Thu Feb 09 2012
by Eric Marotta, Editor
The other night, I looked over the annual disaster that is my garden.
In varying stages of cultivation, I've got five kinds of peppers, four kinds of tomatoes, eggplant, okra, squash, beets, cucumbers and assorted herbs -- including a hedge of basil 3 feet tall. There are also weeds everywhere -- more in some beds than others.
It happens every summer. I sweat and dig, hoe and rake, pinch and pull, and by mid-August, some of my beds are clean, productive and tidy, while others are a mess, with huge ragweed specimens, or burdock, or mustard and grass taking over.
I like gardening. I'm just not all that good at it.
My credentials thus established, I'd like to tell my story about how the Nordonia Hills Garden Club was formed.
It was 10 years ago, when the News Leader was still located on Broadway Avenue in Bedford and people regularly stopped by. Sometimes they tried to sell toys. One guy used to drop by to wash the windows. Most of the time they came to have something put in the paper.
Sagamore Hills resident Rosemary Zamecnik came up to place a press release in the paper. Rosemary told me she had belonged to a garden club in another community and said she felt Nordonia Hills could use one, too.
Zamecnik reserved a room at the Nordonia Hills Branch Library and the announcement she put in the newspaper invited anyone interested in joining the new group to its first meeting.
She says about 15 showed up.
Now with around 80 members, according to Club President Alida Moonen, the club is really making a mark in the community.
Its plant sale earlier this year raised nearly $4,000, and the club went on to plant gardens at the Northfield Village Fire Department.
In doing so, it recruited support from an impressive 41 businesses, as well as the village itself, which presented the club with a proclamation recognizing its outstanding efforts.
Rosemary, as well as the other club founders and volunteers, should be proud of what they've accomplished.
* * *
A year-or-so after the garden club formed, I attended one of its meetings at the Nordonia Hills Branch Library.
I was the guest speaker, and my subject was the newspaper and how to get information into it -- especially photos of beautiful flower beds, water gardens and other such verdant pleasures.
For many years, club member Betty Stricharczuk was a regular at monthly Coffee with the Editor meetings, in which everyone in the community is invited to drop by and talk about the newspaper.
Betty, a resident of Macedonia, always had something from the club to contribute.
She recently told me she "just can't fit everything in" -- and one of her duties is helping her brother and sister help take care of their 101-year-old father, who still lives alone and cuts the grass at his home in Euclid.
She's still active with the club -- she helped with the village garden project -- but transferred her PR duties to Sagamore Hills residents Bob and Carmen Park.
And they're doing a fine job.
Rosemary told me a few months ago she's also cast off her duties as an officer. She said she's concentrating on her grandchildren.
And so it goes, as people's lives change, so do priorities as other pressing duties take precedence.
Fortunately, with the garden club, at least, there are plenty who are willing to pitch in and help.
I hope all of their gardens are doing better than mine!
For more information about the garden club, see www.nordoniahillsgardenclub.com.
E-mail: emarotta@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3171
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