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H/6/1965-1-
June 1-1965 - In our 102nd Year
At "Great Ease" with Pete & Betty Ligon

As we gathered at "Great Ease" under warm sunny skies, most
of us were very reluctant to stop wandering over the beautiful
grounds and gardens, just to fulfill our sense of taste, when our
other 4 senses were being given such a treat outdoors. It seemed
as though most of the men centered attention on the well-kept lawns,
the putting green and a thriving vegetable garden, while the ladies
enjoyed myriads of beautiful roses, as well as the perennial flower
bed in a brand new green house.

Those who ventured toward the begetable garden to admire the
Ligon's experiment in potatoes, were rewarded also by seeing very
clean strawberry beds well stocked with extra large berries, still
left from the previous gathering for supper. There were asparagus,
currants, raspberries, cabbage, tomatoes and others too numerous
to mention. The two mulched potato patches already had excellent
vines about a foot high and should be well on their way to a bumper
crop. With Betty's patch on one sde and Pete's on the other enclosing
the rest of the smaller vegetables, it reminded one of the
Ligon's gracious hospitality surrounding their guests on occasions such as this.

It took several musical peals from Betty's dinner going to encourage
our Society to leave the outside beauty and come to feast
on a wide variety of goodies. Even there we lingered and it wasn't
until 8:00 pm that our President, Ulric Hutton, was able to call
the meeting to order. He welcomed our guests, Miss Esther Murray,
and the former members, Sylvia and Dick Woodward. The absentees
were Jack Bentley, Rust and Liz Canby, Vernon and Caroline Hussman,
Claire Hutton, Mary Moore Miller, Francis and Grace Thomas, and
John Weske.

The Secretary read the minutes of the previous meeting, together
with the Society's reply to Chicken Kricker's resignation.

Mary Reading Miller, our reader, gave us a real "treat" from
a "treaties" on "Herbs: How to Grow, Treat and Use Them", by Ethelind
Fearon. The excerpts from this book dealt with historical, botanical
and analytical facts about dozens of little known herbs, as well as
their practical uses in every day cooking. The author evaluates her
book on three general assumptions; namely, (1) that you can cook;
(2) that befoe you can cook anything, you must first grow it, and
(3) when it has been grown in your garden, can it be eaten?

The author started her book with a quotation from Kipling,
Which is repeated as follows:
"Anything green which grew out of the mould
Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old".
So when we leave out the obvious outlandish herbage such as tropical
leaves, roots, medical remedies, ancient syrups, cosmetics, elegant
poisons, as well as those we are accustomed to using here locally, it
still leaves us an imposing list such as: aniseed, bergamot, borage,
corn salad, costmary, elecampane, fennel, juniper, lavender, marigold,
nasturtium, pimpernel, purslane, rampion, rocket, rue, salad-burnet, savory, sorrel and watercress.