A Month of Garden Club

April seemed to be all garden club, all the time. I started with the zone leader’ walkthrough for Spring Fever on Friday, the 5th, then 2 whole days of that event. Whew.

April 11th was the Windermere Garden Club’s monthly meeting, a field trip to Southern Hill Farm, a you-pick and wholesale blueberry farm. We were inspire to add blueberries to our garden.

Friday, April 12th, I was the speaker at Bloom and Grow’s monthly luncheon, touting the value of becoming a citizen scientist, specifically, downloading the iNaturalist app and participating in the City Nature Challenge 2024: Orange County. I was pleased with my talk, the first one I’ve given in person in 5 years. I still attend EarlyBird Toastmasters, but we’ve been on Zoom since early 2020. Before that, we’d moved to Key Biscayne for a year, and I didn’t drive up to Fort Lauderdale often.

On the 21st, we toured Jeanne’s almost-all native, completely grassless yard, a B&G social with the mandatory wine and lovely appetizers and desserts. I made mini chocolate cupcakes. Our wine donation was a Kirkland Zinfandel from Costco. Quite good, and a great price. A talk by retired nursery owner Vickie on propagation. I learned why my attempts at starting new plants from my sky blue cluster vine have failed. I will try again.

(At the March Windermere Garden Club, a different Vickie also spoke about propagation. Is this a spring thing? She showed us how to propagate many different ways, including checking seeds viability on a damp paper towel tucked into a covered crystal candy dish. She said it looks so much better than the plastic carry-out tray with that she had been using. Hmmm, I don’t have a covered candy dish, but I do have a rectangular lidded tray. I agree it’s not classy, but I germinated two types of eggplant seeds. Lots and lots of seed that were quite old, so I was surprised how viable they were. I potted up 3 of one kind and 4 of the other, composting the rest. Probably more plants than we need. I can pass on the extras, if they survive.)

April 23rd was the 25th anniversary of the Path of Life garden, Bloom and Grow’s first project. Next to Chapin Station on the West Orange Trail, it is a shady oasis with benches, fountain, and manicured plants. We could buy a commemorative engraved brick if we were so inclined. This time the champagne was alcohol-free, I guess city of Winter Garden rules, and the food was catered.

Thursday was the Spring Fever debriefing meeting. No food (!) but door prizes. I won a dish towel printed with this year’s SF design.

Last but not least, the 4th Friday in April was National Arbor Day, celebrated by hacking down Brazilian pepper, vines, and other bushes to uncover as many of the 1000 Trees for a 1000 Years cypress seedlings the club planted 4 years ago at Tucker Ranch. We managed to free 409 from their entombments before we quit. Most of the ones I uncovered had grown to 5-6’. Others that were in more open areas were already 8’ or so. They are on their own now. Next Arbor Day, we begin another project: 100 Trees for a 100 Years, oaks planted, mostly, in Historic East Winter Garden. 

After spend 2 hours stomping through the brush and wrestling with the weeds, we met back at the pavilion for tree trivia and prizes. I did a short recap of my talk and walked several members through using iNaturalist. The irony is that the challenge was only April 26-29, and I was out of town so I couldn’t participate.