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This organization can be really proud of its accomplishments in only a year and a few months. We have grown to over 200 members (this includes chapter membership), built and donated a VERY NICE water garden for Bethany Manor in Story City, have a first class web site and newsletter that is very informative and fun to read, are cosponsors of the very popular Central Iowa Tour of Water Gardens, and our monthly meetings are just downright fun to go to. We could not have charted a better future of our organization than what we have now. Needless to say I am very proud to be your Big Toad.
At our last, very successful meeting/plant exchange/white frog sale, it was easy to see why we are doing so well. It was lots of great volunteers doing their part so that we can be so successful. Most organizations have just a few that do a lot for their group but in our case we have a bunch of ponderers doing a lot. As the sale was wrapping up, there were a number of us that did not want to leave. I can imagine that Gary and Janet Craven had to kick a few people out so that they could lock up the building. It is fun -- isn't it?
As I indicated, the preliminary tally from the plant exchange/white frog sale was a whopping $1000 that was raised. About $250 of that is designated for Bethany Manor expenses. Last year we raised just over $400. It just keeps getting better and better. What is even more interesting is that we all were able to get quality plants at a very good price. I want to thank Kenn Outzen and Dean Koob for chairing this again -- they did a super job of organizing this!! I also want to thank the huge number of members that brought the plants and goodies. It doesn't take that much for each of us to bring just something.
The plans for the Water Garden Tour are coming along nicely. We are almost two to three weeks ahead of last year -- hooray. We should have the tickets ready by our next meeting -- it stacks up to be one of our best tours yet. This is our 7th Annual Tour and it just keeps getting better and bigger every year. Please volunteer to help out at a host garden -- Greg Knop has more on this in his report.
Our next meeting will be at Bethany Manor in Story City on Monday, June 10. Directions are in another section of this newsletter. This is an opportunity to see what all the hoopla and fanfare around this project is all about. Larry and Denice Reisetter have done a great job of organizing this project but they have also volunteered to build the wooden deck that overlooks the pond. Last week, Larry was about half done with this! We can be very impressed with the Reisetters dedication to this project.
The meeting will start at 7:00 PM at Bethany and then we will invade the Reisetter's own water garden that is only a few blocks away. Their garden was on the water garden tour about 4 or 5 years ago. Since then they have even improved on what they had -- if you can believe it. Bring your lawn chairs and we will have a very short meeting and I think a presentation on the use of Barley Straw in your pond to control algae. Yesterday, Dr. Joe Morris (he did a great presentation to us last year) gave us three bales of barley straw. One of his graduate students (Joe Boylan) met me to give the bales to us and I asked him if he could talk about his research on the stuff. Very smart guy and I think he will be able to do it -- he is taking a job in Pennsylvania in a month but we are hopeful he will still be around to talk to us.
We will be giving away (that's right -- giving away) the barley straw to members that night -- we have quite a bit but I'm not sure if we will have enough for everybody -- depends on the demand. We will have guidelines on how to use the stuff and what not to do.
Hope to see everybody there and have fun Ponding.
The Big Toad, Jamie