Richmond Heights Garden Club Newsletter
August 2010
President– Jim Imler
Vice President – Debbie Tolstoi
Treasurer – Donna McDonald
Secretary – Stacy Haynes
Editor – Mary Grenfell
Our August meeting will be back at the Heights, 8100 Dale Ave. at 7:00pm, Tuesday, August 10, 2010. Our last eating meeting
At the July meeting we discussed having an organizational/future planning meeting as part of our August meeting. About a year ago the Richmond Heights Garden Club nearly dissolved. We could find no one interested in being officers and few volunteers for our monthly tasks. A small group of us held a meeting at Donna MacDonald’s on a chilly January night and agreed that we did not want the club to dissolve. Everyone in attendance at that meeting stepped forth to keep the club going. We took on officer positions, plant sale planning and coordination, monthly responsibilities such as refreshments, planning programs, and other tasks such as producing the newsletter. From that meeting we had some of our most successful activities—planting workshops, apple tree grafting and so on. We want our club to continue to be active and grow in membership. Each member is important and each member has talents to contribute to our group. Please come to the August meeting and help plan our next year. All volunteers contribute significantly to the vitality of the garden club.
Jim Imler will also present information about global warming/climate change and how we as local gardeners can adapt our perennial and tree planting to ensure their long term survival. He will also include information about lawns that survive drier, warmer weather.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave; find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. ~ Henry David Thoreau
July Meeting
Thanks to Almut and her family for hosting our last eating meeting. It was a very warm evening, though not as hot as today! Almut made very tasty spaghetti and meatballs with her own touch of nutrition and spices. Fortunately their backyard was in the shade so we could enjoy the good food and company. Members shared comments about their own gardening successes. Some noted good luck with green peppers and a few other vegetables. Others commented that the unusual weather this summer has been hard on vegetable gardens. At that time I was fighting with Japanese beetles on my Crepe myrtle, apple trees and Rose of Sharon. Despite some advice to the contrary, I bought two beetle traps and had hundreds of beetles each day. I think that the opportunists from my neighborhood moved in and I was finally so frustrated that I tired of hand picking them and just took the trap to the bushes and knocked handfuls into the bag. Not exactly the directions on the trap, but I found a certain satisfaction in that activity. After assuming that no blossoms would appear on the Crepe Myrtle this year, I left town for a week and came back to a bush fully in bloom! How did that happen? The Japanese beetles seemed to chew every possible bud. I even pulled buds off the Rose of Sharon with beetles happily eating the middle of the bud. Maybe it’s Mother Nature giving me a break since the May hail storm in our area shredded my hostas for the summer. Now if I could do in those squash beetles…..
At the July meeting, many of us enjoyed Ed Schmidt’s collard greens. He kindly shared the recipe with us.
Vegetarian "Southern-style" Collard Greens
Ingredients
1 T or so olive oil
1/2 large onion chopped
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 pound collard greens, chopped (I remove the big center vein of the leaves)
3 cups vegetable stock
1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes (original recipe calls for 2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped)
salt
Directions: In a large pot over medium heat, heat the oil. Sauté the onions until slightly softened, about 2 minutes, then add the red pepper flakes and garlic, cook another minute. Add collard greens and cook another minute. Add the vegetable stock, cover and bring to a simmer. Cook until greens are tender, about 40 minutes. Add tomatoes and season with salt to taste.
Pinky Possum moved her children from under my porch for the summer. The dirt floor was wet most of the spring and Pinky prefers the lush green of the easement behind my fence. Biscuit had cornered a few of the children against the fence during her nightly trot through the yard and the children were having nightmares about being chased by a middle-aged black dog with unnaturally short legs. Sadly, Pinky canceled the family vacation to Montana after hearing about tourists throwing chunks of firewood at bison and could only imagine what they might do to opossums. Just as well they stayed home. Fritz, the middle child, had to attend summer school after miserably failing Intro to Car Dodging. It wasn’t pretty, but the casts are off and he’s getting around much better.
I think that the following came to me from Donna. A good read.
An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.
One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of a long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”
The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”
“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.
“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”
Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
So, to all of our crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!
Click on one of the following to download a printable newsletter in either Microsoft Word or PDF Format. August 2010 Newsletter – MS Word or August 2010 Newsletter – PDF
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