Garden Club of Wiscasset member Jan Flowers sat with a stranger’s blanket about her Saturday as she helped man a bake sale at the club’s plant sale. The annual event was fully outdoors this year due to the pandemic, which nixed the May tradition last year.

A gray sky and temperatures in the 40s made a cool morning for members on the town office grounds. Flowers, in a face mask like everyone else was, said an event-goer she did not know offered her the blanket and told her to do whatever she wanted with it. “I think I’ll keep it in the car” after the sale, Flowers said and laughed as she told Wiscasset Newspaper about the gift. “It’s handmade,” she said, holding up a corner of it.

This never would have happened in Houston, where she moved here from, the Wiscasset woman said. Neither would a community event like the club’s sale, except maybe a neighborhood one, she added.

Fellow member Elizabeth Palmer wanted an outfit reflecting the event, so she asked King Farm’s June King to make one. “She called and said, ‘I need something pink, with flowers’ and I’m like, ‘I’m on it!’” King said.

“I absolutely love it,” Palmer said of the result, a floral-themed apron and matching mask. Palmer could not find her go-to, purple hat with flowers for community events Saturday morning. So she wore her hiking hat and added a big, plastic daisy. “It’s scandalous. I’m wearing a false flower at the plant sale.”

Palmer said she has helped on the sale’s setup before, but until this year’s always missed the event due to other commitments. What did she think of it? She said she could tell many shoppers, including ones who showed up an hour before the start, came knowing what they were looking for. “There’s some strategizing,” she observed.

Thanks to the sale, Wiscasset will have a lot of bright colors around it, Palmer said.

Sara Gross, newly moved here from Lansing, Michigan to help parents Andy and Lisa Gross with their new business Maine Tasting Center at Marketplace Plaza, was also helping at the sale for the first time. She is not a club member. “Not yet,” said longtime member Emily Adler, laughing. The two manned a children’s table that had a planting activity and prizes including baskets with books and gardening items.

Palmer invited Gross to volunteer and she was glad to help, Gross said. She is loving being in Wiscasset, she added.

Some shoppers bought arm or wagon loads of plants; others, finds they could hand-carry. Charlotte Simmons of Nobleboro had a begonia in one hand and a Soloman’s Seal in the other. She got the begonia because the red will be pretty. And the Solomon’s Seal? “I can’t remember what it was about it, but I figured, I’m going to try it anyway!”

Wiscasset’s Judy Flanagan got flox, gloves, rolls and a piece of peanut butter fudge; Ann Scanlon, toffee bars.

The sale raises money for scholarships for area high school seniors and beautification projects from Bath to Wiscasset and Dresden, Adler has said.

Member Terry Heller, in pink and a sequined mask, said the gray morning was not the sunny one the club ordered. “But it’s not raining. So we’re good.”