Our May Luncheon Closes out the Season

We celebrated the close of our season with our annual pot luck buffet at Sarah Bailey's NeedMore Ranch.  The weather was idyllic and the food excellent! 

Many thanks to our members who renewed and newbies who joined the club.  Your prompt dues payment makes the membership process SO MUCH EASIER now that the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs (FFGC) has put the member roster online!  We had a drawing for an appreciation gift to those who got their dues in that day.  Carolyn won the gift of a bluebird themed shopping bag, tea towels, journal, and accessory boxes.  Very appropriately won because she was the first member to submit her dues.  Enjoy, Carolyn!

May is our last meeting until September, when our 2015-16 season begins.  In the meantime, our Monarch Committee is sponsoring our first Bartram Trail Circle NABA Butterfly Count on 6/2 at Alpine Groves Park.  Over the summer you can find us tending to the Freedom Butterfly Garden and enjoying the wildlife it supports.  Consider stopping by to see the butterflies and other pollinators enjoying a sanctuary garden just for them!  If you take a photo, or have a question, please send it along to switzerlandgc@gmail.com  With your permission, we'll feature your picture (with you as the photographer) on this website.   You can also subscribe to our site.  Then you'll get the latest updates on what our local gardeners and our wildlife in the area are up to!
 

The first meeting is at the Bartram Trail Library from 10-noon on September 10 (2nd Thursday of the calendar around July to see what we have lined up.  And, of course you can email switzerlandgc@gmail.com for more details.
month).  We traditionally do not have a guest speaker for the first meeting, but you never know.  Our Executive Committee is gathering in early June to decide the schedule of events, speakers, and activities, so stay tuned!

Happy Summer!

A Bloomin' Busy April

April just flew by with a bloomin' bouquet of activities and awards.  Our boondoggle meeting at Alpine Groves was crowned with perfect weather for business and pleasure.  Our nominating committee requested the club vote for officers for the next two years, and we accepted their recommendations, voting Claire Fioriti president, Linda Mosier vice-president, Mickey Fraser secretary, and Dianne Battle treasurer.  In preparation for the Bartram Bash, Mickey brought in some grape vine cuttings and Beverly (pictured here) and Dianne busied themselves trimming lengths of it and making wreaths for our birds-nest soup wreath making activity.  "Lucky Claire" won the bluebird windchime that was raffled off; after winning the orchid in February and the wind chime in April, Claire has also become the "Lucky" member of the garden club.  Better luck next year, Louise!

Our garden was already humming with the wings of pollinators, including this weathered monarch, sunning itself (perhaps laying eggs) on a milkweed.  The condition of its wings suggested it has over-wintered here (the season being milder-than-average) or had encountered some disturbance (probably human, given that monarch's "poisonous" nature keeps it off the wildlife menu).  
 

While Dianne was taking these photos, she had the opportunity to talk with a mother and son about the monarchs and the gulf fritillary's special affection for the passionflower vine that was leafing out.                                                                                                



                                   











Our plans for the Bartram Birthday Bash and District IV Member meeting were well met in fact.  We did ourselves proud at the Happy Birthday Bash for William Bartram and were very proud of Beverly Fleming for winning the Fellow Man and Earth Woman 2015 award from the Stetson Kennedy Foundation.  Our officers attended the District IV meeting in Callahan and received on behalf of the club the FFGC Newsletter/Magazine/Publication award and the FFGC Digital Photography Award - Butterflies for Dianne Battle's photos of butterflies in her garden and in the club's Freedom Butterfly Garden; see April Awards for Our Garden Club. 

FFGC has been on top of several environmental issues, including the Florida Water and Land Legacy Amendment, which passed last November.  It has issued two Position Statements:  Ban Hydraulic Fracturing in Florida and Reduce Marine Plastic Pollution.  They are summarized on our Taking a Position for the Environment posting in the Resources section, and can be accessed by clicking on the document links here and in the right-column News on the home page, www.switzerlandgc.org.

Our next meeting on May 14 will be the members' Spring Potluck at Sarah Bailey's Needmore Ranch.  We'll share not only the news and happenings with you, but some of our garden club members' recipes that'll make you want to become a member.  And why not join us?  Membership drive begins on 5/18 and is only $20.  Contact SwitzerlandGC@gmail.com for more information, or see our Let's Stay in Touch Link.

Eat Your Yard Jax and the Monarch Committee Takes Wing

EatYourYardJax was our guest presenter for the March meeting.  We were treated to a shopping spree featuring unusual edibles for us to "grow our own" and an array of succulents and cacti. Our guest speaker was a student at UNF studying nutrition, and she told us about some of the more exotic edibles on the cart.

