Meetings

Our meetings are held once a month (January-May and September-November). We also have two dinners: the Annual Awards Dinner in June and the Christmas Dinner in December. Our gatherings are usually on the first or second Friday of each month except July and August when there is no get-together. For precise dates and other details consult our Annual Schedule page.

Our meetings are divided into several sections:

General Meeting: About thirty minutes of each meeting is devoted to the society's news, information-sharing, recruiting members to work on special activities and planning. All members may participate.

Mini Show: The Mini Show pages will tell you more about the mini show and show you photographs of mini show events. It is a small show judged by our African violet judges. It is intended to allow the members to show their plants at times of year other than our Annual Spring Show which takes place late in April each year. It also keeps our judges on their toes by providing practice at times other than the main show season. Participating members enter their plants at the beginning of the evening. The judges go to work during the General Meeting. The judges report the winners to the members after the General Meeting adjourns and provide justification for their decisions.

Refreshment Break: Members volunteer to bring baking and other snacks for the break which occurs after the judges have presented their decisions. Coffee and tea are also available. The duration of the break is about twenty minutes.

Presentation: After the break members return to their seats ready to listen to a fellow member or a guest speaker from outside to make the main presentation of the evening. These presentations are both entertaining and informative and cover all aspects of violet and gesneriad growing. Much sharing of information happens. A great deal of what each member learns about growing and showing these plants comes from what they learn in this part of the meeting. Sometimes there may be more than one presentation.

At this point the meeting is over and members assist with the clean-up, tidy-up before going home with more knowledge, more plants and a feeling that it was a useful evening.

Please visit other pages in this section of the web site for some more detailed information you may be looking for: Time & Place, Next Meeting, or the Annual Schedule of meetings.