Silver Linings

No question, COVID is the WORST! With 2020 in our rear-view, here are some ideas from resourceful Zone IV club members who have found a silver-lining and are moving forward in small and big ways. They’re learning new skills, adding to their homes and lives: bird-watching, creating backyard monarch way stations and wildlife habitats, and planning vegetable patches. In confinement, they’re expanding their minds: Rumson GC started a Zoom Conservation Book Club reading topics ranging from native plants to forest-bathing.

Many clubs have tackled virtual photography and flower shows. Internet has allowed members to join club activities from where ever they are. In August, while in Canada, Penny Collins of GC of Englewood, using her iPhone, entered a virtual Flower Show with a bouquet of unusual daylilies picked from her Nova Scotia garden. In a strange way, while isolated, we are more connected through WiFi.

Many club members are game for new challenges: Take Emily Caspersen, GC of Somerset Hills, who submitted a photo of a leaf to Focus for the first time. She won not only First Place, but also Best in Show in the GCA Focus Contest 2020. Darby Scott, GC of Morristown, who hated to cook, has begun channeling her inner Julia Childs. She says: “My entire life I’ve avoided cooking” and now she’s relishing concocting new, complicated recipes of pot roast and chicken pot pie which she freezes or farms out to family. GC of Trenton’s Suzanne Brookes is trying her hand at writing a cookbook to breathe new life into some of her great-grandmother’s heirloom recipes.

GC of Trenton is one of Zone IV’s most creative clubs. Deborah Agnew, President of GC Trenton, was inspired by a 2019 talk given by nature photographer, Jim Amon, to get out, enjoy hikes and seek out native plants as well as note the devastation done by invasive species. She now takes weekly hikes throughout the Sourlands region with her husband and dog. Dawn Schrader McClatchy has ventured into a new branch of botanical arts creating hauntingly beautiful preserved framed moss arrangements for friends and clients. Georgette Sturam, by growing her garden library, was inspired to renew her The Garden Conservancy membership. “Reading about Frank Cabot in ‘Heroes of Horticulture’ sparked memories of a visit to his Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, NY and now I’m enjoying their virtual programming.

Here’s to a great 2021 and may the New Year be full of silver linings!