|
|
Our meeting last month was sure fun and interesting -- wasn't it? Charlie Drewes did an outstanding job in presenting a program on our critters in our ponds. His humor, limericks, and "yellow page ads for invertebrates" in combination of actual critter information really made the program one of the best. If only I had Charlie for a professor when I was in college -- I might have been in a different profession. It is going to a challenge for your officers and committee members to beat that program for our upcoming meetings -- but we will give it a good shot.
Our program for this month is going to be on Over Wintering Your Pond, Plants and Fish. It will be an important meeting for us because of the timely aspect of it. As colder weather descends upon us -- there are many things that can be done to insure that your water garden comes through the winter in good condition. All aspects of winterizing will be discussed by everybody and myself. I would like this meeting to be more of a discussion and what has worked for members in past winters. I will start out each general topic by a short presentation and then we will open it to a discussion. If everybody that wants to express their experience (and/or questions) would talk about it -- we all benefit.
Last winter was a tough one on us ponderers because of the severity and length of time that snow and ice persisted. We all learned a lot about the importance of proper over wintering techniques. One aspect that I will hammer on throughout the evening will be to keep things simple and inexpensive. I should have a handout or two to assist in the understanding of what will be presented.
The Botanical Center in Des Moines is sponsoring me to do a program on the same subject -- "Over Wintering Techniques of Water Gardens". I will be doing this in the evening on Thursday, October 4 at the Botanical Center. Call Susan Ferguson at 515-323-8902 to register and find out the details. It will be an in-depth talk on techniques and should be a good overview before our meeting the following Monday, Oct. 8. If you can't make our meeting, hopefully you will be able to attend the Botanical Center's presentation. The difference between the two presentations is that I will be doing a lot more talking at the Botanical Center and you will be participating more at our meeting. Tell all your ponding friends about these talks -- they will not be able to get as in-depth info anywhere else.
Can you believe that, as of this January, our organization will have its one-year anniversary? A lot of us joined at that first meeting and, of course, we will need to renew our membership at that time. The committee originally agreed to have all member's year of membership expire on Jan. 1. Due to our lack of notifying everybody of this bit of information (affects those members that joined since the first couple of months) we have had to reexamine just how members renew their membership. Greg and Carolyn Knop have kept really good records of when people joined and it would not be a problem from their standpoint to have the membership year be from when a member joined. It is more work for them but it is fairer to everybody that we proceed in this fashion. I want to thank Greg and Carolyn for their dedication to our great organization and helping it to become the best. As members, who want to help our organization, it would great that you send in renewals as soon as you get them. Of course, renewals will not start until January 2002, our first anniversary.
Oh yeah, in reviewing the Bylaws, we will need to have an election of Directors and Officers. Didn't we just do this?? We did because our bylaws were not passed by us until our May meeting and we subsequently had a quick election to make things proper. This should be an easy one for us because all the current officers and committee members want to continue. We just need to rearrange who is a Director (and their term length) and who is a committee member.
That's it for this month!! The Big Toad, Jamie