The Annual New Members Tea was held recently at the welcoming home and gardens of Florence Katzenstein. Suggested attire included hats that many members wore with good grace and humor. Among others we saw a warbling bird hat, a flapper felt cloche from the 20’s, assorted garden sprigs on a jaunty straw fedora, and a vintage mother of the bride hat from the 60’s.
After an assortment of finger sandwiches and tea, Florence and Miriam Wexler answered our many questions and instructed us how to put our gardens to bed for the winter.
The party ended with Florence reading us an inspiring paragraph from Fine Gardening Magazine, July 1996 written by Amy Miller of Woodside, California.
” Gardening is like falling in love; it is a leap of faith. We have to trust in the beauty today, regardless of what may happen to it tomorrow–neglect, indifference, even malice, so we go on planting, trusting to the soil that dream of what our little seedling will look like in a year, in ten, in fifty. It is our nature; it is what we have to do.
And being gardeners also means that we leave a trail behind us. We leave our mark on every place we live. And when I remember this I know that it is a good thing that I am a gardener and that I move a lot. For my gardening spreads wide and far, a trail of rosemary, and morning glories sprouting up in people’s yards years after I’m gone. In a way, I ‘m leaving those little seeds I’ve forgotten I’ve planted–only someone else is seeing them bloom , tucked in a corner or pushing up between the cracks in the brick. I have to trust that someone, some gardener by deed or nature down the line, will see them and will smile at them and will go find a watering can.”
The Garden Club of Nyack 