We also learned how EatYourYardJax is advancing the green building movement.  They planted the rooftop garden at breakinggroundgreenroof this past spring.  The garden is also used by local Jacksonville schools as a teaching garden.  EatYourYardJax has a history of community involvement, winning a HandsOnEarth award from HandsOnJacksonville in 2013.

EatYourYardJax took over the business from Fruit Cove Cactus and Foliage, hence the unusual product combination.  We had a full house of shoppers, including guests.  Nice to meet you, Nancy, Pat, Jerrel, and Amy, and to see you back, Kelly!

Other Items

Our committees reported in.  Arlene from the Junior Gardening Committee related her experiences with Julington Creek Elementary School the prior week.   And we had happy news that the county Board of Commissioners approved historic status for Alpine Groves Park.  Congratulations to the Friends and many supporters of that initiative!   

Click for the Garden Slideshow

Inspirational
 
To welcome a new beginning in our butterfly garden, Dianne showed her slideshow of the flora and fauna in the Freedom Butterfly Garden spring/summer 2014 (please turn on your speakers for the 7-minute show).

April with the Garden Club 

Come on down next Thursday 4/9, for our annual Boondoggle and the Bartram Bash.  The Garden Club Boondoggle is our annual "al fresco" April meeting to plan for the Bartram Bash.  Weather permitting we'll be at the Butterfly Garden in Alpine Groves Park.  No speakers are planned for the meeting, but feel free to drop by.  Find out where we'll be and what we'll be doing at the Boondoggle and the Bash!


Our Monarch Committee and Other Winged Wonders

This author got a chance to tag along with the Butterfly Monitoring group at GTMNERR on 3/24.   The group does a monthly count which it submits to the Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network.  They also do annual butterfly counts and submit them to the North American Butterfly Association Butterfly Counts.   Despite the inhospitable weather, the team I was with managed to identify 11 butterflies:  5 buckeyes, 5 phaon crescents and 1 ceranus blue.  The woodland team had better luck, finding 44 butterflies.  Thanks to Janet Koehler and the volunteers at the GTMNERR Butterfly Monitoring project.

During the first meeting of our garden club's monarch committee, we  discussed doing something similiar to GTMNERR's annual count for NABA in our area.  So the count at GTMNERR was my first lesson in butterfly observing.  The skill will serve our garden club well as the monarch committee begins its work. 

Read about the first monarch committee meeting on 3/18.  Remember, you heard it here!

Romancing the Orchid

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Master Gardener, Mary Ann Bell paid us a visit escorted by her beautiful orchids.  It was a real treat and a great way to take our minds off the predicted freezing temperatures on Valentine's Eve.  Orchid lovers are passionate about their flowers, and even the most casual aficionado can't help but fall under their spell in the presence of these beguiling flowers.  Although February is not a particularly auspicious time for blooming orchids, Mary Ann did bring us a lovely sampling of different species and summarized their horticultural requirements.  She has no greenhouse so hers is truly a labor of love.  It almost seemed that we could grow them ourselves, with a little help from her group, the St. Augustine Orchid Club.

Her first topic was how the orchid got its name.  Before we explain that, let's examine the Greek myth that explains the presence of orchids.  The Greek myth tells the story of a young man, Orchis, the son of a nymph and a satyr who came upon a festival of Dionysus (Bacchus) in the forest.  He drank too much, and attempted to rape a priestess of Dionysus.   For his insult, he was torn apart by the Bacchanalians.  His father prayed for him to be restored, but the gods instead changed him into a flower.  Mary Ann did not share this story, but she did cite the word's etymology, coming from the Greek name for an organ of male anatomy that motivated Orchis' rash actions.   The bulbous roots of the orchid bear resemblance to this organ, hence the word was used to indicate the class of plants whose flowers seem irresistibly seductive.

Before you get lost in the flower show, don't forget to check out the Recent and Upcoming Events paragraph at the bottom of this posting.  We made an exploration into the natural world of birds and bones (making fossils at JCE).  And we learned about the environment and ways to protect it in the District IV's first ESS Course, The Living Earth.  On March 7th Master Gardeners Dianne Battle (GCoS member) and Mary Ann Bell (shown above) will be presenting a day of horticultural topics at the IFAS Spring Blitz.  And come on down for our March 12th meeting featuring a presentation on succulents, and an evening presentation from our sister organization, the Bartram Scenic & Historic Highway, on Archeology Along the St. Johns River.