Dear Garden Club Members,
Richard and I spent Thanksgiving this year having a lovely lunch with his son, daughter-in-law and 14 month old granddaughter under the trees in a vineyard in Cape Town, South Africa. Besides jaw-dropping wildlife, we saw dizzying amounts of breathtaking plants, especially the masses of protea, South Africa’s national flower, at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. At the urging of Jody Bush, we visited Brenthurst, a spectacular 40 acre woodland garden in the heart of Johannesburg. As you can imagine, we had a wonderful time but we did feel fortunate, after landing at JFK, to go through immigration and hear the words “Welcome home.”
I realize I am also very fortunate to be part of The Garden Club of New Haven. What amazing members we have. Once again, at our Holiday Workshop, Lucy Elliott and Judi Freudenberg brought us all together- in their gracious and quietly competent way- to bring cheer to area nursing homes. Anemone Schweizer-Kaplan gave a fascinating compilation of her committee’s hard work on the history of Phelps Triangle- demonstrating so ably why the Smithsonian chose to accept the slides the Garden History and Design team submitted. Elaine Anderson, Betsy Hartmayer and Liz O’Connor raised an astonishing amount of money for Ways and Means (I’ll let them tell you just how much at our January meeting) with their rousing Holiday Bazaar and raffle. Sondra Haller and her group of member-cooks put out a lovely feast for all of us –with some left to share with our local soup kitchen. And of course, everyone who attended, making arrangements with nimble hands, bringing favorite cookie recipes and home-made holiday ornaments, laughing, and talking, made our annual event a most joyous start to the holiday season.
Looking ahead to next month; please plan to attend our January program, the Louise B. Carter lecture on the 9th. Louise has underwritten this event and we are so, so grateful to her and for her support. Page Dickey- who is rumored to be an excellent speaker- will be talking about her garden, Duck Hill. Come- and bring a guest to the lecture and also to the pre-meeting gathering talk on “Keeping it Local” with Elizabeth Moore from City Seed. And speaking of guests, our new member party will be at the home of Jody Bush on Sunday, January 15. If you have a friend you’d like to propose for our club, be in touch with Jody as soon as possible.
Not content to rest on our laurels after such an exciting, busy and successful start to our Garden Club year, we have lots of terrific events* planned for the first half of 2012. I hope to see you at many of them. In the meantime, I send wishes for jubilant holidays and a brilliant new year. Thank you so much for being a part of our club!
Warm regards,
Susan
* Including the Floral Design Workshop on January 18th; the topic is Leaf Manipulation, something about which I, for one, am most curious in learning more.
No comments:
Post a Comment