Category: News from National

Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, rocked in the

cradle of the western breeze….. William Cowper (1731-1800)

Once more, Kathy Beveridge has charmed us with The Magazine.

In it are vital pages for the upcoming conference-meeting, June 11,12,13 in Massachusetts. Please send your information to Aileen LaBret. Registration is gratifying and you will find plenty of dear acquaintances from other meetings and times, and plenty of new folks eager to know you. I can hardly wait to greet you, to show you the New England you may not know and to exchange ideas, among all of us.

You members are ahead of the curve, as the media is to say. Not only are you bringing to light the plight of the bee, but even CNBC is talking on their financial shows about the “green shoots”…about local buying and local growing! Current phrases and jargon are taking on agricultural terms..a sure sign of importance of what we are doing.

I’ve just come back from a marvelous visit to the Ohio Division, hosted so graciously by Nancy Naugel and her branches. Julie Seifker became the new President and Nancy’s daughter, the new Vice President, Barbara Hochstettler and many others rejoiced when a contribution of $1500 from the division went to the Ambler Headhouse-headquarters project, with Julie Seifker giving an additional check of very generous proportions from the sale of topsoil, from her farm. How grateful I am, and I know that chairman Hazel Herring is very pleased. We still have a way to go, but remember, it is a one-time request. Once it’s done it’s done.

Next week, I will be going to Michigan and I am looking forward to being with so many friends there. In my travels on behalf of the other organizations,  I have seldom met with the courtesy, thoroughness and thoughtful preparation as given to me by the Woman National Farm and Garden Association. You are saluted by me.

Everywhere around me, apple trees, lilacs, dogwood and silver bells

move gently in the wind. Now, I wonder, did Spring cradle them there

as William Cowper suggests?

Young mothers, after a long winter, happily think “Spring Rocks”.

 “Daffodils…..Ten thousand saw I at a glance…..” William Wordsworth.

 The duck heist took place last week amid the daffodils on the Common and had the Bostonians saddened and shaking their Puritan heads in disbelief.  Over the weekend someone sawed off one of the bronze “Make Way for Ducklings” ducks and made off with it.  This theft in the Public Gardens has diminished Boston’s pleasure of its golden daffodils, Blue Squills and budded tulips.  By the time you arrive for the June meeting, we hope all will be right again.

 Wonderful letters, stories, recipes and reports are arriving: one of our scholarship students went to South America for research and encountered a rare speckled bear, deep in the forest. Another found that insects will not eat invasive plants which are crowding native plants. This poses a threat to our food supply for which insects are a vital link. Insects “eat locally” just as we are being urged to do.

 Jenny Rose Carey is conducting several different arboretum programs at our Ambler base. Also from Ambler comes news from a former staff member, Val Libbey, who is writing a book on Jane Haines, founder of the Ambler College. Val will attend our June meeting.

 A newsletter from the Clarkson Michigan branch has many useful reports on its plans and activities.  All of these Newsletters I have received point to the vitality and important community service provided by our members. How proud I am to be part of this ever-growing, ever-giving organization.

 One of the William Wordsworth lines that follows the quote above from “Daffodils” is “…my heart with pleasure fills.” That is how I feel about WNF & GA.
Faith
 
P.S. Please visit the News from Michigan blog for the Troy Branch program on Bees.

Spring rides no horses down the hill,

But comes on foot, a goose – girl still

And all the loveliest things there be

Comes simply so, it seems to me.

                                                            Edna St. Vincent Millay

And with what joy we turn to our gardens and our seed catalogs and our local farms and nurseries. My mother Vassar ‘1916 became a fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay who was in the class above her.  The Goose-Girl remained a favorite, and  each Spring as we planned our garden, she would quote these lines.  So to you I quote them, and start by congratulating the Rochester Branch for its lively newsletters which are full of activities and opportunities geared to its members. Their Pre –K Planting Project is such an important one.  We all must teach our younger people the value of gardening…value that is Green and of money saving.  Do you remember who taught you to plant seeds?  Do you remember who showed you how to hoe, how to tell a weed from a watermelon seedling?  I am sure that memory is a dear, cherished part of your childhood store of “growing –up” and a subconscious pointer to WNF&G membership.

            Also in the Rochester Branch newsletter, under special projects there is a Beekeeping Student, Brian Oeterson, Musson Elementary School.  The minute I saw that I talked to Temple Ambler about their having a course on beekeeping.  There was such a course back in the time of Jane Haines.

            Another point about the Rochester Branch from which some of us can learn.  It is very clear about membership. It sends a form listing dues, categories for committees and social events among the opportunities it offers.  That is a most helpful sheet, especially for new members.

            So far we have received a great deal of help and interest in our handkerchief project to augment our income.  Kathy Beveridge will have a beautiful bee design I ‘m hoping, in the forthcoming magazine by an artist from the Keystone Branch and the Mayflower Branch has submitted designs featuring a dogwood bloom and another with bees and honeycomb edges.  There is more to do before these materialize but the prospect is pleasing and Hazel Herring shall be given the first one “hot off the press” so to speak for her tireless work on the Ambler WNF&G Home and Head house fund.

Barbara Hochstettler, who has envisioned and given us so much important form and focus, has an article in the upcoming new magazine about our focus endeavors.  We must not loose sight of method and meaning. Kathy Beveridge continues to make our magazine beautifully readable and sumptuously colorful in its covers.  How lucky we are to have her expertise.

            And  Mary Bertolini’s expertise.  She has contracts well in hand and being a consummate businesswoman, she is still making adjustments in our favor.  Boston should be a memorable “learning vacation” from intellectual luncheons (Harvard, and author Allyson Hayward) whacky and possibly wet Duck Tours filled with historical facts and stories, to a Down East clam bake in a tent on my front lawn, put on by a well-known Maine caterer.

So…You’ll ride no horses down the hill

But come by bus…and I’ll be your goose-girl still.

Faith