speaker | Life and Day to Day things by a Pond Lover

The Austin Pond Society held their October Meeting at the usual place, Zilker Botanical Gardens Clubhouse on the third Monday of the month starting at 6:30 pm. Following the usual custom, the members were treated to a meal of Baked Potato with all of the fixin’s followed by deserts brought in by the membership. The meal, courtesy of Stephen and Cory was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Following the meal around 7:00 pm, the Speaker for the evening, Taylor Miller of Taylormade Waterscapes, ably assisted by his wife, Sara Lynn, gave us a very interesting talk about building ponds. He also discussed a pond that he worked on for a wealthy Koi enthusiast that was a miracle of modern technology in its construction. For most of us, this was the extreme in pond building and something that we would only read about in books and magazines. Taylor spoke for an hour to an audience of around thirty five members who all appeared to enjoy his talk.

Following Taylor, Jeannie Ferrier, our President stepped up to the mike to conduct the business part of the meeting which consisted of a brief summary by the current Board Members, several of whom are stepping down at the end of the year. Not on the video due to technical problems is the announcement by Francis, the Webmaster of a new page that had just been installed on the website that enables members to post used pond and garden related equipment to sell, swap or just plain give away. This page is named “The Marketplace”. The page is up and running and requires that a form be filled out and submitted giving a description of the articles that need to be posted. Following this announcement, we arrived at the main business of the evening, the election of new Board Members and the re-election of those continuing to stay.

The following members have kindly volunteered their time as new Board Members or in the case of Nancy Reinert, a change of position. Publicity -Ellen Filtness , Membership – Rodney Lewis , Parliamentarian -Nancy Reinert (Switching from Treasurer), Treasurer – David Collier .
The remaining Board members who are continuing in their current roles, are as follows,
Jeannie Ferrier – President, Glen Hubenthal – Historian, Julienne Smith – Secretary, Ted Paone – Pond Tour Chairman, Barb Lenhardt – Publicity/Special Events, Betty Blackson – Librarian, Francis Allcorn – Webmaster.

The election of officers completed the business for the evening except for the all important drawing for the door prizes which as usual was closely followed with the appropriate boos and hisses when a board member won a prize. With everyone joining in, the place was quickly cleaned up and made shipshape for the next meeting of whoever that may be.

The Austin Pond Society’s next meeting, which will also be the last for the year, will be on November 21st at the usual time. There will not be a speaker as the entire meeting will be our Thanksgiving/Christmas Party with lots of food, music and dancing. Don’t forget to wear your ugly Christmas sweater so that you can participate in the “UGLY SWEATER CONTEST”. This year, we are asked to bring an unwrapped toy for the Brown Santa Program which in turn will be given to needy children at Christmas. Hope to see you there. Oh yes, don’t forget to bring your food offering to the meeting in the form of salads, cookies, pastries and my favorite, apple or mince pie.

The first video is of Taylor Miller.