Message from our President Kate Colville Oct. 2020

Greeting Garden Friends, It’s as if God flipped a switch and we jumped from a hot humid sum-mer to fall with shorter days, cool crisp air, and comfortably warm sun. It’s time to harvest the last of the summer crops (I will miss my constant stream of tomatoes and squash) and remove the tired spent plants. With the pleasant weather, it’s the perfect time to divide up some perennials for next year’s plant sale, snap up some bargains at the garden centers for perennials, shrubs and trees, and pop in some frost tolerant splashes of color for your beds and containers like mums, asters and pansies. I’m looking forward to the beautiful fall foliage colors of red, oranges, and yellows that will arrive later this month It gave me great pride to see the article by Tony Larussa honoring the student poetry, poster and essay contest winners on the front page of the most recent North Journal. Kudos to Chris Hawthorne, Barb Oswald, and Phyllis Chvostal, our Conservation/Youth Committee chairs, for their hard work and dedica-tion, the club members who participated in the judging, and to our publicity chair, Marcia Wielgus, who works hard to get our club name out into the community. Many thanks to Julie Barnes for scheduling the wonderful hands on Kokedama program for our Sep-tember meeting. Mine is still alive! Also, 19 of us participated in the September field trip to Best Feeds on a beautiful day, learned about numerous shrubs and grasses to add to our landscapes and enjoyed an out-door lunch at Kretzlers. It was a wonderful chance to catch up with club members. A small team of club members travelled to Bellevue in September to North Hills Community Outreach’s Rosalinda Sauro Sirianni’s Community Garden, assisting to harvest vegetables, tear out some summer crops, and plant fall crops .What a wonderful and much needed program – expertly run by NHCO Gar-den Coordinator, Alyssa Crawford, providing fresh organic produce to three pantry sites that serve local families. My hope is that, in the future, our club can look for more ways to provide assistance for this pro-gram.

Julie Barnes will be the leading the October meeting in my place, as I will be out of town. I will miss see-ing you all. Keep safe and socially distanced and I will see many of you at the Oct 14th board meeting. Take the time to relax and enjoy the spectacular fall view that nature offers this time of year.

Celebrate fall!

                Kate Colville                      “Down to earth and diggin’ it”