SAUGUS — The town’s gardeners and attendees gathered inside the auditorium in Town Hall to hear guest speaker, Neal Sanders, wax on the woes of gardening, during the annual fundraiser for the Saugus Garden Club.
“Gardening is Murder,” read the poster for the event. The Garden Club’s guest speaker, mystery and suspense author, Neal Sanders, presented to those in attendance at the event.
The presentation left many attendees in good spirits, as they nodded in agreement and laughed at the many garden-centric jokes that Sanders cracked.
Sanders, a former high-technology executive from Medfield, MA, shifted over to writing books in 2005. However, he saved the book talk until the end of his presentation.
Instead, he delighted the crowd with a humorous talk on some of the woes of gardening.
Sanders’ wife, Betty, is a Lifetime Master Gardener with the Massachusetts Master Gardener Association, as such, Sanders has become intimately familiar with all of the work that goes on behind-the-scenes to make a beautiful garden.
Sanders himself ultimately began chairing the Boston Flower and Garden Show from 2010 to 2012.
Fielding responses from the crowd, Sanders asked how many people have utilized the internet for gardening advice.
A sizable number of attendees raised their hands, and Sanders said consulting the internet is perfectly okay for gardening advice, but there are some caveats.
“The internet cannot distinguish between good advice and bad advice — instead, it simply presents the most popular answers,” Sanders said.
Topics of Sanders’ presentation ranged from the scourges to gardens that have Colorado Potato Beetles, squirrels and slugs. It was all presented with humor and a clear enthusiasm for all things gardening.
Sanders went through his many failed attempts at ridding his garden of snails, as internet research suggested using wormwood tea, beer, and more slug-specific solutions, which all proved to be imperfect for one reason or another.
As a former executive, Sanders quipped that at one point, he had broken down the number of hours he had spent growing potatoes, and in relation to that, the amount of money he had spent on growing them, as compared to simply purchasing them at the grocery store.
Closing out his thoughts on gardening, he reminded the audience that even though it may not make sense considering the costs and all of the work — “you’re in it for the fun.”
Wrapping his presentation, Sanders highlighted one of his books, “The Garden Club Gang,” which follows four women who pull off a robbery.
The Sanders’ also have done philanthropic work with their local elementary school, to help get over 800 composters installed around Medfield.
After the presentation was over, the Garden Club moved on to its auction, where attendees bid on floral arrangements made by members of the club and some of which were donated by the local Trader Joe’s.
The auctioning of the floral arrangements raised $98, not including monies raised through the purchase of raffle tickets for the raffle held later that evening.
The raffle, which saw various baskets such as an “Italian” basket, filled with goods like pirouette cookies and illy espresso, or the “Summer Fun” basket, which had beach-y items.
The last event of the evening had the baskets being raffled off.
Selectman Debra Panetta, who was reading off the raffle numbers, to the amusement of the audience and herself, read out her own raffle number, accidentally announcing herself as the winner of the very basket which she had just presented to the audience. She decided to draw another number, allowing another attendee to be the recipient of the basket.
