There was a good turnout for our monthly meeting on Sept. 7th. Fifty members and a few visitors attended, probably due to the popularity of our speaker who had visited us several times before.
Jean Lewis started off in good form with not one but two anecdotes and welcomed us back after the summer and about the summer the least said the better.
The visit to Lord Carrington's garden had been enjoyed despite the rain and miraculously our own garden meeting in Audrey' lovely garden was a knockout with temperatures in the 80s.
Our various sales and the raffle at this event raised exactly £200 which will be donated to a local charity. Several suggestions were made for a suitable charity but the outcome will be decided at committee level.
A petition with the objective of saving local libraries ( the chosen WI resolution this year ) was passed round and signed by all. Certainly a worthy cause.
Our RBWM local planning group has requested that we send a member to a planning workshop to be held on 3rd Oct. Our representative will be Mary-Lou Kellaway and we are urged to send suggestions and opinions to her. Geneviève Usher , our very talented singer was a soloist at 'Glyndebourne in the Barn' at the Old Barn in Purley. The local NHS Foundation Trust has sent an SOS via our Berkshire WI Federation for help in supplying emergency packs of toiletries for patients admitted urgently to A&E who have been unable to pack a bag first.
The special interest groups gave their reports and there is good news for our singing hopefuls. The newly formed singing group will have their first monthly meeting on 22nd September.
Planning for our 20th birthday celebrations have been going on behind the scenes and a date has been set for Feb 15th next. More about that later.
Our speaker, Brian Davis, winner of a full set of RHS show medals including Chelsea Gold
is always received with great enthusiasm here. His talk was entitled ' Gardening with Perennials' and he showed us his own colourful slides with his thoughts on suitabity for different planting sites and soils. He also gave the lowdown on gardeners enemy no1, thso nasty slugs and snsils. Apparently it is the little slugs that come up from underground, tackling the roots before making inroads on those succulent shoots. Although always entertaining Mr Davis was possibly a bit more subdued than usual, probably because he was waiting for an operation on his ear which was giving him some pain.
Our next meeting is scheduled for 5th October and will be entitled ' Working with Ex-offenders.
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