Notes from June 24th Steering Committee Meeting

On June 24th, the Steering Committee met to discuss status.  Attendees were Sue Carlson, Cindy Coy, Vera Jones, Lynn Luessen, Marti Szczur, Pat Thompson, and Jill Toop

We meet at the garden, which is really coming together thanks to the recent efforts of the volunteer gardeners. Let’s acknowledge those who have put in back breaking labor with clearing, weeding, rock prying/moving, mulching, planting, and watering. Kudos to Sue Carlson, Cindy and John Coy, Vera Jones, Betty Kane, Dave Litchfield, Lynn Luessen, Georgia Orphan, Bob Scott, Nancy Schwiesow, Marti and Joe Szczur, and Pat Thompson.

Summary of topics discussed included -

·      Treasurer’s Report – Cindy reported that we have received contribution dollars from 20 different mountain residents, and after paying off start-up expenses (trees, river stone, pine straw mulch), we still have some left in the kitty for completion of Phase 1 and initial maintenance.

·      Garden Planting – All the initial planting for Phase 1 has been completed.  Selection and arranging delivery of path stones from Schwiesows is a to-do activity.

·      Maintenance - Weeding of the stilt grass (ugh!) in the garden border areas will require a serious effort and more mulch is needed for the pathways and open area. The watering crew is doing a fabulous job of keeping the plants happy.  

·      Signage – Marti will investigate options and costs of buying an entry rock to be engraved. Cindy has a flat surface rock we may want to use and have engraved. After discussion about labeling, the most liked label was

Reflection Garden

a place of peace and remembrance

Homework assignment was for all to ponder on this labeling and propose other candidate wording.  We can vote if there is not a consensus. We decided to order 3 small signs with “Shh … please” for placing around garden.  Marti will check out cost of these.

·      Website Status – Thanks to Janelle Carroll, the Reflection Garden webpage will be a link off the Mountain Women Website.  After Marti updates the most recent list of contributors, Janelle will ‘turn on’ the site. 

·      Memory stones – Marti brought two sizes of stones for  ‘show ‘n tell.’ The larger size was decided to be too small for people memory stones.  Pat Thompson is going to King Custom Engravers with a sample rock size from our river stone island to check out what is available and the cost. Cost of a memory rock is being proposed at $100 to cover not only the cost of the rock, but include donation toward memory rock ordering/pickup and garden maintenance.

·      Interest in pet memory stones has been expressed.  It was decided to postpone discuss and implementation of a pet memory area until after the people part is completed.  The idea will be to have a different area in the garden for small engraved pet memory stones.