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Can you believe it has been a year since we formed as an "official" group. The interest has been intense and consequently our membership swelled fast over the entire year. Most of the ponderers in the Story County area have joined (there are still a few that I am surprised that haven't) and I think that everybody is happy with our organization. We are here to inform, share and just have a good time. Now that a year has passed a lot of our members will need to renew their membership. Times do change for some of us and we will lose some of our members but I am certain that most everybody will renew. For those that feel like they are not getting what they expected, we need to know that so we can better serve you. Believe me, we want to be the best conduit of information to the members that we can.
So with that in mind, our next endeavor is to form committees to carry out our goals. Our Directors will be meeting at 7:00 pm on Thursday, January 10, at Mike Stewart's house to discuss all this plus decide on all the programs for the year. Mike lives at 1400 Nebraska Ave. which is in west Ames. Nebraska is north off Ontario/13th Street and roughly ½ mile west of North Dakota (Brookview Place subdivision). Everybody is welcome to come to this meeting -- it will be a good discussion on ponding plus we actually will get some organizational stuff done.
Our program for our meeting in January will be "Constructing Water Gardens - Lesson's Learned". Doug Rieck will be our presenter and we are fortunate to have someone as talented as Doug to teach us. Doug is our Vice President and has been ponding for close to six years. His pond and stream was one of the nicest on the tour in Des Moines last summer and if you toured that leg you probably already know Doug. He has really put a lot of himself in the hobby of ponding and it shows. He is the immediate past President of the Polk County Master Gardeners and is now working on the formation of the Polk County Chapter of the CIWGA.
The meeting will start at 7:00 PM at a very new facility in Ames -- that is the Somerset Clubhouse at 2400 Aspen Road in Ames. Map is included in the newsletter. This facility is free for our use like all of other meeting locations.
We decided at our last meeting to rebuild the water garden at Bethany Manor in Story City. It is not a big feature but is in desperate need of updating. We started a collection that night to help fund our endeavor with the hope of raising $500-1000. The next few months we will come up with a design and a plan for the Bethany Manor people to look at. Any suggestions will be welcome, so.... give 'em to us.
Hope to see everybody at the meeting -- it will be a good one, like always.
The Big Toad, Jamie