With The Kitchen fully stocked and continuing to harvest every other day to provide fresh salads for our members and visitors, and with Garden Club members having plenty of Pictona lettuce for their own salads (Thanks, Hydroponic Committee!), a question arose - what should we do with our surplus?
Club members Russ Royce (Master Gardener) and Louise Bosworth (gardener extraordinaire) had the answer! Russ and Louise collected three bags / baskets of lettuce to donate to Hope Place, a part of Halifax Urban Ministries, whose stated mission is to "prevent homelessness among low-income families by providing emergency assistance & to intervene on behalf of homeless people." Hope Place provides three meals a day to families as they seek to return to being self-sustaining members of our community.
Thanks, Pictona Garden Club, for your outstanding volunteerism in our Humana Community Gardens. The lettuce from our towers is feeding Pictona members in The Kitchen, Garden Club members at home, and now our neighbors in need!
Pictona members showed up in a big way at our first ever Soap Drive! In partnership with SAC sponsor, Florida Health Care Plans, Pictona members contributed to three full boxes of bar soap, liquid soap and hand sanitizer. In total, along with donations from other area sites, FHCP collected OVER 500 POUNDS of soap for local citizens in need.
Thank you, Pictona, for your generosity and spirit of giving!
Please note the following FHCP SAC class schedule through the end of December. The schedule will resume as normal beginning Monday, January 3.
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
Congratulations, Pictona, for once again stepping up to donate blood in our second ever blood drive. Held back in November, our statistics are now in: 11 units donated and potentially 33 lives saved. This is awesome and a testament, yet again, to the generous spirit of Pictona members and friends. Well done, Pictona!
Clean Hands Make the World a Better Place!
Join FHCP and Pictona this month in donating unused and unopened bar soap, liquid soap and hand sanitizer. These products will be distributed to those in need by partner charities like the Jerry Doliner Food Bank, The Salvation Army in Volusia County, Daily Bread in Brevard County, and Family Life Center in Flagler County.
You can deposit items in the boxes located at the Welcome Desk and inside the Senior Activity Center. The Soap Drive begins December 1 and ends December 22.
SAC classes are canceled Wednesday through Friday this week. We will still have Open Play Bocce on Friday at 9:30 am. All classes will resume at their regularly scheduled times beginning Monday, November 29.
For the second year in a row, members of the Pictona Garden Club came together to collect food items to help families in need have a delicious Thanksgiving feast. Led by the efforts of Club member, Shirley Rose, gardeners contributed items such as scalloped potatoes, stuffing, brownie mix, cream of chicken, cranberry sauce and more, as well as supermarket gift cards for the purchase of the main course: the Thanksgiving turkey!
The organization sponsoring the food drive is the Volusia Thanksgiving Basket Brigade, which organizes the donation of Thanksgiving meals every year to over 3,500 families in Volusia County. The Pictona Garden Club filled and donated five boxes, which will feed five families this Thanksgiving. We are proud to have once again participated in this awesome event!
On Saturday, November 6, the Pictona Garden Club visited EFG Orchids in DeLand. Organized by Ricki Stofsky, Social Committee Chair, Pictona gardeners had the opportunity to take a tour of the facility and learn about its history and the many diverse plants for sale and on display. It was an enjoyable morning, and we look forward to the next great field trip!
All are welcome to participate in the Pictona Garden Club. If you're interested in joining us for future activities, contact Rynn at rynng@pictona.org or call 386-238-9276.
Pictona, in partnership with Florida Health Care Plans and OneBlood, will host a Blood Drive on Saturday, November 13 from 9 am - 2 pm. The "Big Red Bus" will be parked right out front of Pictona beside the Chamber building on Ridgewood. Appointments are available, and walk-ins are also welcome. All donors will receive a OneBlood blanket and a $10 eGift card, as well as a wellness checkup including blood pressure, temperature, iron count, pulse and cholesterol screening.
To make an appointment, click here and type in the Sponsor Code: 64478. Click "Search," then select "Pictona - Florida Health Care Plans - Holly Hill." Choose your appointment time, and you're all set! Or, if you prefer, simply show up on the day of the event.
Back in May, Pictona members and friends donated enough blood to save 51 lives! Join us on Saturday the 13th to make a real positive impact here in Holly Hill and Volusia County!
Did you enjoy a salad from The Kitchen during the Pictona Open? How about a hamburger with fresh lettuce? If so, look no further than the towers behind Courts 23 & 24 for the source of that tasty goodness! Thanks to the efforts of the Pictona Garden Club, the Pictona Open had a tremendous supply of fresh lettuce to satisfy the many hungry players who visited Pictona during the tournament. Garden Club members start seeds at home, nurturing them until they're ready for transport into the towers. Then, at weekend "Planting Parties," they plant them in the towers and continue to monitor their growth until the greens are just right for harvesting. It's a lot of work but also a labor of love, managed and coordinated under the leadership of Hydroponic Committee Co-Chairs Corrie Wise and Trish Kabus, as well as Master Gardener Russ Royce.
The Kitchen is grateful for the contributions of Pictona gardeners and continues to use the harvest from the Humana Community Gardens at Pictona in salads and weekly specials. If you haven't tried it out yet, come on over to The Kitchen to enjoy the freshest lettuce in town - and know that it might just have been grown by one of your fellow pickleballers!
Pre-Tournament ("How It's Been") Post-Tournament ("How It's Going")
