WNFGA News

   Celebrating In Style!

Foreground L-R: Bamberlee Barnes, MaryJo McInerney, Kim Vance, Elly Wilson Background L-R: Mary Hemmer, Marilyn Karpicke, RaeAnn Krauss

  The Saginaw Branch of the WNF&GA had a tea on the 31st of August this year celebrating the 80th Anniversary of this Branch! The tea was held at the historical Castle Museum here in Saginaw. The Castle Museum was at one time Saginaw’s stately post office in downtown Saginaw. It is a beautiful building with its majestic turrets and marbled halls designed after a French Chateau. The castle was completed in 1898 and was saved twice through the years from demolition. Just visiting the castle is a pleasure in itself. Walking through the castle is so much of Saginaw’s past. You can almost imagine yourself standing there in the past at those places all but forgotten by the people of the here and now. It was such a fitting place to hold our anniversary tea.

     We were pleased to have two guests from outside our branch attend our tea, Carroll Thomson (the Michigan Division WNF&GA president) and Claudia Scioly, who gave us a very remarkable and interesting recount of her Frysinger Exchange to Iceland at a lunch we held last year. It was so nice to have guests from the Division!! I think the tea topped everyone’s expectations of an old-fashioned tea. Each table was decorated by a different member of our Branch. Some were very fancy while others reflected a simpler tea you might have at home with your best friend. Each table had its own individual centerpieces, table settings, and teapots, provided by the table hostess. Finger foods were provided by members and their own recipes for the most part. They were amazingly good! Everyone had their best dresses on, some of us with hats and gloves. What a site to see! I think the ladies who founded our Branch would have been so proud of us! 

    “There were three crows”

It is the time for me to crow…to crow first; about the marvelous work of the Tri-County Branch and their festive, accomplished 80th birthday party in Hartford, NY, home finally of our beloved Mrs. E. Frances King.  Audrey Ehrler and Betty Monahan waited in the warm sunshine at the local firehouse for us to arrive. Within the branch and mounted several articles and clippings from their 80 years of work that included photos of Henry Ford, awarding a Ford tractor to the winner of a horse pulling and plowing contest, and Mrs. King along with Mrs. Ford, helping with a flower show. They are, I believe, the only branch still mounting a flower show, annually. And behold, on a table was a collection of rocks, for our Ambler project. As you remember, each branch is asked to furnish a local rock to go into the rock garden or path, at the Headhouse / Ambler project. Members shared recollections of branch history.

After the meeting, presided over by Janie Thomas, we visited the home of Mrs. King on Route 40. The young couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Waring are struggling to keep it going but her gardens have all but disappeared. Mr. Waring greeted us most hospitably and gave us a rock for the Ambler project from the grounds, and a white rose bush from what remains on a slope. He promised that the bush would thrive and the fragrance divine. I’ll report to you if it survives the New England winter.

Crow number two; I’ve just returned from the “Bee-Fest” at the Ambler Branch a huge crowd had paid $35 each to attend the lecture, displays and lunch along the garden tours at Temple / Ambler, our official home. It was a most successful fun-raiser which had been painstakingly planned by Mrs. Jenny Rose Carey, our Vise-President, Linda Lowe, our liaison and development at Temple Ambler, Grace Chapman, staff there and all in partnership with the Montgomery County bee association. Part of this effort is to re-establish a bee keeping course there. Every Booth had a T-shirts with a bee-keeping themes, and all kinds of honey, tulip and iris bulbs, displays with live bees in conjunction with 4-H. Not only was this great financial, but a lasting gift to the community.

 
Crow number three; Mary Bertolini has come up with a final and favorable reckoning of our June, Natick meeting and is well advanced toward next June in the Niagara Falls area. Michigan, as usual has been doing its wonderful things. Now sorry I was to miss the International Tea, which was such a grand success. The up coming, the Greens Market, just past, a Pumpkin Festival. Soon you will be getting your magazine, filled with good information edited by our talented Kathy Beveridge, and with an orchard cover from Jean Ehlinger’s collection of Orchidae.

 And now, like those three crows, I shall flap my verbal wings, and fly away.
FAITH