Volume XIX, Issue 10, January, 2011

Herb Guild Thymes

The Charlotte Herb Guild Newsletter

Next meeting:

Tuesday, Jan. 11 2011

7:15PM

Business Meeting

If you are interested in a Board position,

please contact Dana DeBellis.

Garden Council House

1820 East Seventh Street

Charlotte, NC 28204

Please consider volunteering to be a hostess for the January Business Meeting.  We need at least 2 hostesses.

 _______________________

Charlotte Herb Guild

Minutes November 2010

President Dana DeBellis thanked Mary Beth Collins, Mary Ann Nagel, and Lyn Lytle for the wonderful refreshments.

The October Minutes were approved.

Kelly Davis from the Colony Gardeners announced to the group their event, a SouthPark area Christmas Home Tour,  December 11^th, from 10:00AM-3:00 PM.

President DeBellis announced  the Southern Spring Show, March 2011.  The Charlotte Council of Gardens anticipates participation from member organizations for the Spring Show displays.

The final clean up for the year at the Hezekiah Alexander Garden is forthcoming.  The date is TBA.

Our Hospitality committee needs volunteers for the January 11^th Business Meeting. Contact Netta Turnbull to volunteer with refreshments.

Results from a poll for the Asheville Field trip: The group voted for lunch at the Grove Park Inn on the Sunset Terrace with a lighter, more vegetarian fare.  The date chosen is the Saturday after Mother’s Day, May 14.  The expected itinerary is to leave Charlotte early, by coach, and arrive at the NC Botanical gardens for a morning tour.  Lunch will be at the Grove Park Inn followed by an afternoon visit to the NC Farmer’s market.  Expect to be home by late afternoon or early evening.

Remember to be on the lookout for teapots for the State Garden Club convention.  We will be selling the centerpieces so the teapots cannot be loaned.

Minutes recorded by Lara S. Barnett

Highlights from the November program:  The origins of the Herb Guild, presented by Cathy Tolman and Virginia Frazier

• Names were gathered from 3 years of herbal sales and events – a mailing to 80 prospects drew 25 interested people for the first meeting in Feb., 1990 at the Sharon Branch library. No internet at that time – how easy it would be now!
• Virginia Frazier missed that first meeting in February because she was doing her first Southern Spring Show as an herb grower, but was there at the March meeting. 
• Charter members that first year included Virginia, Brenda Dills (Brenda and I both brought our young children in lieu of child care; both are now young adults), Ann Baldwin, Jane Ireton. Jan Sundberg and Dixie Spivey soon followed. 
• After we moved out of library, space was limited by fire regulations at Wing Haven – Sandie Fenton remembers feeling lucky that she slipped in, in 1993.  The search for a new space took us to the Betty Little House, which prompted the Guild to become a member club of the Charlotte Council of Garden Clubs.  The kitchen and dining room set-up allowed the creative and generous cooks in the Guild to blossom.    

Cathy brought programs from one of the early auctions, an edible flowers program by Dixie Spivey, one of the first tea parties hosted by our Board, and recipes from a herbal hors d’oeuvres program that Dabney Sanders prepared in 1992 (the recipes follow), an early tea party where Jane Ireton set up a charming child-size tea table.

Programs seemed to grow in scope and scale as the Guild grew, but the excitement about herbs in the early 1990s was unmatched – we were breaking ground and learning about things that were as old as the hills, but couldn’t be found anywhere else.  Everything was new and fun, and every new member to the Guild brought a new talent or perspective.  Someone asked about the first cookbook – it was printed in 1997.   Dixie Spivey was the editor.