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Our meeting in January was fairly well attended and the Somerset Clubhouse was a decent meeting location. This last year we have had some great meeting locations and I am hoping that it is not too confusing by moving it around all the time. Some locations are not available to us every month and we need to be checking out all the possibilities.
I want to thank Doug Rieck for doing an excellent job of doing the presentation for January. As most of you know, Doug is our Vice President and is the guiding light for the Polk County Chapter. They had another meeting the end of January with Larry Arnold of Aqualand Pets in Des Moines presenting a program on Fish for Your Water Gardens. We will have an update from the Chapter in next month's newsletter.
Things are coming together for committees and programs for this next year. I am grateful for all of the members that have volunteered so far to serve on committees. When everybody does their part our organization will prosper and grow.
I am excited to announce that our program for February is going to be very unique and informative. Joe Maher from Mingo, IA has agreed to present a program on Creating Artificial Stone and Building Waterfalls and Streams. Joe's credentials are very impressive. He has some of the most realistic artificial stone in the business. Believe me I have checked most of them out and we have one of the best right here in central Iowa. I have some of Joe's stuff as well as some artificial stone from another supplier before I knew about Joe. Some of the other supplier's stone just does not have the natural stone look but Joe's ... very nice and very realistic. Joe also makes artificial trees, logs, stone signs and can even make a stone to fit a certain place. One of our members, Ada Mae Lewis, had Joe make a certain size stepping stone for her -- worked perfectly for her. He also installs water gardens and his installations are done with low maintenance in mind. He uses some of his artificial stone in them combined with natural stone to create some very realistic waterfalls and streams. We are indeed fortunate that Joe agreed to do his presentation for us. This is one not to miss.
The meeting will start promptly at 7:00 PM at the Alliant Facility (thank you Gary Craven for lining this up again). We will have some nice door prizes donated by Dave Metcalf of the Ark Pet Center. Remember your name badges -- a few quarters were collected at the last meeting but not everybody has their name badges yet so we can't be to rough on them -- yet??!!
Guess who has Lizzy? Life is just not fair especially when it comes to our beautiful frog. She had a great home at Robin Whetstone's pond for a couple of months and, since Robin had not been able to make a meeting, she asked if she could bring Lizzy over to my place so that I could bring her to the next meeting. I agreed only because I have a nice pond for her to reside next to. She has been here once before and I figured she would feel comfortable here. Well, she is too comfortable and because of that I forgot to bring her to the meeting. I think to be fair to Lizzy we need to have a limit to the amount of time she has to endure any one of us -- especially me!! I am only thinking of Lizzy and her well being. What do you ponderers think? Uh Oh!! -- it is a mistake asking you guys.
The Big Toad, Jamie