A Big Thank You to our
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Imagine the amount of tea poured for our 200 luncheon guests on Saturday, May 12th. Sam Allott boiled tea water for 2 straight hours. Guests lingered on the back patio amidst Barbara Lyon’s extravagant floral masterpieces, enjoying the sunny, mild weather and discussing the six wonderful gardens on the tour. The 5th Annual St Philip’s Garden Tour and English Tea Luncheon was a day for pouring out love to our community: with tea, with flowers, with beauty and most importantly, with our hearts. |
2007 Garden Tour and English Tea Another Big Success!“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts …” -Romans 5:5 |
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The entire St. Philip’s community puts so much heart into this event. We come together almost like a family preparing for a wedding. Sheryl McEwan is our matchmaker, using her unbounded enthusiasm and amazing networking abilities to find our gardens. Sheryl is the only one I know who could persuade me to knock on a complete stranger’s door and ask if it would be OK for 200 people to tromp through their garden. The owners of the Exotic Oasis graciously accepted our request and their garden was a wonderful addition. We are so grateful to all the garden owners for their generosity to St. Philip’s. Sara DeRouchey’s gift of time and talent was critical to our success: she not only produced our beautiful tickets, she also took on the selling of them! Beyond that, she set us up to take credit cards for the first time. Jack Doscher worked diligently on the publicity, sending out early releases, managing the advertising, and communicating with the newspaper editors. The Sentinel article was amazing! |
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Don Roth worked quietly in the months ahead to clean up the front of the church, to have the old stove removed, and to install the new stove. Dennis Potts took the initiative to organize a work day the week before the door. He also seemed to be helping just about everywhere on tour day—in the lobby, in the parking lot, in the kitchen. Glenn Luque created our new garden path and helped with “valet” parking on tour day. Lucy Gowan worked in advance to secure of the donation of tables, whose smaller size seemed to work much better in the lunch room. Lucy made all the sausage rolls before heading off on her trip. |
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Karen Krestensen, our volunteer coordinator, worked extra hard this year to recruit not only the docents but many new volunteers. Karen’s positive attitude and wonderful organization are foundational to the event. Thank you so much to the docents: Janis and Bill Lages, Julie and Bob Mazurek, Julie Levy, Sheryl McEwan, Carter Potts, Mary Powers, Camilla Shaffer and Kelly Cox. |
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Thank you Donna Seelbach for photographing the gardens and making the signs. Thank you to the Shaffers and Honeys for posting the signs. Thank you Karen Krestensen, Myrna Crooks Owen, Sandy Sotelo and Ying Liang for helping with set-up. Special thanks to Brenda Hillier for assisting Barbara Lyon with the flowers. Cindy Hershberger, Delia Lopez and Nancy Connor did a wonderful job manning the lobby, and Donna Jones graciously welcomed and checked in the lunch guests. Bill Kelly delivered scones to all the gardens. The kitchen crew was somewhat like a well-oiled machine this year, except still full of punchy good-humor. Vicky Granger-Jones planned a fabulous menu and worked tirelessly, shopping, prepping, and notably turning her house into a carrot-coriander soup factory. Julie O’Brien was Vicky’s right-hand lady, planning, prepping, organizing and managing the kitchen. Jong An was sous-chef of the day and together with Annie Warr plated food for hours. Cindy Hershberger, Barbara Luque and Dianne Evans washed the endless pile of dirty dishes. Though we owe John Gallagher tremendous thanks for his fabulous salads, we don’t want word to get out that the English Tea Luncheon’s cooking artisan is an American man. |
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Valerie Sims-Johnson, Claire Mills and Vicky Granger-Jones were charming and hard-working waitresses, and Jose Gonzalez was a suave maitre’de. Our young bus people—Olivia Gonzalez, Jessica Granger-Jones, Alex Mills, Katrina Luque and Tim Potts—got rave reviews from our guests and made all our jobs easier. Big thanks to Susan Seaburg, who did a fabulous job organizing the raffle and seemed to be quite a natural at hawking raffle tickets, which I believe resulted in record sales. Thank you also to the many scone bakers and to people who contributed in behind-the-scenes ways that I don’t even know. Thank you St. Philip’s kids for the artistic pots and statuary. Thank you to Pastor Mary for her encouragement and support. Thanks to all of you for pouring out your hearts for a very special day that brought God’s love to our community. Sincerely, |
