Daily Archives: August 23, 2022


New Connections

For years, many of you have received our new posts delivered directly to your email boxes, rather than logging into our website. There are of course many advantages to going on the website – we have many pages of history, event descriptions, photos, and mission statements, along with a password protected member directory, but nothing beats the convenience of just opening your email to see what’s new. In July, Google’s Feedburner program was discontinued, rather suddenly to our way of thinking, although we had been told that updates would be discontinued and support would no longer be available. Long story short, emails stopped until we found a way to set up a new system, through a Feedburner alternative called Follow.it. At the end of each post on the website, you will see a button to click to sign up one more time. On https://follow.it/the-garden-club-of-the-back-bay?action=followPub&filter you can now define filters and more delivery channels, e.g. to receive your news via Telegram, news page etc. We encourage everyone to do so. Once you add your email address, you will receive a confirmatory email which you MUST answer in order to be on the list. That is all there is to it – you can unsubscribe at any time. You’ll be offered the opportunity through the company to subscribe to other organizations’ lists, but you are not obligated. The service is free, although we are paying a small premium to keep the emails free of advertisements. We don’t accept ads on the website, and we strive for consistency.

We were able to transfer some of our existing list to the new service, but sadly not all. There were numerical limits. We will notify those who were left off, but if you are reading this on the site, https://www.gardenclubbackbay.org/, please take a moment to register, regardless of membership status or geographic location. So many of the events we promote are virtual, available to all, not just to Bostonians! If you received this in an email, forward it to friends, and thank you.


Saturday, August 27 11:00 am – 1:00 pm – The Ground We Walk Guided Tour

Join the Society of Arts + Crafts for a special guided tour of the outdoor exhibition, “THE GROUND WE WALK,” located at Riverway Park, Brookline (near the Longwood T stop on Chapel Street). The tour will be led by one of the exhibiting artists. Studios Without Walls is a Brookline-based collaborative group of sculptors and conceptual artists who have been since 1997, producing art in outdoor public settings.

Participating Artists: Sarah Alexander, Max Bard, Gail Jerauld Bos, Richard Dorff, Liz Helfer, Linda Hoffman, Janet Kawada, Bette Ann Libby, Madeleine Lord, Silvina Mizrahi, Stacey Piwinski, Maria Ritz, Ruth Rosner, Stacy Latt Savage, Rachel Shatil, Allen M. Spivack, Time Project, Rebecca McGee Tuck, Mihoko Wakabayashi. and Bob Shannahan, off site at the Hilton Garden Inn, 700 Brookline Ave.

RSVP Now

Courtesy of The Boston Globe

Wednesday, September 7, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Spice 101: Cumin, Online

Take a Smithsonian Journeys online gastronomical journey to explore one of the world’s most widely used and oldest spices, cumin. Humanity’s appreciation of cumin stretches across millennia: It’s the only word in the English language that can be directly traced to Sumerian and is listed as an ingredient in an ancient recipe collection dating to 1750 B.C. Christine Rai discusses cumin’s origins and history, culinary uses in global cuisines, and flavor profile and composition, and offers tips for using this internationally beloved spice.

Rai, a professor at Frederick Community College, has a passion for food studies, culture, and folklore. The program will be held September 7 at 7 pm, is $25 for Smithsonian members and $30 for nonmembers. and registration and more information may be found at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/spice-101-cumin


Thursday, September 8, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Lessons From Plants, Online

Join Dr. Beronda Montgomery and the Native Plant Trust on September 8 at 6 pm Eastern for an engaging virtual discussion about her recent, acclaimed book, Lesson from Plants. Lessons from Plants enters into the depth of botanic experience and shows how we might improve human society by better appreciating not just what plants give us but also how they achieve their own purposes. What would it mean to learn from these organisms, to become more aware of our environments and to adapt to our own worlds by calling on perception and awareness? Montgomery’s meditative study puts before us a question with the power to reframe the way we live: What would a plant do? $15 for Native Plant Trust members, $18 for nonmembers.