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DSSEW Member Profile: |
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My husband Jack and I found our way to DSSEW and daylilies in the way gardeners who network with other gardeners do. About five years ago, a friend who had a daylily pest problem found the e-mail address for Harold Steen, who then recruited her as a club member. She then told me about the club and Jack and I joined. While my friend has since become inactive, we are still going strong and having fun. I have served on the Board and presently co-chair the Guest Plant Committee. Jack and I are also members of the Southeast Wisconsin Hosta Society and were quite active in that group from its inception until joining the Daylily Society. We have may plants of both daylilies and hostas and enjoy seeing them in our garden every year, as well as sharing them with family and friends. We were living in the City of Cedarburg, my home town, until about five years ago when Jack talked me in to moving to the country (the Town of Cedarburg). While I love having the space to grow just about anything I want, and the privacy is wonderful, I do miss sidewalks and neighbors. I look forward to moving back into the City of Cedarburg when Jack retires and know I will have just as much fun gardening an a small lot. But, for now, we enjoy the couple of acres we have as woods, the native areas, and the sun and shade gardens. Our two dogs and three cats really love it here, too. Since I am a bit of a collector, we have many perennials in addition to large numbers of hostas, daylilies and iris. We also have a vegetable garden and a fence line with grapes, asparagus, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb. When I retired about ten years ago, I thought it would be fun to take a gardening class at MATC. I grew up in the city, but still had gardening in my blood. My dad is an avid gardener and taught me a lot over the years since he lives on a wooded lot only two miles away and gardened in our yard for years. Anyway, I got hooked on school and wound up getting a degree in horticulture. One of the best things to come of that experience was the network of friends and acquaintances I found in fellow students and teachers. After getting my degree, I worked the landscape field for three years and, once the novelty wore off, decided spending time in my own yard satisfied my love of the land. I work a couple of mornings a week in the spring for a local plant nursery getting plants ready for wholesale and retail sales. This is a great benefit since I am working in the warm greenhouses getting my hands dirty in March, April and May, while everyone else is anxiously waiting for Spring to come to Wisconsin. Jack grew up on a farm in the Fond du Lac area and has always loved the outdoors. He works at Kohl’s, plays softball, fishes in Canada, and hunts deer in northern Wisconsin. I volunteer at our church, the local theater, Cats International, and the Blood Center. We have a Harley motorcycle and each week try to take one weekend day to go somewhere interesting. But, as is the case with most of us, we find it difficult to fit everything in. Being a collector, it is hard to list all of my favorite plants. Here are some of them: Alpine plants, succulents, dwarf Aruncus, Cimicifuga, Maiden Hair fern, Hostas: ‘Guacomole’, ‘Geisha’, ‘Little Sun Spot’ and, of course, daylilies: ‘Cat Dancer’, ‘Scratch My Itch’, ‘Jambalaya’, and ‘Turn My Way’. |
