New officers elected, amended bylaws posted to website

Last night's dinner was fabulous! Our guest enjoyed meeting and speaking to you all. Thanks to the Program committee for organizing that annual event and to all who participated!

All ballots were collected or turned in and our new slate of officers has been officially elected to begin their duties in January! Congratulations to our new Board: Kate Jarrett-President, Judy Howd-Vice President, Nanci Shipley and Jo Irish, Co-secretaries, Eric Topinka, Treasurer, and Travis Jordan, Immediate Past President. A special thanks to the nominating committee who worked diligently to make sure we had an outstanding slate. As we set out on a new year, I hope that each and every one of our members will look for ways to support our board and the mission of UGA Cooperative Extension.

After our October business meeting, Travis Jordan, got the bylaws all revised, but it took me a little time to get them posted to the website. They are there now, so if you need to reference them, check here: http://www.ugaextension.com/paulding/anr/mastergardener.html. Look down for the list of useful links and click on "Paulding County Master Gardener Bylaws".

Recently I've gotten a lot of requests about the rain barrel instructions from Cobb County. They can be found here:
http://water.cobbcountyga.gov/files/rain_barrel.pdf

They include a contact for the barrels with their phone and address. I'm wondering if our group should think about doing a blitz of education and fundraising early next year around rain barrels. We could do some workshops teaching folks to build their own and also take pre-orders and build rainbarrels for people.

Time flies!

It's almost the end of November and I haven't blogged in a while. So, I'll try to catch you up a bit!

Don't forget that the Master Gardener Harvest Dinner is this Thursday evening at 6pm at the Paulding County Senior/Community Center. Hopefully you've already RSVP'd and you're planning to join us for a presentation from Susan Meyers of Monarchs Across Georgia.

Lots has been happening around the Extension office. Several programs have gone on this month along with the State Agriculture Agents' meeting and my end of year reporting! Which reminds me of your end of year reporting...Your summary of hours and yearly activities along with your Memorandum of Agreement for 2008 are due on December 1st! That is this Saturday, so if you haven't turned those in, you can bring them to me Thursday evening, or mail them so that they arrive in the office.

December will be a busy month for everyone, but I hope you'll check out Extension Programs that are coming up, including the NW Commercial Fruit Update that will be held in Cartersville on December 11th: http://www.ugaextension.com/paulding/documents/FruitDec11.pdf
RSVP to the Bartow (770-387-5142)office by December 4th to attend and they'll provide you with free lunch at the program! The program is intended for folks in commercial production, but those interested in fruit production are welcome.

Holly Thornton has posted this month's disease report from the UGA Extension Plant Pathology Lab. Disease of the Month is Downy Mildew on Rose. You can take a look at it here:
http://plantpath.caes.uga.edu/extension/documents/NOVEMBER2007.pdf

I look forward to seeing you soon!
MC

Demonstration gardens look great

Thursday, November 15th is the Matthews School day this month for Master Gardeners. Anyone who wants to help students plant bulbs is welcome to meet me at the Extension office at 9:30am. so that we can arrive at Matthews around 9:45. The young ones do the hard work- we just help them do it properly. If you'd like to help, bring trowels, bulb planters, and gloves (be sure to label your tools with your name). We'll need to help the students by cutting chicken wire to go over the bulbs once they are planted.

This week some 4-Her's and a parent volunteer planted the rain garden and Dallas Ann Dennis made sure the mulch went in in it and in bare spots of the rest of the landscaped area.

Earlier in the week Betty Drafall and Kate Jarrett harvested a load of eggplant and they continue to bear (at least until we see a really cold snap). Kate also came back and cleaned out the corn stalks and the spent beans. There are tomatoes on some of the late planted tomato plants now. Not ripe, but large enough to pick green if needed. The fall garden crops are coming along nicely. And all this in the absence of much water (OK, so we had some much needed rain last week, but that's it).

On Monday the exemptions that were allowed within the outdoor waterban went away, so I've been trying to get that word out to green industry and to help them look for alternatives for their businesses.

More people are picking up copies of the instructions for making rain barrels and evaluating our working model out front.

Next week there's loads of activity too! Check the Paulding County Extension website for news and events:

http://www.ugaextension.com/paulding/news.html

I hope I'll see you sometime soon!

MC