The Austin Pond Society held their monthly meeting for July this past Monday, July 18 at the usual meeting place, Zilker Botanical Gardens in Austin. As is usual, the thirty five members were treated to a light meal of Hot Dogs with all of the fixin’s followed by several kinds of appetizing desserts. The half hour from 6:30 pm to 7:00 pm is always used as a social half hour giving the members time to both enjoy the meal and the company.
Following the meal, at 7:00 pm, Barb Lenhardt who is in charge of Programs and Special Events for the Society, introduced our speaker for the evening, Mark Klym and his topic would be “Texas Amphibian Watch”. He spoke mainly about the frogs and toads that inhabit our ponds and how beneficial they are in keeping the pond life adjusted. He was a very entertaining speaker and following his presentation, he answered many questions from the floor. Below is a video of him speaking.
APS Mark Klym July 2016 from Francis Allcorn on Vimeo.
Following Mark, Jeannie, our President brought the meeting to order to discuss the next upcoming meeting and passed along general information to us all. We are attempting to break new ground with a table sale of anything pond or garden related that any member may bring to sell for the cost of “renting” a $10:00 table. This does not include Plants as we have already had that at the Plant Swap Meeting. It will be interesting to see how many members will try to sell off their unwanted pond and garden equipment.
The main piece of business was to have an open discussion on the duties that each Board Member performs as we have a couple who would like to or in fact are stepping down. Each of us was asked to give a brief description of what we do as theoretically, all of the positions are up for grabs. For those that do want to continue, their jobs are pretty secure as historically, there has never been a mad rush of people from the floor wanting to volunteer their time.
APS July Meeting – Business 2016 from Francis Allcorn on Vimeo.
To close out the evening, there was a door prize drawing which always evolves a lot of laughs and cries of “cheater” and “favoritism”, not to mention “rigged” and my favorite “draw again”. The meeting ended at 8:30 pm.
