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Spring is here!

A container garden is an easy way to enjoy the spring and summer.

 

Annette Moore

Hamlet Atrium resident, Annette Moore, and her family made a wonderful contribution to the beauty of Hamlet Village. In what turned out to be a two family project, daughter-in-law, Joyce Moore, who is married to Annette's son, Larry, has beautiful gardens at their home in South Russell.

     Joyce generously dug out several carloads of perennials to donate to Hamlet. Resident Vern Kalan's daughter, Laurie, made several trips transporting the plants to Hamlet, with the help of resident, Shirley Badger, and skillfully planted them on the new hillside garden behind the Atrium. The end result was a new, beautiful garden for everyone to enjoy.

     Annette's son, Larry, (he and his wife, Joyce, live next door to Hamlet receptionist, Anne Rusko) wanted his mom to move to Hamlet several years ago after his dad, Tom, died (approximately 17 years after moving to Florida from their home in Tanglewood, to which they had moved from Novelty). Tom was the retired Sales Manager of the Mine and Mill Division of Midland-Ross Corp., previously National Steel Castings Corp. He frequently took Annette with him on his sales travels, both nationally and internationally.

     Annette is healthy, active, blonde and beautiful and a member of the Hamlet Ambassador Club. She loves living at Hamlet and enjoys helping everyone, and has a great outlook on life. Annette has made it a point her entire life to make the best of every situation. This attitude has enabled her to find true happiness, which you can see in her face. She loves her apartment and takes part in as many activities as she can, especially those associated with her lifelong passion of crafts and needlework.

    

     Annette has a wonderful family with two children and five grandchildren. While living in Florida in a golf community, both participated frequently in the sport of golf and were involved in some of the related organizations. Make sure you check out her Swinger Ring, just like the one Betty White had. She loves everyone, loveable or not, and likes to joke around. She often says of herself, -here comes trouble!-

Karen Perry

Hamlet Hillside Building #3 resident and gardener, Karen Perry, has a garden that is a "must see" Karen is usually seen wearing a colorful botanical tee shirt and walking her very cute and friendly toy poodle, Cherie. She loves to get down and get dirty in her garden, then go in and have a bubble bath. She jokes, -Gardeners know the best dirt!-Gardening is a way of remembering her mother in a happy way, as her mother's life was wrapped around flowers and conservation. Karen loves to find new plants and experiment with them and, at the same time, mix colors to make the garden creative and a part of her.

New plants in her garden include orange hosta, guardian angel hosta, giant hosta and Korean rock fern, which when turned over looks like rocks. Other new favorites are tapestry and tatting fern, and tassel ferns, all found at the Holden Arboretum Spring Sale. She lends her expertise to others working on Federated Church's garden at the Family Life Center and the Chagrin Herb Society Garden at the Bainbridge library.

Karen has led a fascinating life and has lived at Hamlet for eight years coming from Shaker Heights. She graduated from Laurel School, Smith College and the Katie Gibbs School in Boston. Her father was a physician and her sisted graduated with honors from Wellesley. As a career, Karen was Secretary to the Vice President of Union Commerce Bank. Reading is her greatest love.

A tireless community volunteer, Karen is taking on a big job with Chagrin Valley Woman's Club as Federated Sales Chairman, to raise money for the club's charity and scholarships to 13 organizations in the area. Karen also volunteers for Meals-On-Wheels, cooking at Federated Church, and is a member of the Red Hat Society.  She's helping downtown Chagrin Falls organize a community "Wizard of Oz" festival this fall.- Thanks to Karen's involvement, Hamlet will be hosting one of the original Munchkins from the original movie.  She is 80 years old and will be travelling with her 9 year old granddaughter. The "Munchkin" will be staying in one of the Hamlet guest suites for the weekend.

Karen has made a difference at Hamlet Village and Chagrin Falls Village with her great spirit, fun personality, fabulous gardens and volunteerism.

Shirley Badger

Hamlet Hillside Building #9 resident, Shirley Badger, has made many contributions to the beautification of Hamlet Village.  The Hamlet Community Garden wasn't yet organized when she came here four years ago.  Her first year here she developed a garden plan that included flower beds and paths.  Unfortunately, the deer ate most of the garden.  The next year she and retired metallurgical engineer, Vern Kalan, bought deer fencing.  Hamlet maintenance staff helped by digging post-holes for the garden fencing, and it was effective for keeping the deer out, but the raccoons and rabbits were able to come in under the netting to destroy the garden.  Last year Maintenance Director, Mark Walsh, added another line of defense by wrapping chicken wire all around the garden.  That did the trick and they had their first successful gardening year.

  Former resident, Ruth Spence, helped plant Iris, lillies and lupines.  Shirley maintains the beauty of those flowers in Ruth's memory.  She also planted plenty of her very favorite flowers, Delphinium.

  Shirley is a Master Gardener, certified by the Ohio State Extension Service.  She started the school garden at Ben Franklin School in Old Brooklyn in 1994.  She continues to work with the children at that school every Thursday throughout the year, teaching a class about gardening.  During the summer children in her class and from the neighborhood help in the garden.

  The second horticultural project Shirley started at Hamlet is the new garden behind the Atrium.  A couple years ago she approached Jon Eigen, Executive Director, with her idea.  A designer from a local nursery gave an estimate of $6,000 and, of course, Jon said, no way!  Shirley doesn't give up easily and drew up a garden plan.  With a couple hundred dollars from Hamlet and carloads of plants from Joyce Moore, daughter-in-law of Atrium resident Annette Moore, and from the Master Gardeners plant exchange, the Atrium garden is beginning to take shape.  Vern's daughter, Laurie, planted the plants and Hamlet maintenance staff planted some shrubs.

  Shirley has had an amazing life teaching microbiology at Case for 25 years and raising four boys.  Her husband was an air conditioning engineer who owned Badger Equipment.  Coming from a farm in Vermont she became a docent at the Natural History Museum, a Master Gardener and a political activist.  While serving in the Witness for Peace program she lived in Nicaragua and worked to spread peace and justice to the people of Central America.  She liked to rent out rooms in her large Cleveland Heights home to interesting people, which included doctors at the Cleveland Clinic who came from China, Iraq and many other countries.  She became a nature photographer and travelled all over the country and Canada and belongs to a photo club at the Natural History Museum.

  When Shirley was growing up in Vermont, poet Robert Frost sometimes lived with her family in a rented summer cottage on their property.  Her grandfather, a physician, built a blacksmith shop in 1885 and had turned it into a summer cottage.  He rented it to Robert Frost where he founded the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.  The family was on Frost's Christmas card list and Shirley remembers receiving a new poem from him every year at Christmas time.

  Always the intellectual, Shirley performed presentations on Robert Frost to Hamlet residents and to the Federated Church.  She celebrated her 80th birthday at Hamlet Atrium with sixty important people in her life in attendance.  She wrote a touching script about each one of the guests, which was read by her son at the celebration.  Her favorite expression to overcome problems is, this, too, shall pass.  Thank you, Shirley, for your many contributions to the quality of life at Hamlet!