Marcy McTier called the meeting to order and welcomed everyone back.  She thanked Catherine Fleetwood , Jane Sterne, Jane Tracy and Nancy Tracy for hosting the meeting at Southface, a non profit company that provides environmental advice, services and educational classes to the public.

Southface has been around 34 years, the mission is to promote and educate sustainable buildings.  The Whitehead Bio Medical Building at Emory was the sustainable building in the city Atlanta.

We learned about the LEED program and Earth Craft buildings.  Neither are required, however, a certain standard applies.  The Southface house was built in 1996 with features such as light shelves (harvesting daylight can save half of the energy of traditional lighting), rapidly renewable energy sources.  Everything in the building is eco friendly from the paint to the carpet to the adhesives.

Marcy recognized the new members,  Jennifer Euart, Parker Tekin and Liz Irby.  She also recognized Mandy Culpepper, the new member liaison.

Officer Reports:

Having been emailed, the May minutes were approved and submitted, and everyone was reminded to sign the attendance sheet.

Speech School:

Nicole Warren reminded everyone about the required work days and encouraged everyone to sign up to help for 2 hours sometime during the year.

Quarry Garden:

Jinny Keough said the Quarry Garden as another new Director and hopefully she will be able to attend our work day and meeting at the History Center in October.

She also announced that a special Flower Festival coming to St. Phillips Catheradral on October 5 and 6.

Corresponding Secretary Rawson Grobety spoke about the use of our hotmail service and asked anyone not getting the mail or having trouble opening the Evite to let her know and she would try to help them.  Our goal is to go paperless in the next year to save trees!

Yearbook:

Leslie Morgan reminded everyone not to forget to pick up their new yearbook pages.  The yearbook is smaller this year because of an effort to have more information online,

Membership:

Lois Yates told us about the lovely luncheon she and Marianne Craft had for the new members in late August.  She also asked the members not hostessing this year to quickly sign up on the chart for next year and to remember the new “rule of 4” hostesses, unless there is a special need for a 5th.

Historian:

Sallie Smith gave us a brief “history fact” by reminding us of when, where and why the Atlanta Speech School was founded by the Hamm Family, who had a deaf child and realized there was no where for the child to get the therapies and school that he needed, and how Mimosa became involved in the garden.

Flower Show:

Shelby Drinkard announced that there will not be a Flower Show this year.  The organizers are skipping this year to allow more time to plan a special celebration for the 25th Anniversary in 2013.

Party:

VP Catherine Fleetwood announced that she will be chairing and hosting the bi-annual Mimosa party at her house this year, which will be on Wednesday, May 9.  We will be doing a Mimosa market theme with things to be auctioned off such as jams, jellies, etc.  It was discussed that the new members be in charge of the flower arrangements since they would not be able to do the flower show this year.

Announcements:

Marcy announced that Guerry Redmon’s mother, Rae Neal Morris, had also passed away in mid August after a long illiness.

The Fulton Federation of Garden Clubs, of which Mimosa is a member is having their November 14th meeting at Heeneys Wholesale Floral.  The program is Holiday Workshop with an opportunity to make purchases.

An article sent from Elizabeth Morgan informed the membership of an up coming John Muir exhibit in the Cherokee Library at the History Museum.  The exhibit is about Muir’s botany writings and travels throughout the southeast, and runs from October 12th  to December 4th.

As there was no more business, the meeting was then turned over to Sophie Mason, who introduced our Speaker, Laura Case, who gave us a very interesting talk about Southface as well as a tour of the facilities.  We saw the gardens and heard why they had planted what they planted.  She explained that the sidewalks were porous to catch all of the rainwater possible.  We saw the compost pile and had a brief explanation of how it works and what all goes into it.  We then toured the rooftop garden and saw how it was built and the benefit of the garden.