Amidst our normal rainy Washington weather, we’ve had some unusually sunny days lately. If you think back to last year and all the snow, it’s ironic that we’re hitting 55- to 65-degree weather this year in February.
As you read this, you might be asking why I have seemingly taken in an interest in changing jobs as a downtown director to a part-time weather girl. It’s not that I’ve installed a Doppler weather station here in my Heritage Park office, it’s because I’m keeping an eye on all the daffodils that seem to be popping up unnaturally early this year.
If you take a look at the 2010 Sumner Downtown Association event calendar on your refrigerator (I assume all good Sumner residents have one hanging on their refrigerators) you’ll notice the Daffodil Parade is scheduled for April 10 this year. Using my handy dandy fingers, I count that as still about six weeks away. That’s a long time to expect those King Alfred’s to stand tall and stay yellow before they are picked and packed to be put on the floats.
If you were born and raised here in the valley, you know the bulb farmers (thank you for still planting them, Mr. Knutson) pick the buds and put them in cold storage to keep them from blooming and wilting between now and parade day and that’s pretty darn critical for our annual daffodil festivities.
Our downtown float meister, Ben DeGoede, and his tireless band of merry “floaters” have also been hard at work on the Sumner Community Float. The Daffodil Festival’s 2010 theme is Carousel of Spring and there are plenty of people meeting on a regular basis to design and plan for another award-winning entry in this year’s parade. It’s hard to name all the wonderful people who work on this project without leaving someone out. If I had to guess, I’d say we have somewhere between 40 to 60 people who help with the float in various ways. Some start with making sure the engine runs, some buy goggles for driving the behemoth on parade day (keep in mind it doesn’t necessarily fit in one lane of traffic), some work on floral design and others work on props, costumes, stapling and gluing. But mostly, folks show up because it’s a lot of fun and they have pride in their community.
The float meister told me we have enough volunteers for the preparade activities (bless your hearts) but if anyone is still interested in helping, April 9 is when it all comes together and we can use additional help. So if you’re interested in becoming a floater, just e-mail me at shelly@sumnerdowntown.com and I’ll get you on the floater e-mail list. If you’d like to be a volunteer parade ambassador, I can get you on that list as well.
So mark your calendars for 2:30pm April 10 and bring the whole family downtown because everybody knows it’s fun to spend some time watching a parade in Sumner.
