For 92 years, they’ve called it Flowermart, but they might just as well call it Food Fest because everybody in Mount Vernon was eating Friday.

Including the plants.

As the Social Security Chorus sang old show tunes and ’70s television theme songs (Think Laverne and Shirley) on a stage nearby, the food booths’ lines grew steadily longer for Italian sausage, quesadillas, gyros and crab cake.

And just across the cobblestones, Michael and Pam Szesze’s carnivorous plants were snacking on the insects tossed their way by the brisk, noontime breeze.

Venus fly traps, pitcher plants, sundews and other hungry plants from their Carnivorous Plant Nursery in Derwood caught the attention of children and adults alike.

“I think it is fascinating,” said Laura Jeffers of Pasadena, who paid $8 for a glass jar of tadpoles swimming among the bladderwort, a plant that eats the microorganisms generated by the tadpole droppings. The tadpoles will eventually be toads in her garden.

“We have lots of pets,” she said as she carefully carried away the family’s newest additions.

Elsewhere, Flowermart traditions showed their sustaining strength: big hats, lemon sticks, face paint and Catholic school kids selling flowers.

Ascension School of Halethorpe won first place in the booth competition with the construction of a pond under their tent. Even Immaculate Heart of Mary, second-place winner, was impressed. “The pond should have won,” said an admiring Joanne McShalley of IHM in Towson. “We were just proud to be second.”

Bobbie McKinney, dressed in the peach and black colors of this year’s Flower mart, danced nearby with granddaughter Kaylah Hope, 5, whose face was brightly painted beneath her big hat and whose fingers were sticky with lemon juice and candy sticks.

“This is her first time, but I wait the whole year for Flowermart,” McKinney said.

Look here for more photos from Flowermart by The Sun's Jed Kirschbaum.