Mud pies and Cherry Pies

Hi everybody--We had a great time at Rosie's last night, didn't we? By the time we were all there the heat had dissapated a little bit, and who noticed it anyway with all the Hosta and Heuchera to admire? Kathy, Buscia and Patrick, we missed you guys and hope to see you next month.
Rosie's place is lovely, full to the brim with interesting plants, all beautifully grown. We all came away with a fresh appreciation for the design possibilities of combining plants with attractive foilage to their best advantage. From her eye popping huge Hosta all the way down to the charming minis, every hosta was admired in its turn. People were fast choosing favorites--Cindy admired "June" with its cream colored foilage, Marianne became determined to find the unique "Guardian Angel" for her garden. Rosie passed along an excellent perspective on Hosta and their need for light, pointing out that the varieties with white on their leaves lack a lot of chloropyll and thus need a certain amount of light to make enough energy to survive from one season to the next. She explained how she and Perry (aka "Diego the Lawn Boy") built box beds for asparagus, and we all admired her ingenious beds that utilized equipment tracks as containers. She told us the life story of her beautiful arborvitae hedge, that actually preceded the house on the property, and amazed us with her stellar delphinium, which unbelievably is actually a bit smaller than normal this year.
Rosie's Heuchera collection provides a wonderful look at this most decorative genus--Cindy was very inspired by the combinations and went home with ideas for her own yard. Heuchera's can be a mixed bag of good varieties and bad, so seeing which ones grow beautifully to a mature size is really instructive.
Then it was on to the business meeting. We had all our usual reports--Marianne read the minutes and Shirley had nothing new on the moola front. Bobbi is back online, thanks to the very "Dependsable" mediacom guy, so watch for email updates. Buscia wasn't there last night, but several people said they had received reminder calls--as always thanks to her for reaching out and touching us all.
Online buddies had all printed their copies of "Indiana Gardens" and since Patrick wasn't there Maggie gave her printed copy to Marianne, and Kathy can get her copy to Patrick next time. Cindy also has hers.
Rosie and I went to Das Essenhaus for a tour and another meeting of the State Convention committee, and in the interest of time, we will have Rosie update us in July. She took a lot of photos, asked a number of questions about our job (program book) and will fill us in on all of it then. When the time comes for proofreaders she will use the internet to send out files for people to check. Sue volunteered to be a reader--thanks, Sue.
A brief report on our get together at "Thyme of Grace"--yum. end of story.
In new business Gene reported that Tim Disco from Notre Dame has agreed to come to our July meeting--he just needed to let him know the date, which is July 12 the SECOND Tues. in July. Thanks, Gene, for taking care of this. We are all looking forward to meeting Tim and dancing the night away.
In addition we may be having a guest in July in the person of Joan Stone, who is the GCI district director. Joan wishes to attend one of our meetings to say hello and support us as we go along. Since she must be invited to attend, we chose the July meeting to ask her, and I will take care of this.
An exciting development--Cindy has stepped up and volunteered to be our Travel Diva. She will keep an eye out for bus trips and tours that might be of interest to members and report to us when she finds something. I will add her to the meeting agendas from now on. This is something I have been wanting to implement since the club began and I really thank her for volunteering to take it on.
We touched upon the subject of a program book--its something that I think could be easily added to the blog and accessed online. Online buddies can print a copy out for non-onliners so everyone has access to it. More on this later.
Then it was Hayden's turn to relate the fabulous "once in a lifetime" experience he had meeting Piet Oudolf. We are so glad for Hayden having had this incredible chance. We know he will make the most of it. Hayden also filled us in on what is coming up with MHA. Three open gardens this month, Rosie's open garden will combine with a sale she is planning on the 14th, so come on back and get yourself some hosta! The featured MHA nursery this month is Nancy Beadles' "Hostas and More" in Fish Lake. There is a coupon online for her shop. The next Pie Night is July 8 at my house--it will be the Garden Fail Festival. Bring the plant you hate the most and we will help you destroy it in one of several ways.
In announcements--Sue told us about a garden in New Paris owned by the DeFries family that will be sponsoring tours, we talked about the Art and Earth trail (link posted in the "Handy Links" section), the Barn Quilt trail, Gardens on the Prairie and Sunshine (?) Greenhouse and a potential fun day out to visit them, and a fun weekend at the New Kitchen Store in Walkerton. As a final note, Marianne brought some of her delicious strawberries to sell.
With that all taken care of, we adjourned (yes, Patrick--we remembered) and got about learning to make hypertufa. Rob got the task of cement mixer, and we all donned gloves and set about our sculpting. Several people decorated the edges of their containers--Marianne was doubtless thinking about PIE when she made hers, since she finished the edge with a lovely pie crust ruffle. Cindy used her thumb to shape her edges and Sue used a little stick to decorate hers. Rosie has sent me instructions and they are in the blog post before this one.
Then we all got to eat some of Rosies delicious lemon bars, death by chocolate brownies and cherry pie squares, washed down with two delicious drinks--a tea blend and a lemonade blend, both concocted by Rosie herself. Watch for recipes to be posted soon. I think I will add a recipe page somewhere--and maybe we need a recipe archivist to add to our roster of "jobs". There is just too much yummy stuff drifting on and off the radar screen. We need to keep track of it.
We were also very glad to meet Perry, who joined us for snacks, and then brought the effervescent Murphy out to say hello. Perry and Rosie have built a beautiful place and we loved getting the chance to spend some time there. Many thanks to them for such a happy evening, filled with stories, hands on work, time with friends and beautiful gardens!