The West Chicago Garden Club

November is our Member Appreciation meeting.  Each year we have a Potluck meal and a special Silent Auction. 

For the dinner, the club provides the main dish, beverages and tableware.  Members bring a salad, side dish or dessert to share.  At the same time, we have our annual “Garden Dollar” Silent Auction.  Throughout the year,   members earn “Garden Dollars” by participating in the club.  Dollars can be earned by attending meetings and field trips, volunteering for club events (such as the Plant Sale or at Kruse House Garden), bringing a snack to a meeting, writing a newsletter article and so on.  Those “Garden Dollars” are then the only currency used for the Silent Auction in November.  The Auction items are donated by members, newsletter advertisers, local businesses or the from the club.

We do not have a meeting in December.  Mark your calendars for the first meeting of 2019 on January 24th.  Our speaker will be Carolyn Ulrich, Editor of Chicagoland Gardening Magazine

Our club year runs from January through December so it is about time to renew.  Or it would be a great time to join us!  We keep our dues low by funding our club with our Plant Sale, so Individual membership is only $15 and a Family membership is $25.  If you pay your dues before the November meeting, you will earn 75 “Garden Dollars” to use at the Silent Auction.  Membership Form

For the final report of 2018 on Kruse House, Keith Letsche, one of the Kruse House Crew, gives us this poetical reflection, written last year, on the end of the gardening season:

Cold Snap, November 8, 2017

From high atop their trellises,

the Black-eyed Susan vines have seen

the cold rays of a morning sun that

can no longer climb above the roof top,

and bow their heads in unconditional surrender to

the message of the night.

A lone woodpecker

taps out a knell on the silver maple

in a frantic quest for the lost creatures of summer.

Amid the carpeting leaves

from the weeping trees

only the silly Purple Tower,

feeling invincible in its cast-iron urn,

spreads its thick insensate leaves

in a still joyous expression of immortality.

©2018