In Honor of National Volunteer Week, please accept the following:
I am writing to extend a huge thank you to all of our volunteers who make the programs and events of our NPSOT Austin Chapter possible. How much do we appreciate everything you have accomplished? “Let me count the ways:”
Native Plant Sales: at our most recent Spring Plant Sale, thank you to Michelle Sikes who was the keeper of the “To Do” list and making sure everything was checked off and running smoothly, Alice Mabry and Jackie Okeefe who purchased a large portion of our plants, several NPSOT members who personally grew plants to be sold, Susan Brotman who organized over 25 volunteers who prepped the sale location, mowed the lawn, picked up sticks and branches, moved and set up tables, acted as cashiers, wrote out sale tickets, took photos, and packed everything up at the end of the day to move to our new location. A big thank you to Heartwood Community Gardens for donating their space for several of our plant sales. Our plant sales are powered solely by volunteers. Because of you we sold over 1,000 plants which will spread throughout the Austin area to bring native habitat back to our landscapes. We look forward to our Fall plant sale at our new location in partnership with the Native Prairie Association of Texas on their Dowell Ranch Property, south of Austin.
NLCP Classes (Native Landscape Certification Program): we have two classes planned each year, in Spring and Fall. We had 40 participants and 10 volunteers at each class. Thanks to Jane Tillman who organizes and teaches classes, Jackie OKeefe and Kathy Trizna who also teach, and at 6-8 NPSOT Austin members who lead the plant walks, all are volunteers. We have been working to create a Level 2 class, in addition to the Level 1 and Gardening for Birds, and I want to thank Kathryn Teich for organizing the plant list for that new class during our planning meetings. This year, we are honored to be asked to offer our NLCP classes to the City of Austin Watershed Reclamation crew. Jane is organizing this class for October.
NICE Partner Program (Natives Improve Communities and Environments): I want to thank Kathryn Teich for agreeing to take my place as the Austin NICE Committee leader so I could move on to the role of President. Kathryn and Michelle Sikes were major contributors in developing this new program for our chapter. We are proud to have recruited two NICE Partners in our first year and hosted two on-site events at each nursery, Barton Springs and Tillery. Barton Springs liked our on-site event, to promote their native plants, so much that they asked for a two-day event this year. In its first year, the Austin NICE Partner Program was also part of a team that has been formed to present a proposal to HEB to become a NICE Partner, to promote native plants in their BackYard Texas program. Some NPSOT Chapters don’t even have a plant nursery that sells native plants, so HEB’s participation in the NICE Program could have an exponential effect, since this store is so widespread in Texas.
NPSOT Native Plant Database: I would like to thank Stephanie Long and Jon Leinhard who helped me to develop a plant database for the Austin website and then expanded to the State NPSOT Native Plant Database. And, thank you to Kathryn Teich who worked with me to create and upload plant information sheets to our Austin website. And each chapter that provided their NLCP plant lists to upload to the State Native Plant Database. And Karl and Jan Hanz who worked together to scan slides to provide photos of each plant in the database. And Katie Stykes who uploaded the scanned slides to the plant database. And thanks to the family of Paul Montgomery for donating his plant slides to NPSOT to add to our photo collection. These will be added to a NPSOT photo library that we creating from all of the photos that have been donated from our members.
Field Trips: Thanks to Jane Tillman, Jackie Okeefe and Kathy Trizna who lead 3 field trips last year. We are hoping to hold even more field trips this year, with Jackie Okeefe as our Field Trip Leader. Given the last few years of COVID, and the need to isolate, outdoor activities have been a key outlet for safe social activities. Jane added her expertise in bird identification and Jackie and Kathy added their wealth of plant knowledge. We look forward to an upcoming plant walk at Dowell Ranch and a field trip to Shield Ranch.
Monthly Meeting Speakers: Thanks to Alice Marcom for her long stint of finding speakers for our monthly meetings. And thanks to Michelle Sikes and Susan Brotman for taking on the role this year. You have all brought many months of interesting topics to our chapter meetings. It shows what a draw these speakers are for our meetings when you see 40 people at the beginning of the meeting and 18 people remain when it comes to the business part of the meeting after the speaker. We are working to make the business part more appealing. These monthly topics help us meet the NPSOT goals of providing education about the natural world and the importance of native plants. And we can’t forget our Secretary, John Middleton, who has the unglamorous job of taking notes at all our meetings and storing them safely. Most people don’t know you are there, but your work is definitely much appreciated.
Advocacy: A special shout out to Clarence Reed who never fails to answer the call to set up our chapter display board and talk to hundreds of people, at various events, about the importance of planting native plants in our landscapes. He especially focuses on the fact that planting native plants serves our need for water conservation. He has promoted NPSOT goals at the State Legislative level, at local MUDs, and at local earth day events, to list just a few.
Brodie Wild: Thanks to Jerry Mayfield for his years of service helping to manage this special piece of watershed property in partnership with the City of Austin and the Native Prairie Association of Texas. And thanks to Tom Heger who took the lead from Jerry last year and Cathy Nordstrom for doing a recent review of the property with the City of Austin property manager.
Communications Team: Last, but not least, because the communications team supports all of the above programs. Following our annual calendar of events and programs, they meet once a month to get our newsletter out and from that they create announcements in Facebook and posts on our website. They keep our membership engaged and up to date. When I began as President-Elect, our newsletter had come to a stop, and we had lost our webmaster, who had moved to the State NPSOT webmaster position. We were so blessed when, after some begging at a monthly meeting, Adeliza Tiffany and Sandra Ries offered to join forces to act as our communications team. We especially appreciate both of you for being so organized, so reliable and for your fresh perspective that helped us to better communicate with the younger generation. It was almost a year before Craig Dalton heard our pleas for a webmaster and took the reins so I could focus more on the role of President. He is already making a big contribution to building our new website, giving us a much more modern and attractive look. In this group I am so pleased to see a younger generation taking leadership in our Chapter. It worries us older folk that there will be no one to carry on our work and our communication team gives us hope for the future of Chapter and the future of the Austin area natural environments.
Officers: And even more last, but not least, thank you to our NPSOT Austin Chapter Officers who work tirelessly to grease the wheels, so to speak, to keep all of the above moving along as smoothly as possible. By officers, I mean our President, President-Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary. You are literally agreeing to fill positions that most people don’t want to do. These positions just look too big to most people who have families and jobs and other interests. I promise that we are working to make these jobs less intimidating. We need to recognize that this is not a full-time job and remember to have fun! Nature has always been my refuge, let’s not make it a chore.
Disclaimer: There is not enough space here to thank each person individually. I apologize for any oversites. Please know you are all making a difference no matter how small your role may seem. Planting native plants in your landscape is a labor of love and of great foresight. The rapidly declining numbers of animal and insect species depend on our actions to help them survive. And, in turn, our survival depends on pollinators and other animals and insects to keep our own food system going. We are all part of the same web of life and we all rely on each other to thrive, even to the smallest being and seemingly tiny insignificant plant.
For more information about the programs described above click here https://www.npsot.org/wp/austin/chapter-projects/
Cheers,
Claire Sorenson
President, NPSOT Austin
