The Suffield Observer (https://thesuffieldobserver.com/category/organizations/page/132/)
Observer Managing Editor Ann Kannen and her daughter Kelly Manning prepared a Christmas tree for the Suffield Garden Club’s Christmas Tree Gala at the Senior Center, December 1-15 (see Page 35), but it spent a few days brightening the newspaper’s office. The pages on the wall in this mid-November photo are that month’s issue. (The office seldom looks this neat.)
The Suffield Garden Club will hold a monthly meeting on Monday, December 3, at 11:45 a.m. at the Second Baptist Church, Fellowship Hall. Coffee, tea, a light lunch and a short business meeting will be followed by a guest speaker at 1 p.m.
Our guest speaker, Susie Hanna of the Daisy Stone Studio in the Berkshires, studied floral design at the famous New York Botanical Gardens. Susie will demonstrate examples of holiday floral designs for the home, and her arrangements will be raffled at the end of the presentation. All are welcome to attend. There is a $10 guest fee.
In the Observer’s November issue, an editorial on Page 2 misstated the amount of land in Suffield that has been preserved from development. (The “237,000+ acres” stated would be almost ten times the area of the town.) In the Town administration’s presentation to the October 10 Town Meeting, the amount preserved by the Town was listed as 1,373 acres, about five percent of the town’s total area. The Observer reported that number on Page 8 of the same issue in an article about a decision at the October 19 meeting protecting 43 acres of farm property on Hill Street. Including property protected in some other manner, a little over half the land in Suffield is preserved from development.
The Suffield Garden Club announced the receipt of a grant from the Fred and Astrid Hanzalek Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. The good news was shared at the club’s November meeting held at the Suffield High School with students in the Agriscience Program. Our long-time member, Astrid Hanzalek, attended this event and was warmly thanked by all our members. The grant is for the special care of a few trees on Main Street, two of which are in front the King House. Included is treatment for the prevention of the Emerald Ash Borer.
Did you notice the “Christmas in Suffield” insert that went out in the November issue of The Suffield Observer? An insert is a great way for an organization to reach out to the 6,900 households in Suffield and West Suffield that receive The Observer. An insert is a special service that The Observer makes available only to nonprofits. Their charge is $200 to help cover the cost of having Turley Publications “insert” a brochure, newsletter or postcard into each copy of The Observer when it is printed. The main cost of doing an insert is printing the brochure.
In a three-year program started in September, the Suffield Garden Club is creating attractive gardens in two little no-ceiling spaces, or atriums, within Spaulding School and a third out by the playground. The work is being supported by a memorial donation from the family of Garden Club member Priscilla Wabrek, who died in 2015. So far, plantings have been set for a “Sea Scape” garden in the spot across the corridor from the cafeteria kitchen. A much larger spot in process is down the hall next to the farther lunch room. It will have succulents, grasses, and cacti.
On Saturday, September 29, twenty volunteers combed the Connecticut River bank, the Windsor Locks Canal trail and the surrounding area for litter and other unsightly rubbish. Half the group were members of the Suffield High School Interact club. Others were members of the Friends of the Windsor Locks Canal, a few Cub Scouts and several other volunteers. The crew worked for three hours. The project was coordinated by the Friends under the auspices of the Connecticut River Conservancy’s Source to Sea Clean-Up program. “We greatly appreciate all the folks who helped,” said Friends’ secretary, Karen Carlson.
Three Performances Only: Keep The Home Fires Burning by Charles E. Bright. An ensemble of 16 talented local thespians from Massachusetts and Connecticut are gathering to create a Merry Old-Fashioned Melodrama with Songs of the Season on December 7 and 8 at 8 pm, and December 9 at 2 p.m. at Mapleton Hall. This play is recommended for all ages! Keep The Home Fires Burning is The Suffield Players’ 2018 Holiday Benefit Challenge production, performed with scripts in hand as a staged reading with a minimum of rehearsals … and a maximum of creativity! All proceeds from this production go toward the upkeep and maintenance of Mapleton Hall, The Suffield Players’ theatre, built in 1883.
Greetings, friendly reader! May your Christmas season be filled with joy and light! The first recorded display of a decorated Christmas tree has been traced to Riga, Latvia, in 1510, and the custom proliferated in Germany in the 1600-1700’s, as Protestant elites bedecked their homes and guildhalls with pines and firs garnished with nuts, dates and apples. Christmas trees grew in popularity in Germany throughout the early 1800s, and German immigrants to the United States brought the yuletide tradition with them to their new homeland. In his book, The Battle for Christmas, Stephen Nissenbaum writes that, in spite of claims that Hessian soldiers fighting for the British during the Revolutionary War erected the first Christmas trees in America, it was the Pennsylvania German community, likely after 1820, who first brought the custom to the United States.
The Suffield Land Conservancy will be holding its annual meeting on November 8 at 7 p.m. at the Suffield Senior Center.