December: Wendall led our annual Christmas ferns and Native hollies hike.
November: Pete Kassars demonstrated and taught each person present to start a fire with flint and steel.
October: Helen Helwig, local artist and FOMR member, helped us create Carroll County clay tiles using nature, as in leaves or bark.
September: Our participation in Rivers Alive was our Walk & Talk for the month of Sept. We helped to feed 150 volunteers, and joined in to gather more than 400 pounds of debris.
August: Our geologist, Tim Chowns, educated a large audience of students and interested adults about geological principals, demonstrating many as we walked the Reserve. This is always a favorite Walk & Talk with our members.
Also: In August, we joined with the Georgia Native Plant Society to rescue pink lady slippers from a development site in Cherokee county. Wendell Hoomes went with other members of GNPS in the early dawn hours to dig the plants from the Ballground location, while members of FOMR waited at the Reserve, shovels in hand, to place the plants in their new homes. You can see pictures of this operation on the GNPS website (www.gnps.org). The plants seem to be doing well, even though lady slippers are notoriously difficult to transplant.
In addition, members of FOMR met at the Reserve with Donna Lackey, representative of Jordon, Jones, and Goulding, the consulting firm advising the county on greespace use. We had an opportunity to discuss our ideas about the conservation and use of McIntosh and other county greenspace areas.
July: The July Walk & Talk was cancelled due to severe flooding at the Reserve.
June: John Brand, aka Snakeman, and his wife Sara from Muscadine, Alabama, kept a large audience of adults and kids enthralled with their display of snakes, both poisonous and harmless.
May: Jeff Sibley, with Georgia Forestry, suited up to help us identify trees along the McGarity Trail.
April: Wendell Hoomes hosted the spring wildflower hunt, where we caught the Atamasca lilies in bloom, both below the bluff and in the deep woods. We also enjoyed the bluff and in the deep woods. We also enjoyed the blooms of cinque foil, star flowers, mayapples, spiderwort, fire pinks, wild azalea and dogwood, southern nodding trillium, yellow star grass, Carolina silver bells, wild geranium and the buckeye. Fresh green leaves of the pipsisewa, the sassafras, the rattle snake plantain, and the jack-in-the-pulpit also delighted our eyes.
Also: In April, we helped to host “rambling” members of the Georgia Trust for Historical Preservation. In addition to setting up a display at the welcome site in Carrollton, we had people on duty all day at the Reserve to present information and answer Rambler’s questions about the Reserve and the history of Chief McIntosh.
March: Daryl Johnson led a hike to acquaint us with the wetlands behind the big field. He pointed out possible locations for a board walk to provide more intimate contact with the marsh.
Also: In March FOMR members helped out with the big Easter Egg Hunt at the Reserve. Thousands of eggs, “hidden” over a two hour period, were found in 10 minutes by hoards of youngsters ages 2 to 12. It was quite an experience!
