Pat Maguire finishes up the summer show season with great success
Pat Maguire, the ever successful Milltownpass gardener has finished off this year's competition season with yet another a first place, this time in three separate categories.
The Clonaslee Show in Laois saw Pat take first prize three times. These categories were the best vase of dahlias, the best single dahlia and the best pom pom dahlias. Each offering was, as usual, sublime.
“It’s in Laois, it’s a beautiful show and there’s lovely people involved in it,” he said of the event. Pat met a woman who had travelled all the way from Canada who participates in similar shows .
“She’s from Canada but she has relations in Kilkenny. She showed me photographs of a flower shown out there and they’re the same as mine."
But Clonaslee is not the only win he's had in the past few weeks. Pat has had an incredibly successful season, he returned from Moate last month victorious as well with the Bord Bia prize for his potatoes, and a first place for his Dahlias too.
Including Clonaslee and Moate he's won at almost every show he's entered this summe: “It’s just another prize isn't it.
“There’s about ten different shows I’ve to go to yet, I’m going to North Dublin in a fortnight's time then I have to go to Clonaslee and then I have to go to Troim so there’s heaps of them on.”
Since Pat competes in so many shows he and his fellow competitors have forged their own little community: “There’s about 10 or 12 of us involved in the dahlias, and the people I met yesterday there’s two from North Dublin and another from Tipperary.”
Pat attends the Moate Show every year without fail: “There about four years ago I got the best turn out for the Dahlias in the Moate Show. I won all the top prizes.”
Pat's Bord Bia All Ireland prize for his potatoes was one he is particularly proud of: “The competition was really good, it was nearly better than Tullamore. The amount of vegetables there was unbelievable, it was a credit to all the people.
“There were dozens and all the carrots and every cabbage you name it. And I have to say it was a credit to them that the show was very well organised,” he concluded.