Flower Mart

Lemon-peppermint sticks, ugly ties, pretty hats, maypole dancing and lots of flowers. It can only mean one thing: Flower Mart 2003. This year's Flower Mart takes over Mount Vernon Place from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and offers its usual array of floral displays, crafts, activities, entertainment and delicacies. Exotic flowers, bedding plants and plenty more greenery will be on display and for sale. Visitors can check out the specialty garden or watch floral demonstrations. But who are we kidding?

PROOF THAT LIFE goes on, and that Baltimore springs eternal: The 2003 Flower Mart is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14, at the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon Square, beginning at 11 a.m. and concluding after an evening concert at 8. All who volunteer for civic events, fund-raisers or nonprofit groups - and all who hold precious the traditions of this bruised but obstinate old city - will appreciate excerpts from the minutes of the recent meeting of...

Straw hats, lemon sticks and Maypole dancers were in the mix as usual - along with a bit of added zest from contemporary arts-and-crafts booths and jazz band music - as yesterday's annual Flower Mart festival put on a fresh face for 2002. The genteel affair in the heart of Mount Vernon drew office workers on lunch break, Peabody Conservatory students and even busloads of Catholic schoolchildren enjoying a field trip with the approval of the archdiocese. "From wheelchairs to baby strollers, you'll see anybody and everybody," said Bobbie McKinney, a community activist in Edmondson Village who was sporting a hat. "It's a diverse celebration of Baltimore," said John Constantine Unitas III, 13, an eighth-grader at the School of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, as he surveyed the crowd surrounding Washington Monument, open to all who wished to climb its 228 steps.

In a break with tradition, the Flower Mart show will go on tomorrow without the mayor of Baltimore - but as a consolation, it will not have to pay for using city streets and services. Organizers of the flower show were miffed when city officials told them recently that Flower Mart@Mount Vernon Ltd., the nonprofit organization that runs the celebration, would be charged $2,500 in advance for transportation and police services. The event, a city tradition for 91 years, had never been charged for such services.

HERE IS THE beauty of this city in a nutshell, and its name is Fred Bierer. He runs the annual Flower Mart formerly organized by the dear ladies of the Women's Civic League, who gave the thing its genteel essence but mixed it with the air of a cotillion for dilettantes. A year ago, when Bierer ran the Flower Mart after its 83-year run by the ladies, he gave it an increased air of street festival. He also walked around looking, by his own (and his family's) account, like an idiot: seersucker suit, Panama hat, yellow tie, pink face schvitzing like crazy in the humid spring air. By 2 o'clock in the morning, having been awake and running around since 5 the previous morning, he found himself in two places: a state of exhaustion and the Owl Bar at the Belvedere Hotel with his friend Howard Gerber, who owns The Horse You Came In On saloon in Fells Point.

IF YOU'VE ALWAYS wanted to celebrate spring by hanging a beautiful May basket or if you're looking for unique, locally grown plants for your garden, don't miss the Four Rivers Garden Clubs' annual flower mart, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday at Market Space in downtown Annapolis. Club members dig up, divide, pot, label, price and sell homegrown plants, including perennials, bulbs and small shrubs. They also offer an assortment of cut flowers, herbs and annuals at the mart. New to the sale -- a downtown Annapolis tradition depicted in a 1949 photograph by Marion E. Warren that hangs in the lobby of Pussers' Landing restaurant -- are floor cloths hand-painted by members, crafted garden ornaments and 18th-century holiday table decorations.

I AM hereby announcing, here at the top of today's column -- and without the expressed written approval of my bosses -- the First Maybe Annual Baltimore Sun Ugly Tie Contest, to be held May 15 during the Definitely Annual Again Baltimore Flower Mart. This is a revival of a contest that used to be held in The Evening Sun newsroom back when there was an Evening Sun and the closets of editors and reporters still glowed with large, ugly, polyester, what-were-we-thinking? neckties from the '70s.

Women rule. Not exactly news to twin sisters Wendy Jachman and Jennifer Myerberg. Oct. 21 heralded the pair's 50th birthday. So, Jennifer flew in from her home in Columbus, Ohio, to celebrate with her Owings Mills sis at a "girls-only" Halloween-themed birthday party a couple of weeks ago. Girlfriends, aunts and female cousins were asked to dress as beauty queens. One line in the invitation read, "If you come as Audrey, Grace or Jackie, you won't be tacky." Wendy says of the 54 guests who posted, 53 were in costume, including three Audrey Hepburns, three or four Jackie Kennedys (with short brown flip hairstyles, boxy suits and pillbox hats)

Flowers are old hat. To be sure, there were plenty of spring blooms at yesterday's festive fair around the Washington Monument, the 84th Flower Mart since 1911. But it was the hats that stopped traffic. Heads turned at some of the arresting creations perched on the heads of women, some of whom designed their own for the chance to parade a hat in public without standing out in a crowd. Hundreds turned out in picture-perfect weather for spring's annual rite, including a contingent of 15 women from the Charlestown Retirement Village in Catonsville, who joined in the hat spirit.

The Baltimore Department of Public Works is advising motorists that several downtown streets will be closed today for the city's annual Flower Mart in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. Detours around the festival and parking restrictions in the area will be in effect through 11 p.m. Street closings, also in effect through 11 p.m., will include Charles Street from Centre to Read streets, and Monument and Madison streets from St. Paul to Cathedral streets. Traffic officers will direct motorists to alternate routes.