Society Meeting – February 27

Despite the bad weather, a good number of members and guests were on hand for the February meeting.

Colleen Green welcomed our new members – inviting them to stand and be recognized – and also reminded guests that they should sign the Guest Book.

Colleen advised everyone that sales of vendor spaces for the County Garden Show were going really well (kudos to Anne Reeves and her team), noting that a vendor list would be published and regularly updated on the web site in advance of the show.  In other show news, buying an advance ticket for Paul Zammit’s presentation would get you into the show for free ($2 saving), and the Green Trust Music Festival (which follows the show at 7pm) tickets were available from Green Trust members for only $5.

Walter McGee, our featured speaker was introduced.  His topic was ‘A history of vegetables – from asparagus to zucchini’ and you knew it was going to be interesting after just one glance at his tie!

Walter gave an informative and entertaining talk on vegetables, interspersed with historical and social commentary on many of his chosen vegetables. Did you know that potatoes were undesirable when first introduced into France? Fencing them in with a few gaps in the fencing prompted some of the starving peasants to ‘liberate’ the veggies and eat them … thus popularising an important food source!

Walter’s talk was accompanied by many slides of mouth-wateringly good-looking vegetables from asparagus to zucchini and dozens in between, and generated lots of questions and comments from the audience.

The mini-show topic was ‘an arrangement of any number of your favourite vegetables’. While February isn’t exactly prime vegetable season, the topic proved no obstacle for our contest entrants, all of whom produced great exhibits. Not counting Walter’s spectacular vegetable tie, there were four entries in the mini-show.

Mini-show entries were judged by the members at large. 1st place went to Kim Katanik-Kuris’ spectacular vegetable flowers [upper-left], 2nd place to Colleen Green [upper-right], and 3rd place to Gwen Reilly. Click the images to see larger versions.

Photo-credit: Bert Jenkins