Fall-ing in love again

Hi all--We had a great time last night, attending the presentation on Fall Color at the North Liberty Library branch. Many thanks to their wonderful speaker, Debbie, for all the great information she passed along. Its clear to see that the library has chosen well in hiring her as their gardener; her love for plants was very evident. She started off with a number of suggestions--the most important of which was basically contrary to our plant crazy instincts--don't rush out and buy. Instead she recommended carefully studying our sites so we choose plants wisely, and photographing our gardens to help us decide (and then remember) where to put new plants for the best effect. She also suggested studying area gardens and noticing what looks beautiful in them that could be added to our own spaces. Add to that a little careful investigation into the habits and requirements of the plants we are considering, and hopefully you end up with easy maintenence gardens that pack a lot of visual wallop in the space they occupy.

Fall is a great time both for planting as well as buying--she reminded us to watch for good prices on clearance plants at season's end. Sometimes this takes some legwork as inventories are at low ebb, but great bargains can be found--and who says hunting for plants to buy is a hardship anyway??

Then we got into her show and tell, and what a beautiful array of examples she had to show us. From trees, including Oaks, Maples, Sweetgum, Tulip poplar, Dogwood, Serviceberry, Baldcypress and Dawn Redwood, through shrubs like Miss Kim Lilac, Aronia, Hydrangea, Fothergilla, Clethra and Witch Hazel, she showed us an array of colors that would beautify any garden. For smaller areas, Debbie introduced us to asters, sedums, echinacea that had been deadheaded for a repeat flowering, grasses and numerous seedheads that are attractive and structural accents to the colorful leaves. She also showed us a most unusual "Wahoo" Euonymus, which is boring most of the time, but ends the season with an amazing show of pink bracts and fruit.

To make the whole experience even better, she generously passed some plants along to lucky winners, with Maggie winning a beautiful magnolia, Cindy going home with a Serviceberry, which will be perfect in her yard, and several other lucky partcipants received a wonderful living gift from this terrific gardener. She also passed out divisions of an Oncidium orchid, and Patrick and Rosie both will have a new project to interest them as they begin the adventure that is orchids.

After the program we hiked across the parking lot where Gerry Brown greeted us at the door of Bluebird House. Coffee and cookies had been laid out by Gerry and Debbie's daughter, Kirstin, since Debbie had been sidelined by the flu. We were so pleased to have two guests attend--Mary Ann's neighbor, Eva came with her, and I kidnapped my friend Lorraine and she was nice enough to come over as well. We are so very happy they joined us and hope to add them to our membership. Everybody toured Bluebird House and enjoyed visiting with Gerry as he explained the history of how the house was saved from destruction and renovated to the charming state it is in now. Bluebird House can be rented as a Guest House if you have family coming in for a visit or reunion, or friends coming for a football weekend. Just call the Browns at 656-8093 and they will be glad to accomodate you.

Then it was on to the meeting. We had no minutes--Marianne was at work. Shirley gave us the treasurers report which consisted of the balance as of the most recent bank statement. I had a copy of the July District meeting minutes for anyone interested in reading them, and we discussed the Oct. 20 meeting in Middlebury. 4 of us are going and Shirley is going to drive. Of course we are all so organized we couldn't figure a timetable out for this, but we will get it done and communicate the information to those who are attending.

I also wrote up a short blurb about our clubs activities for the year to submit at the meeting, and there was a copy of that for anyone to look at too.

As to our upcoming meeting, we had to bump the date back by a week--we are now going to Lurie on the 13 of November. I have communicated this to Ben and it should work out fine. Keep an eye on the blog in case there are any changes. I will have Bobbie send out alerts and put Busia on the phone if there is any last minute news to report.

As for the blog--new pics are up. Thanks to Shirley for sending me a set of pics--I have to figure out how to strip them out of the Kodak gallery, but I will get Rob on the case and it will be resolved soon.

Then it was on to new stuff. The Indiana Gardens issue was emailed to everyone--a couple people thought it was spam and threw it out. Rosie didn't get one because once again my brain had a synaptic failure and I never reported her as a new member to anybody. Sorry about that, Rosie--I will get a copy of the current one to you and take action to add you as a member.

There also was a very important entry in the newsletter about a project being taken on by the Deleware Garden club. This task of planning and installing a garden at Dover Air Force Base to help and protect families who go there to claim the remains of their loved ones killed in military service is something we should all support, either with a donation or our prayers--better yet both. Look for the blog post titled "Something very important" for a link to take you to a page where you can find out how to donate.

Another upcoming topic of interest is the newly formed Michiana Horticultural Alliance. This umbrella group which seeks to provide a common ground for all aspects of Horticulture, from everyday gardeners to industry professionals has just begun its journey, and everyone is invited to join and go along for the ride. Membership is and always will be free--so sign up today! Website is http://www.michianahort.org/.

We briefly touched on the idea to have our Dec. meeting at Thyme of Grace Restaurant. I am going there next Friday and will talk to them to see what we can figure out. This will most likely be a lunch meeting.

Then we began looking to the future and discussing plans for next year. After a lot of helpful discussion, Rosie suggested that everyone come armed with ideas for topics and presentations when we meet in December. In light of the fact that our club doesn't have a Vice President, whom Rosie pointed out was responsible for compling a program book in most clubs, Cindy suggested an alternative method used by a garden club her sister belongs too. In this club people draw out of a hat and each person is responsible for the meeting that they "draw". In Cindy's version, the person draws a month and then is in charge of coming up with a program, a meeting site, the whole works. This will all go into the "idea stew" that is our club, and in December we will thrash the whole concept about and come up with the method that suits us the best. Thanks to everyone for their input into this issue. I would really like for us to develop a way of handling this that is uniquely our own. Then everyone's personality will shine through in its own way.

Also--I would like to have someone volunteer to just compile a listing of area bustours that might be of interest to the club. We are too small and its awfully complicated to charter a bus and do all that crazy stuff. Much easier to find trips we want to take and then just glom on to someone else's hard work instead. Again--we will take this up in December and get the job delegated.

We closed the meeting with a reminder about the recent Pet Food Recall on Blue Buffalo dog food. Thanks to Nick for filling us in with the details of how to check the internet for information.
With that, Patrick (in his new Pucci shirt) was nice enough to adjourn us--and we all drifted away into the night.

HTTD!