Our meeting begins at 9:15 am. First will be our business meeting and then Cindy Bench from Bench Greenhouses will speak to us on “New Ornamental Selections for the Plant Sale”. Bench Greenhouses is again supplying ornamental herbs for our sale on Mother’s Day weekend. Cindy spoke on “Ornamentals” at the Bedford Herb Group’s meeting in March and brought beautiful plants for us to see and admire. We certainly enjoyed having her as our speaker.
This will also be your opportunity to sign up to work at the sale in May.

The March meeting will be one of our evening meetings. It begins at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, March 16 in the Conference Center at the Toledo Botanical Garden. The speaker will be Gini Behrendt, owner of Flying Rhino Coffee and Chocolates. Her topic is “Chocolates and Coffee”. Chocolate has many times been called “the other herb”. All meetings are open to the public. Come and enjoy.

Four new books have been added to our library cart since the beginning of this year:
Fragrant Designs, Brooklyn Botanic’s Garden All-Regions Guide Eight gardens are included with plant lists and garden designs for each
Herbal Crafts, a book containing more than 60 projects with ingredient lists and directions for making each
Wicked Plants, a book containing stories about more than two hundred plants that can cause illnesses or even death. Some stories are historically significant, others are present day, and some are in between. You will find this book fascinating.
Herbal Cookery, compiled by members of the St Louis Herb Society This book contains eight menus of various types and recipes for the foods listed in each menu. You will find different uses for many herbs in this book.
We have also received a donation of two boxes of Ann Lacksonen’s books for the library that were donated by her husband, Jim. We certainly appreciate this wonderful donation.
All members may check out these books. We encourage you to do so.

All members of MVHS are invited to attend the garden planning meeting in the Stables Room of the Conference Center at the Toledo Botanical Garden at 9:15 am on Tuesday, March 2. This is a way for all members to become familiar with the activities involved in planning and maintaining our herb garden throughout the growing season. Garden custodians are reminded to bring their lists of plants to be ordered.

Are you interested in hearing about antique gardens? Scott Kunst will be our February speaker. He is the owner of Old House Gardens, a nationally known catalouge company. In this catalogue you will find an assortment of heirloom bulbs, corms and tubers. He also has had many articles published in horticulture periodicals and has served as advisor for many historical reconstructions of well known American gardens. He will be participating in the 2010 Garden Symposium to be held in Williamsburg, VA in April. In our library you will find “Flowers and Herbs of Early America”, a book about the gardens of Williamsburg.
All our meetings are open to the public. We invite you to come to the conference center at the Toledo Botanical Garden to hear Scott Kunst speak on Wednesday, February 17. Our social hour begins at 9:15 am.

We wish to thank everyone who helped to make Heralding the Holidays so successful for the Maumee Valley Herb Society. Thank you to those who made herbal vinegars, mustards, jams, jellies, soups, salsas, and baked goods. Also those who donated items to the Silent Auction. We made more money this year from the Silent Auction than in previous years. We also did very well with the herbal blends, teas, craft items, bath and body products, wreaths and dried arrangements, actually with everything we had to sell. Thank you to everyone who helped in any way, to those who helped get ready for heralding at our workshops, who worked during heralding, and all members who helped in any other way. We certainly appreciate all that you do for the Maumee Valley Herb Society and for the Toledo Botanical Garden. We also want to thank everyone who came to Heralding and purchased our products. Please mark the first weekend of December on your calendar for 2010. See you then.

Both of these meetings are workshops for Heralding the Holidays. This annual event is always the first weekend of December. This years dates and times are: Friday, December 4 from 5-9 pm, Saturday, December 5 from 10 am-5pm, and Sunday, December 6 from Noon to 5pm. Groups meeting at the Toledo Botanical Garden participate in this event. Some of these are the Toledo Artists Club, The Potters, the Glass Blowers, and the Rock Hounds.
During our workshops we decorate, label, and price our wares. Among our herbal items for sale are jams, jellies, mustards and vinegars, herbs, herbal blends and teas, pot pourri, wreaths, and craft items. We also have a silent auction and a bake sale. The money we earn is used in supporting the summer intern program at TBG, to purchase plants for the herb garden, and to help in other ways.
If you are looking for gifts that are a bit unusual for your self and for others, come and join us. You won’t be disappoionted. You will find us in the Conference Center at the Toledo Botanical Garden.

Our September meeting at the Wildwood Preserve Metropark in Toledo, Ohio, was both interesting and helpful to us. Our speaker, Stacy Walters, a Registered Knesiotherapist, demonstrated how body mechanics and various exercises can prevent aches and pains during our gardening sessions. Members of the Bedford Herb Group joined us at our meeting. We can now practice what we learned at this meeting and reap the benefits of her knowledge.

We were fortunate to have Jim McDonald, Herbalist, Wildcrafter and Medicine Maker as our speaker for this meeting. He talked about “Weeding for Wellness” and told us about the many beneficial uses that weeds have. He is a very interesting speaker, one you can listen to for several hours without realizing how much time has passed. We hope to have him speak to us again.