Michele Tango puts the finishing touches on her waterfront garden in preparation for Saturday's Deale Beach Garden Tour. Photo by Mitchelle Stephenson for The Capital
By MITCHELLE STEPHENSON, For The Capital
The Deale Beach community came out to support their local garden club with a yard and plant sale on Saturday.
Outside of the community hall, under the shade of a maple tree, Peter Tango, president of the Deale Beach community association, made bacon, egg and cheese croissants on a grill, while inside residents rented tables to sell their unwanted household items.
Next to Peter's busy croissant concession, his wife Michele, president of the community's garden club, had a variety of plants lined up for sale, including hostas and herbs. She and garden club vice president Julie Beal were handing out flyers for their upcoming Garden Tour on Saturday and will feature seven waterfront gardens in the community.
The club has been around since 2000. The original president, who Michele describes as, "amazing," kept the club going even through the community's cleanup in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel.
The garden tour will be the first one that the club has hosted; volunteers have otherwise been busy over the years sharing ideas for their own gardens and making needed improvements to the community's meeting hall, located on Main Street.
The homeowners of the 182 properties that make up the Deale Beach homeowners association have access to the hall for neighborhood functions, but the community also rents the building to the public for receptions and parties.
It is a cute, single-story building with a gently sloping waterfront back yard. The yard is currently lawn with some side plantings, but Michele, a landscape designer by trade, has big plans to hardscape a patio and put in a rain garden with the proceeds from the plant sale and the garden tour.
"That will make it much nicer when people rent the space," Michele said.
On the garden tour, which will cost $10 for adults, participants will get a map of the properties beings showcased. Since all of the houses on the tour are waterfront, and the community is small, Michele said that the tour can easily be walked.
"We wanted to showcase the kinds of plants that can be grown in a waterfront environment," Michele said. She said that a lot of homeowners with waterfront property have a hard time creating gardens because many plants don't tolerate the conditions.
To pick up tour tickets and a map, go to the community hall on Main Street, just off of Deale Beach Road in Deale. The garden tour is from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Several Riva girls from Girl Scout Troop 782 recently earned their bronze awards by helping the Davidsonville Wildlife Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization that takes in injured or abandoned wildlife and neglected farm animals.
Back at the beginning of the year, the girls, fourth- to sixth-graders, decided that they would help Sandy Carr's DWS facility by collecting contributions and food.
First, the girls visited the sanctuary, where Sandy gave them a tour and explained how she gets calls about injured or abandoned animals and takes them in for rehabilitation.
From there the girls worked to put out collection cans at area businesses, and created flyers to distribute to neighbors to collect blankets, food, and cash.
Alyssa Sloan, 10, collected $158 in cash from cans she placed at area businesses like Sam's Market in Mayo and the Selby Sub Shoppe. In addition, she collected gerbil food, cat food and "a whole bunch of stuff" from her neighbors."I'm proud to help all of the sick and in-need animals," Alyssa said. She said that she loves animals and just wanted to help them.
Her friend Loretta Jordan, 10, said that she "walked around a lot."
"I got a lot of donations, including organic hay," Loretta said.
Loretta had posted her flyer at Bowen Farm Supply in Annapolis, where a Harwood farmer saw it and agreed to drop off several bails of hay to help the girls' efforts.
In addition to their donations, the girls spent part of last Saturday storing their contributions in the feed shed, raking leaves, stacking wood and helping around the facility.
In all, the troop collected over $500 in cash contributions along with the food, blankets and hay.
The girls will get their bronze pins at a bridging ceremony in June.
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