Garden club to discuss importance of bees on Sept. 8

LACONIA — While recent headlines read, "Obama launches efforts to save honey bees" and "New Harvard Study Proves Why The Bees Are All Disappearing," naturalist Michelle Mensinger has been fully aware of endangered species and the importance of being a bee.

Mensinger, the president of the New Hampshire Federation of Garden Clubs, will speak to the Opechee Garden Club on Monday, Sept. 8, at 1 p.m. at the Gilford Community Church on Potter Hill Road.

Mensinger has had years in important roles as a naturalist and gardener, author and lecturer. She takes the role of bees so seriously that she sometimes appears in a bee costume when she lectures on "Mason Bees." The industrious mason bee is solitary, docile and hard to spot. It likes to nest in narrow holes or tubular cavities which it constructs of cells of sand and other particles glued together with saliva until March when it leaves to mate and start its important role pollinating.

Her message, "Bee aware, bee concerned and bee a friend to pollinators," encourages a positive awareness of ways to assist improving the environment or to raise this important pollinator, the mason bee. Providing man-made tubular nests may be one of the ways.

Hospitality Chairs Barb Sargent and Ginger Jones, along with committee members Eleanor Brouillard, Debbie Cotton, Cindy Beebe, Jo Connelly, Sally Doten, Edie Adams, Judith Reilly, Bunny Clark, and Sharon Tyler will provide refreshments and table décor.

Opechee Garden Club will join its sister clubs in District II on Wednesday, Sept. 17, to host the NH Federation's 81st Fall Conference on "Growing for Pollinators" at D.S. Cole Grower's Greenhouses, one of the area's largest, at 251 North Village Road in Loudon for a day of fun, learning and light luncheon. Registration forms are due Sept. 8.

The annual "Pajama Program," started by a teacher concerned about her students and spread across the country, strives to provide all students with warm sleepwear and a book of their own. OGC would appreciate receiving warm pajamas for infant to teens, along with a new gardening or nature-related book. Club members can bring these items to either meeting. Donations will be sorted by members of New Hampton Junior Garden Club and are distributed to New Hampshire students.

The Opechee Garden Club, a member of the New Hampshire Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc. and the National Garden Club, Inc., meets at 1 p.m. on the first Monday of the month (unless otherwise noted) at the Gilford Community Church, Potter Hill Road, Gilford.

New members are welcomed. Please write P.O. Box 6025, Laconia, NH 03247, call 527-0493, email opecheegardenclub2012@gmail.com or visit www.opecheegardenclub.com