Page 12

H/10/1945 -1-

The Cedars -
October 1945

There is a farewell feeling to the last
Horticultural meeting of the season. According to
schedule we meet again in April, but that seems a long
way off, with a winter's work and pleasures
intervening. On October the second, 1945, the
weather was rainy and wintry. Inside at The Cedars
everything was cozy and lovely. Lucheon came
first, and the "covered dishes" were such to feed
the soul as well as the body.

The meeting opened with the reading of the
minutes. Then Lofton Wesley read an article which
described the various types of fall pruning best
adapted to bring out the natural individuality of
shrub plants.

Another subject he read about, the compost pile,
produced much animated discussion between the old
school which considered the compost pile a weed-spreader,
and so favored chemical fertilizer, and the
new school which approves a compost heap formed of
layers of organic plant trimmings and other organic
waste material such as manure or kitchen waste, plus
lime, all moistened and turned until the whole
has become a crumbly, decomposed product similar to
manure in use.

Forethought notes contained the proven methods
of storing certain vegetables and of taking care of
the garden in autumn. Corn and tomatoes brought in
on the stalk and vine will continue to ripen. Some
of our members have done this. Elsa Thomas also
shared with us the romantic and dramatic story of
the Dutch flowering bulbs. During the war, bulbs
supplied sugar and starch to a hungry peoople, who
at the same time managed to develop a hundred new
varieties of bulbs for our enjoyment now.

The meteorologist had recently experienced a
hurricane in North Carolina. The tail of the storm
caused three inches of rain to fall in three hours
in Maryland. The average maxiumum temperature in
September was 78°. With the fickleness of fall it
fell from 90° one afternoon to 46° the next morning.

Prolonged rainy spells were extra-detrimental
to most of our gardens, but Sharon and The Highlands