When Ray and Texie McGowan planted their first camellias, they were a young married couple building a home in Napa. The year was 1950, and the seeds came from trees in downtown’s Fuller Park.

Six decades later, those same camellia plants are flourishing, accompanied by some 50 more Reticulatas, Japonicas, Sasanquas and various hybrid camellias the McGowans have collected over their years together.

Ray, 84, still starts new cuttings every December, and the couple regularly win prizes for their camellia blooms.

“They have nice flowers at a time of year when other flowers aren’t blooming,” said Texie, 80. “There’s a nice variety of shapes, colors and so forth.”

Camellias come in thousands of forms, their blooms ranging from passionate reds and blushing pinks to pale rosettes that appear to have been carved from alabaster. Most have no odor, but some fragrant varieties exist, Texie said.

As they do each year, the McGowans have entered some of their choicest specimens in the upcoming Napa Valley Camellia Society show, Feb. 2 at the Napa Senior Center on Jefferson Street.

There is no charge to enter flowers in the camellia show. Club members will be on hand to help newcomers, who are asked to bring their camellias by 9:30 a.m. Accredited judges from the American Camellia Society will award trophies to the best blooms.

The annual show and sale are open to the public; visitors are encouraged to wander among the hundreds of flowers on display — and, perhaps, take home a plant or two.

“We’ll have a nice selection of 2- and 3- and 4-year-old plants, all with buds on them, ready to go,” said Texie, who is completing her accreditation as a judge for the American Camellia Society.

Ray added that camellias don’t need much special treatment to thrive, as long as they don’t get too much sun.

“The main thing is to give them the proper watering and fertilize them three times a year,” he said. The third application should be a bloom fertilizer to boost flower size, he continued.

Texie praised camellias for their resistance to disease and their long blooming season at the darkest time of the year.

“We have some that have been blooming since November,” she said.

Painting, writing, flying, building

Married in 1948, the McGowans raised three children at the Adrian Street home Ray built himself while working as a machinist at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

“I was only making $7.64 a day,” he recalled of those postwar years.

While the couple’s camellia collection dates back to their early days together, the McGowans have pursued many other interests over their nearly 60 years of marriage.

Texie is an award-winning painter who has exhibited her expansive landscapes and closely-observed still lifes at several Northern California galleries; she has slowed down her output in recent years, but still maintains a home art studio.

She is also a writer who has been working for the past year or so on a romantic thriller called “The Curse of the Seven Jaguars.”

Ray’s lifelong love of flight is reflected both inside the home and in the couple’s garage.

In their neat living room, a glass case displays his collection of some 60 model airplane engines from the 1930s and 1940s, like the 1938 “Baby Cyclone” ignition engine he carefully rebuilt after his younger brothers destroyed it while he was stationed in England during World War II.

As a flight engineer with the 8th Air Force, Ray flew in B-24s and B-17s, earning multiple decorations. The war’s end didn’t ground him: Ray began building and flying model planes, heading both the Silverado Soaring Society and the Northern California Soaring League for many years.

The McGowans’ son Robert and grandchildren Robin and Allen share Ray’s hobby: Allen is scheduled to represent the United States at a model flight competition in Turkey later this year.

Both antique and modern planes share space in the McGowan’s tidy garage with a Chris Craft powerboat — one of three Ray built from kits — and a restored 1892 “bicycle built for two,” complete with square-block chain.

The bike was in pieces when Ray began to work on it; he had to forge some parts himself.

“One of the best things I can remember: Just before my dad died, I got it back together and I took him for a ride,” Ray recalled with a wistful smile.

“Oh, it was wonderful. Made me feel good.”

Napa Valley Camellia Society Show

Feb. 2, 1 p.m.; entries due before 9:30 a.m.

Napa Senior Center

1500 Jefferson St., Napa

Free admission

Info, www.napacamellia.org