Jack Blandy could barely speak late Wednesday night - he was tired and his voice was hoarse.
Come Thursday morning, after a few hours of sleep, Blandy's condition was worse.
"I feel like a zombie."
Blame it on a tough workweek.
Beginning last Sunday morning, Blandy, the owner of Stoney Bank Nurseries in Glen Mills, put in 12- to 15-hour workdays last week.
That's not unusual when you're a major exhibitor with one week to get ready for a major exhibit - the annual Philadelphia Flower Show, which runs today through next Sunday at the Civic Center in Philadelphia.
Just ask Wayne Norton, an exhibitor from Highmeadow Gardens in Media.
"Yesterday was a marathon," Norton said Thursday. "We were in there from 7:30 in the morning until 11:30 at night. We're already up to 50 hours and we have two days to go yet."
Meanwhile, one of about 12 people helping Norton set up told him the workers needed another gallon of paint for a makeshift house they've built under the Civic Center's roof.
"This is when you think, 'Why am I doing this?' " Norton said.
Still, Norton does it and has done it for 10 years straight.
"Once you've gotten the Flower Show bug, it's very hard to quit," he said. "You just love it. It gets you pumped up for the spring, too."
Blandy agreed.
"It gets everybody geared up for the spring and it gives us the opportunity to show what we do."
They hope the opportunity to exhibit their landscapes will be good for business, too.
Blandy, who spent $30,000 on this year's design, said the cost was part of the nurseries' advertising budget.
But profits as a result of the show are difficult to gauge and are not immediate, he said.
"We might get calls from people saying they saw our exhibit at the show four years ago and want us to come out and do something similar at their home," Blandy said.
"Sometimes you don't know whether you regained your loss or not," said Russell Jones, president of J. Franklin Styer Nurseries in Concordville, who spent $40,000 on this year's exhibit.
"It kind of comes to you in dribs and drabs. But it rolls in and affects your garden-store sales and your landscaping sales," Jones said.
Nonetheless, the exhibitors say their designs are first and foremost on their minds.
"It's a challenge," said Bernadette Dougherty, owner of the Edgmont Flower Shop in Upper Darby. "It really gets all the creative juices going.
"More than anything, it's really fun putting it all together," she said.
That's not to say Dougherty and the other exhibitors aren't checking out one another's designs. They are, after all, competing with one another.
And all four exhibitors have won various awards at the flower show in past years.
"When you go in there, first of all you're a little cocky. Then you see everybody else's (exhibits) going up and you say, 'Oh, my God, I'm just another fish in the bowl,' " Norton said. "But I've always considered my exhibit an award-winner."
"I approach every show with the possibility of being the first-prize winner," Blandy said. "I'm hopeful that will be this year. Otherwise, why be in it?"
Jones was more definitive.
"We are the best," he said.
Overworked and more than a little tired, Dougherty wasn't so sure how or whether she would place.
"You know that expression, 'You can't see the forest for the trees?' You really get so immersed in it that you don't know what you're looking at after a while."
Flower show hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and next Sunday and 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Tickets are $9 for adults and $4.50 for children.
