December Newsletter, Part One

By Julia Farwell-Clay | December 10, 2022

Holiday Workshop 2022

Over coffee this morning my husband broke the news to me: only 14 more days until we celebrate Christmas. It’s been a blur of a week just behind all of us in Garden Club, hasn’t it? Here at Sudbury Road, for one, it’s been a shambles of renovations and a new school for our youngest all competing with Garden Club events and spring planning, not to mention several professional deadlines coming due. I can only imagine how much you have on your plate, talented men and women that we all are. December is so very much in a normal year let alone one of recovery like this one. There’s a kind of elation and relief to making it through such gauntlets, and there’s still more to do! Like sit down and tell you all, especially those of you who live far away, what it is your Garden Club has been up to!

Town Wreaths

First of all, the Town Wreath Committee – organized and wrangled perennially by Pat Lescaleet Lashley – assembled our annual gifts to the town offices and local agencies and hung them in time for December 1st. Our new local paper, The Bridge, published the press release/letter to the editor I submitted on the club’s behalf, and the editors not only published it on the “Opinion” page, but also featured it at the top of the online Arts section with the beautiful photograph Pat had sent of the prototype! How exciting. Below, you can see one of the wreaths installed at the North Bridge Visitors’ Center, with the inset photo of the minuteman and the grapes that grace every wreath.

Kathleen D. Fahey of the Friends of the Minuteman National Park took time to write us a thank you note, and to send along the link to a feature on their website about the wreath we made for them. The image above is from their post, so I owe credit Kathleen for the photo.

Holiday Workshop

Last Monday, Anne Hrabchak and Anne Humphrey (affectionately known as “The Annes”) set up an exceptionally elegant and certainly fun version of our annual Holiday Workshop at the Emerson Umbrella, all the more enjoyable for the number of years it’s been since we last gathered for one (two, but who’s counting?).

The Annes assembled materials for a textural and tonal centerpiece which you can see at the top of this post. They introduced us to Agri-Wool, a new Oasis alternative that is fully compostable and can even be mixed into potting soil. Floral materials included weeping cedar and spruce branches, both silver dollar and seeded Eucalyptus, Thistle Eryngium, fresh Veronica, otherworldly silver Brunia, seasonal pine cones, and three beautiful Ecuadorian Roses that opened spectacularly over the week to come.

Anne Umphrey, Amanda von Weise

Andrea Meyer, Joan Campbell

Martie Fritz, Kathy Venne, Laurie O’Neill

Cans for Caring

Ellen Whitney writes:

We had a happy and productive time this morning making 35 boxwood trees for all the Meals on Wheels recipients in Concord. Present were: Jenny Borden, Kathy Venne, Mary Pope, Maryrose Sykes, Jen Lannan, Bean Nardi, Jane Coutre, Pam Nelson, Jane Ripley, Victoria Mulligan, Joan Campbell, Madelene Wilson, Lori Bratzler, Erika Rodriguez, Leslie Cheney and Barbara Freeland.

This project was started, we think, twelve years ago by Mary Ann Street, and it moved to our house ten year ago. Isn’t it fun to work with our hands and chat? The smell of the greens and the sound of everyones voices with a little holiday music underneath — and then all the cute trees that emerge – make it a special time for me and I think others. I wonder if that happy spirit is part of the reason they seem to be so heartily welcomed by Meals on Wheels.