September Notes from the Garden...

Hello Bloomers,

There's a lot of information below, be sure to check it all out! (Please let me know if I missed anything!)

Meeting notes for September taken by Cindi H.
09/16/09
September meeting of the Barrington Bloomers started early at 6:00pm. We discussed business before our guest speaker was to arrive.

Dues of $20.00 was collected by Colleen. Dues are due no later than Nov for this year (Sept 2009-Aug 2010) and is per person or family.

Lynn has become the new treasurer, Nancy is president, Colleen is vp, and Cindi is secretary
Michelle and Cyndi have stepped down as comittee planners for field trips, speakers, and other fun things we have been to. Heather will continue to be on this committee with ???

Calendar year; we will do it a little different this year in the summer months.
June; tour each others gardens/ bring a plant
July/ August; no formal meeting, just meet for fun or garden maintenance

We missed it this year but plan to attend next years Natural Heritage Fair at Warren's Farm. Would be great if we could get full partipation in this event sharing time at a table representing the Barrington Bloomers

We also need volunteers to help maintain the library gardens as their funding for maintenance has been cut. Contact the library to see where or what needs to be done. Even a few hours will help out! (see notes above about helping out).

We will be looking for a new sculpture for our Town garden for next year-- we will need to get information together for this probably around January to send to newspapers, etc for publication about the Call for Entries. Thanks to Adam Pearson for a beautiful sculpture on display in the garden. We plan on doing a small scale garden at the intersection of Province Rd & rte 9 in the future. Coleen is looking into planting at the fire house/police station by the corner/rock wall. Thanks to all who helped maintain the town garden this summer. There will be a cleanup of the garden for the winter on November 8th at 1:00pm. It would be nice to see a large participation for this as we want to represent an attractive area for our town. Look forward to seeing you there.

There have been a couple of other requests to maintain gardens in town... the feeling of the members at the Sept meeting was that if where the garden is is also a volunteer organization we can advise them, but seeing we are volunteers as well and have a large garden and the library garden to maintain that it doesn't seem fair to us to do this at this time.

Our speaker for the evening was Ed Roy from Urban Tree Service. Shared advice and gave us handouts on planting, caring for, and pruneing trees. Great suggestions for proper tree selection. Very informative.

We look forward to seeing some new faces this year--pass the word on about the club! http://barringtonbloomers.blogspot.com/

Other Important Notes:

_Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 21 and will be held at the Town Library at 6:30pm.
Jim Rivet, the landscaper who helped us build the town garden and has donated a good amount of his time doing so will be our speaker! The topic will be: Lawn and Garden Overwintering.

_ We are still looking for volunteers to help with the program planning for the upcoming year. Speakers, fieldtrips, etc are needed for the months of: 2010- January, February, March, April, May (the club will not hold meetings during the summer -June, July and August - but will plan on a couple of get togethers like weeding the gardens in town, a fieldtrip or members tour of Bloomers own gardens.) (September, no speaker, business meeting, regrouping, maybe a plant/seed swap), October, November and December.
Michelle and Cyndi, who have done an awesome job with Heather being the speaker and field trip co-ordinators, will be stepping down from their positions to let other members build the character of the club. Would anyone else be interested in filling a position for the coming year? Or to plan one months meeting? Ideas are more than welcome for speakers-- what would you like to learn about? --let me know

_The "Keeping Barrington Beautiful" decorative donation pots! have been taken in for the fall & winter seasons and will return to local businesses in the spring.

_Town garden/library upkeep. If you have time, please stop by the town garden or the library gardens as they are in need of weeding and deadheading until we have the group fall cleanup on Sunday November 8th at 1:00pm. Meet at the town garden on the 8th and we will split up between the 2 gardens. Please bring a refreshment to share : ) Please let me know if you will be coming by November 1st. barringtonbloomers@metrocast.net

Amy the Library Director has also given us a list of maintenance that needs to be done throughout the year at the town library gardens. Please contact Amy to let her know when you could help out by either calling the library or emailing Amy at: blibrary@metrocast.net. Attached is a document with the schedule for the year. (From Amy: Here is the schedule with volunteer opportunities in yellow highlight. If you want, you can fill in names/phone numbers and just shoot it back to me. I'd love to be able to go outside and thank your volunteers by name :) I thank you all for helping out in this way!)

_ I have created a Barrington Bloomers Group on Flickr (a photo sharing site) where you can post your pictures. http://www.flickr.com/groups/barringtonbloomers/ I believe you can "join group" right on that page.

happy gardening and hope to see you all in October!
nancy