August 21, 2013
July 13, 2011
Vol 13 No 28
Most Beautiful Garden
Recipe
11
Frosty Orange Banana Sipper
Around Town
3
Hooray for Play Gala
Lincoln County Life
6
TBHS Wins Top Honors
Fran and Curt Pike showing off their beautiful garden Photo by Ray Rockwell
This peaceful sanctuary won our 2013 Garden Contest. By Shannon Cothran, Editor Fran and Curt Pike have lived in their home since 1994. “When we first moved here, our backyard was pretty bare. We didn’t have any plants in the backyard except for the tall trees on the boundary. The first thing I wanted to do was put a garden in it, but I didn’t know how to go about it at the time,” Fran says. So she did what residents in St. Charles County do when they have a need: she turned to her neighbors. “One of my neighbors had a beautiful garden, and I knocked on her door and asked her to show me her garden and tell me how she did it.” Fran’s neighbor helped Fran learn a love of gardening, and she and Curt have avidly kept up their beautiful yard since then, adding to it each year. “We put in an arbor first,” she says. “My husband did all the hard, backbreaking stuff like digging up the sod.” Now the Pikes have a bridge, a stream and a pond complete with fish and water lilies. “I wanted to put a pond in the backyard while my kids were young so
they could feed the fish and have fun with the frogs. So another neighbor showed us what they did.” With neighbors stepping up and helping the Pikes, their peaceful outdoor retreat is a testament to the community of St. Charles: a community of kind neighbors. The garden’s plants include shrubs, day lilies, hydrangea, and other perennials around a path. Fran also has a vegetable garden with delicious varieties of zucchini, tomatoes, herbs and more edible plants surrounded by zinnias. Fran Pike has been involved in a local garden clubs like the Gardeners of St. Charles County and her subdivision’s club. She is also a master gardener with St. Charles County Extension, which is an extension of the University of Missouri. Her memberships in all these gardening organizations have been volunteer; neither she nor Curt are professional landscapers or horticulturalists.
Community News is grateful to all the gardeners who submitted an entry into the garden contest. Thank you all for See MOST BEAUTIFUL GARDEN page 2
School
8
WSD Opens Third High School
Lee Daniels’ The Butler photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company
Movie
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