It's 4:30 in the morning, but the day is well under way in a chilled banquet room at the Red Lion Hotel in Redding.

Rosarian Tom Bonfigli of Sebast- opol has been up all night — and working as hard as the air conditioner. He's entering 100 hybrid tea, floribundas and old garden roses in a show that's part of the Northern California Nevada Hawaii District Rose Conference and needs a good nine hours to get them set for competition.

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Bonfigli scrutinizes each rose as he sets it in a glass vase. To be a winner, a rose must have beautiful color, a straight stem, healthy leaves and petals that unfurl just so. He carefully cuts away blemished areas; buffs leaves with a soft cloth; and stretches blossoms using cotton swabs until the roses are at the perfect stage of openness — not too tight and not too loose.

Why would someone go to all that trouble at such an ungodly hour?

"Because we're nuts," said fellow competitor Baldo Villegas.

Villegas arrived at the Red Lion in the wee hours of the morning last Saturday with an ice chest filled with about 100 roses, mostly miniatures, from his quarter-acre garden in Sacramento where he has 1,500 rosesbushes. Yes, 1,500. Villegas begins cutting roses a few days before the competition, then refrigerates them so they don't open prematurely (that's why the show prep room is kept cold too).

He has a spare refrigerator in his garage, but because he's a research entomologist with the state Department of Food and Agriculture, that refrigerator is usually filled with bugs. So he sneaks roses into the house refrigerator.

"My wife gets kind of mad at me for taking too much room in the family's refrigerator for the roses," he said.

Hey, whatever it takes. Rose competition is a serious matter.

Last weekend's show was part of a three-day conference hosted by the Shasta and Humboldt rose societies. It's been 10 years since the district conference was in Redding. There weren't any cash prizes, but there is a certain prestige that comes with winning.

"You do it for the love of the rose," Bonfigli said. "It's a specialized thing."

"I enjoy the excitement, competition and seeing the wonderful specimens displayed after judging," said Robbie Ridenour of Walnut Creek.

"It's a challenge," Susan Chan McCarthy of Hillsborough said of cultivating winning roses. "It forces you to grow them well."

Chan McCarthy said timing is critical. For a fall competition, roses need to be clipped off bushes in summer so the plants have time to put out new blossoms in time for the show. Some growers keep meticulous records to see how much time a particular variety requires to rebloom. Chan McCarthy doesn't like all that paperwork, but she has used a permanent marker to record the date she cut summer flowers on the underside of leaves on her rosebushes.

Villegas keeps a spreadsheet. It notes each plant's location in the garden, the year it was introduced, awards it has won and other details. He adds comments on how the plant performs, such as: "Mildew prone," "Mildew magnet," "Forget it" or "Hybridizer should have included a bottle of fungicide."

Roses are prone to all sorts of maladies and pests. Villegas prefers not to use chemical sprays, so coming up with blooms that are show- worthy is a challenge.

Rose growers in coastal climates defensively note that foggy conditions make their roses prone to mildew and fungus. Inland growers complain that summer heat scorches leaves and results in small roses.

"People from the Bay Area show up with huge blooms. The challenge is to beat those guys from the Bay Area. That's the thrill of this rose show," Villegas said.

Using a small, dry paintbrush, he gently moved the petals of a grape-sized bloom named Soroptimist International into precise position, then put the thin-stemmed flower in a plastic tube, adding a wad of crumpled aluminum foil to keep it straight.

"Yeah, perfect," Villegas said. "You arrange it so that it looks at you, so it looks at the judge."

He dismissed a tiny rose he brought. "It has a bent neck," he said, pointing to a slight kink in the stem. "This one's not going to do anything."

Meanwhile, at the other end of the room, Chan McCarthy was writing off one of her large, showy blooms. "It has a split center," she said. "That's a disaster."

The center of the rose needs to spiral symmetrically, she explained. Petals can't overlap in different directions, appearing confused.

"The number of roses with good centers is not that great. If you look at them long enough and hard enough, pretty soon you have nothing," she said. "It drives you nuts."

Hal Muns of Redding entered several roses. He didn't arrive in the cold room until 6:30 a.m. He said he wasn't a serious competitor. He prefers the low-key shows at the Shasta Rose Society's monthly meetings.

"They're fierce competitors," he said of the district exhibitors.

Muns said showing roses causes a shift in perspective.

"A rose is a rose, but when you are competing, a rose is not a rose unless it is perfect in color, shape and leaves and everything else," he said. "It's like any hobby, people get crazy."

Bonfigli took most of the top prizes in the show. For a complete list of winners, go to www.ncnhdistrict.org.

Record Searchlight reporter Laura Christman can be reached 225-8222 or lchristman@redding.com.