Happy February! Brrrrrr….  ♬♪ Baby it’s cold outside ♫♬.
I hope you are managing to keep warm. It’s hard to imagine gardening right now with all the snow that’s piled up outside. For now all we can do is plan and look forward to warmer days to come. Anticipation of our spring gardens is one of the best things about gardening in Ontario.Our year has gotten off to a wonderful start. The January general meeting was well attended. Thank you so much to Judy Jeffery, Pauline Bradford, Marlene Link and Mary Fretz for kindly donating their time and expertise as our panel of garden experts. There were many questions thrown at them by our members and they graciously and humorously answered them all. We will definitely do this again next year.

Our guest speaker for this month’s general meeting is Paul Bolland of the Potting Shed in Dunnville. He is going to speak to us about water gardening and ponds. I am so looking forward to hearing what he has to share with us. I have a small fish pond in my back yard with 4 of the fish being 13 years old. I got them as feeder fish in 2002 and they travelled with us to town when we sold our farm 7 years ago. March’s guest speaker is none other than Lester Fretz. This is his 4^th visit and he’ll be talking to us about “Profitable Plant Propagation”.

We have firmed up a few more speakers for this year. Your president, Debbie Thomas, has been working very hard organizing and planning the meetings for the year. We will have copies of our 2015 agendas at this meeting with updated speakers and activities on it…please make sure you grab a copy.

We’re going to be attending the Lions’ Home & Garden show this year…yay! We took last year off but we’re ready to do it again. We’ll need volunteers to man the booth during both days so be prepared to sign up for a shift or two. It’s a great way to meet people and recruit new members. The Lions’ Home & Garden show takes place April 17 & 18^th at the Dunnville Memorial Arena.

We won’t be voting on the general meeting minutes any more unless a motion is made. Kim will continue to email them out to you and we’ll post them on the bulletin board at the meeting. If you have any questions about the minutes or the treasurer’s reports please feel free to approach us at the meeting or send an email.

Garden tip of the month:  Certain seeds can be started as early as February. Slow growing annuals such as marigolds, impatiens, pansies, snapdragons, and petunias can be started any time now. There’s a myriad of gardening shows on television these days—it’s always a great way to get inspired for the upcoming growing season.

See you at the meeting!