.
"I am going to go check out the cooler space and kind of eyeball it one more time. Though if there isn’t enough space, I’m not sure what we will do,” I said.
The other two ladies nodded at me and headed back out to the parking lot.
The other contestants who were already here working were busy at their tables, not paying any attention to anyone. I glanced over in the direction where I knew Josie's table was supposed to be and saw some items on the table but didn't see her. I made a mental note to find her before I left. There were a few things that I really wanted to discuss with her, and I preferred to do it before tomorrow. I really wanted tomorrow and Saturday to be all about enjoying the fall festival and the contest.
Part of the great attraction of the fall festival was the food, and I was definitely going to find time to get myself some hot apple cider and some cinnamon donuts—which were frankly the entire reason fall was so awesome. As I got closer to the door that led to the back room, I could hear loud voices. They definitely weren’t the voices of casual discussion.
As I walked through the door, I could see Josie and Jenni standing toe to toe, their faces flushed and hands on their hips. They were screaming at each other, and the first thing that popped into my mind was that Jenni was accusing Josie of sabotaging her flowers. Their argument had drawn a small crowd, and I wondered where Scott was right now. As Jenni's boss and the manager at Adams Creek Farm in charge of this event, it seemed like he should be here defusing the situation. It wasn't good for the festival or his business to have contestants screaming at each other and hurling accusations, which was what was happening now.
"I didn't touch your flowers, and I don't appreciate you thinking otherwise," Josie yelled.
"Oh, come off it, Josie. Everyone knows that you'll do whatever it takes to get ahead, and that doesn't always seem above board."
"I don't know where you get your information from. Maybe from the same place you get your design skills because they're both bad," Josie snapped back.
Jenni's eyes narrowed. She took a step closer to Josie. I was afraid that this was going to get way out of hand, and the last thing I wanted to see was these women coming to blows. So I walked up to them and slightly wedged my way in between them.
"Ladies, ladies. What the heck is going on here?" I asked.
"She's accusing me of sabotaging her flowers. As if," Josie said. "It's not like she has any chance of beating me."
"As if she has any chance of beating me. I don't need anything except my own talent to win this thing. I don’t need someone to design my arrangements for me," Jenni retorted.
"Now, Josie, I think that's a little harsh." I looked at Jenni. "Jenni, do you have any proof that Josie is the one who wrecked your flowers?"
Jenni shook her head. "No, but I know it was her."
Part of me wanted to roll my eyes, but another part of me knew I sometimes jumped to conclusions and that, when I was angry, it could be hard to think objectively.
"Ladies, I know that competition can sometimes make our emotions run high. What do you say, for the sake of the greater good of the competition, we just call it a truce?" I projected, looking at both of them.
"Fine," Josie said, even though the look on her face didn't really look fine at all. Jenni didn't say anything like that.
"Jenni?"
"Fine. Just stay away from me," Jenni said and flounced off.
Josie rolled her eyes and sighed. "It sure is annoying when everyone thinks you got where you are for reasons other than your own God-given talent," she snapped and followed Jenni back out to the floor.
As the small crowd dispersed, I couldn't help but worry that this might be an ominous warning of how the rest of the festival was going to go. And that would make for a long, tense weekend. If contestants couldn’t get along, Scott might just throw in the towel and cancel it altogether.