Christmas Social/The Christmas Garden, talk December's meeting

For our December meeting this year we did our Christmas social slightly differently. Our falling   attendance numbers at meetings and the uncertainty of the weather at that time of year mean that we decided not to have an entertainer, but instead we had one of our favoured speakers to give us a talk on ‘The Christmas Garden’. This was followed by an opportunity for members to get together and mix and socialise while enjoying a bring and share buffet. Our thanks to Veronica Perry for suggesting the idea of the shared buffet and to everyone who contributed by bringing a dish or two.

The talk was an enjoyable tour of both indoor and outdoor plants that may grow and flower at Christmas, but also those that bloom at other times of the year but strangely have names suggesting Christmas. So we have the Christmas Rose (it’s a hellebore), Christmas box (Sarcococca), Christmas cactus (Indoor plant) and Poinsettia which do bloom at Christmas time. But then we have other plants like the fuschia ‘Hollys Beauty’ and ‘Santa Claus’, Tulip ‘Christmas Dream’ that as we all know don’t flower at Christmas at all. One of the most interesting facts that I learned was that in their natural habitat of Mexico and Central America Poinsettia’s can grow into 12 foot/small trees. In the UK they are sold as house plants that most people find difficult to care for after Christmas.

The bring and share buffet was fantastic. We had a range of dishes, many home made including Barbara Humm’s home made mince pies, Pasta salad, Barbecue chicken wings, special friend rice and Cheese Puffs (The recipe can be found below and is very east to make. They can be made in advance and frozen and cooked straight from the freezer).

We take on board that it would have been good to have some music accompaniment to the socialising and we will bear this in mind for next year.

We hope all our members had a good and healthy Christmas and New Year.