Summer Plans

Hi everyone,

Well, it seems the summer has snuck up on us! I hope everyone's end of the school year went well. We had a blast at our end-of-year lake party (if you weren't able to make it - contact me, I have some stuff for you more than likely).

Summer Plans
I wanted to see what people wanted to do over the summer with 4-H. I was thinking of doing 2-3 field trips possibly related to butterfly gardening. We'll start meeting regularly again in September, but we'll probably have a parents meeting in late August to kick off the 4-H year.

Library Butterfly Garden
We're also going to be working on collecting plants for our Tower Road library garden and we'll have at least one work/service day to install the plants. I'm working with the library to make sure we don't miss anything. I've attached the plant list. I work with a landscape designer and she came up with a list of plants and a design that would work for our library garden.

Parent Volunteer Opportunities
I have some specific parent volunteer opportunities that I could really use some help with. Please let me know if you're interested. We really need some help to make this coming year awesome!

Field Trip Organizer - contact trip site, relay information to club, set times and dates
--Field Trip #1 Organizer - Great Butterfly House in Earleton - possible trip dates end of June or early July
--Field Trip #2 Organizer - Butterfly Rainforest - possible trip dates in late July or early August
--Field Trip #3 Organizer - Payne's Prairie - sometime this fall

Butterfly Garden Helpers
--Library Plant Collector - take the lead on collecting the plants for the garden either by contacting nurseries or assigning plants/nurseries to families
--Arbor Builders - we've got a couple of arbors in the garden plan and we'll need some handy people to help show the kids how to build them - they can be out of lumber, bamboo, or a variety of other materials

Fall Helpers
--Fall Snack Coordinator - I'd like to get a parent to coordinate snacks for the fall
--Cloverbud Helper - we're going to have a LOT of Cloverbuds this upcoming year (5-7 year olds) and some tag alongs (younger than 5). I really need some help with planning activities and collecting meeting items for them.
--Livestock Judging Coach - last spring, we had some interest from our older members in forming a livestock judging team. If they're still interested, we'll need to get a couple of coaches to help out with training them.
--Project Leaders - help with a specific project activity (ex. vegetable gardening), helping kids carry out activities, identifying guest speakers - if you're interested in a specific project area, let me know and I can tell you more about it. This past year, we mainly focused on gardening and swine. We're willing to expand that if we have the project leaders to help with it. Project leaders can also have sub-meetings to really get into content with interested members. For example, some of the members have been interested in crocheting - we might meet every couple months just with the crocheters to go over new techniques and projects.

We just finished a great year and we're really looking forward to the upcoming year. Parents - please let me know if you're interested in serving as a volunteer. Volunteers are the heart of 4-H and the program wouldn't happen without them. We really want to make this coming year a great year for everyone, but we'll need your help to do that. If you'd like to talk more about what the different volunteer positions, call me and I can give you more info.

Butterfly Garden Sketch

I went out to the library today to look at our site. It looks great! Here is the outline of our location. We're going to have a design competition with our members, so print this off and fill it in with the plants on our plant list for the garden. I look forward to seeing them!

We're going to need help!

Stars & Stripes is getting ready to put in a butterfly garden at the Tower Road library. We hope to attract Zebra long wings, black swallowtails, monarchs, sulfurs, gulf fritillary, Easter Tiger swallowtail, and Giant swallowtail.

We're going to need to work on getting some donations. If you'd like to help with collecting donations, let me know. I can use all the help I can get.

Here's a list of materials:
--landscape timbers for edging
--soaker hoses or drip irrigation
--mulch
--lumber to build an arbor

We also are working on getting a bunch of plants donated. If you have any of these in your yard or know someone that might be able to donate plants, please let us know.

Nectar Plants
--Fire bush
--Milkweed
--Gaillardia
--Coreopsis
--Mist Flower
--Porterweed
--Tropical Sage
--Snow Square Stem
--Fire Spike
--Pentas
--Mexican Sunflowers
--Zinnias

Host Plants
--Passion vine
--Parsely
--Milkweed
--Cassia
--Wild Cherry Tree
--Wild Lime or Citrus Tree

I got some free zinnias already although we could probably use some more. I also have coreopsis seed and have dug up some passion flower from my yard. The passion flower is not in the best of shape, so it may not make it.

I'm going to the library this week to take pictures of our site. I'll send out measurements and then any interested members can do a garden design. The club will vote on which design we like and that will be the one that goes into the library!

Butterfly Gardening!

Ms. Wendy Wilbur, our Alachua County horticulture agent, was the guest speaker at our last meeting. She's going to help us with our butterfly garden at the Tower Road library.

Designing our garden.






Butterflies have tongues that they drink with. Here are 4-Hers are butterflies and flowers.

Last meeting of the 2007-2008 year!

Dear parents,

Our last 4-H meeting of the year is this Thursday! But, we still have a few more activities after that. We'll be meeting at the Eubanks' house at 5:30. Here's what we're planning on talking/doing on Thursday.

We'll have a recap of the youth fair and the great job our members did at it. We'll talk about possible fair projects for next year.

Wendy Wilbur, Alachua County horticulture agent, will be talking to the club about community gardens. She's going to help us organize our long-term service project - a butterfly garden at Tower Road library! We haven't scheduled a date for putting the garden in yet, but it will most likely be a Saturday afternoon in May.

We'll also be talking about officer positions for next year and answer any questions the members might have.

We'll also be having an end-of-year party at the end of May, so we'll be talking more about that. We'll be holding officer elections then, so encourage your kids to be thinking about what office they want to hold.

And, we'll be having a parents' meeting May 15 to discuss what activities we want to do over the summer and what we'd like to do next year.

Last meeting, the kids were asked to identify a Floridian butterfly, their host plant, and their larval plant. Remind your kids to look for those. Here's a good resource for kids on butterflies - http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu:8080/wings/.

Please let me know if you can come and remember to bring your t-shirt money if you'd like a t-shirt!
Thanks.
Emily