 Okay. All right. So a lot of things that I wanted to say the first 15 minutes of our of our member meeting, but I guess first, thank you. I can't see anybody. That's on the screen, but I wanted to thank everyone for for joining on this beautiful fall day. I did a lot of activities earlier today and and got home early to make sure that I got everything working for this meeting, but I know everyone's time is is really precious and I really appreciate everybody buddy joining us for for the members meeting. So Kentucky Native Plant Society. I guess we're all coming together today because we all share love of native plants and the native plants across Kentucky. So We all share that in common. So the Kentucky Native Plant Society is a nonprofit organization statewide organization that was formed in 1986. So we've been around for many decades and We are leaders of promoting native plant education and conservation throughout the state. We've got a really strong membership and we're continuing to grow every year. I know Jeff Nelson, our board member is going to be touching on membership in just a little bit. But the members of the society. We are a diverse group of folks that are made up of academics professionals, citizen scientists and many native plant gardeners and we all share a love of plants. So Jeff, you could go to that next slide. I think it has Like who are we, you know, who are the folks that are board members and officers within the Native Plant Society. So first, our membership. As I said, we're a diverse group. You know, all the way to from professionals that do this for a living all the way to to folks that that just have an interest in just native plant gardening in their backyard so But but one thing that we do have in common is we all share love of native plants and and and coming together to to work together on on on, you know, sharing this love through education and and also being more active through conservation act action of trying to protect native plants so It doesn't matter how how big or small your contribution is To native plants in Kentucky, it's all extremely important from purchasing large acres of land and restoring it to planting really awesome pollinator plants in your backyard so it's all super important and we're excited to all come together And and and talk about the kinds of things that we do at Native Plant Society. So I think that the screen that is being shared shows our our officers and since you guys don't know who's actually talking since you can't see my face. I'm Tara little field. I've been the president for the past couple years, but I've been involved with native plant society for almost 20 years. And I started out leading hikes when I was in graduate school at at the National Bridge State Park at our wildflower weekend. And I've served a couple different roles over the years and particularly over the past five years. I've been involved with native plant society as we've gone through a lot of changes. Moving into the virtual world a lot of technological changes with our online blog and our newsletter, the way that we interact now we do everything through zoom. You know, a lot of our meeting since we have folks that live all across the state, you know, there is a lot of benefits to doing these these virtual presentations. One negative is that sometimes things go wrong and you can't connect to the internet like me, but normally actually this doesn't happen is one of the first time. Our other folks that are our officers are Heidi Braun writer. She's probably been filling in for me for the past 15 minutes as I'm texting her saying I can't get online. So Heidi is a botanist at the Office of Kentucky Nates preserves. I also work at the Office of Kentucky Nates preserves as a botanist and managing a lot of our plant project. Our, our, our recent secretary Emily Ellington has served for the past couple years as our secretary and she was the native plant curator and at the UK Arboretum and she's recently moved on. And I'll talk about that in just a second. And we have a new treasurer that just joins on earlier in the year steel McFadden, and he's a wildlife biologist and botanist that works for the Army Corps of Engineers out of Louisville. And he's also got a lot of a lot of really great background in botany across the state. Our board members. We have really awesome board members and committee members that have been a part of native plant society for several years. Jeff Nelson. I feel like I couldn't really do much without Jeff. He kind of helps us keep everything going. Jeff is a long standing native plant society member. He works in Western Kentucky and, and works as a community scientist doing volunteer work at Nates preserves and, and helping with inventory projects and does a lot of restoration work on his own property with his wife, Liz. We've got Dr. Jen Coslow, who's a plant ecologist at Eastern Kentucky University, West Cunningham, who's a contract consultant botanist with Stantec out of Louisville. David Taylor botanist at the Dana Blue National Forest, Deb White, who is a former botanist that makes preserves and is now a contract botanist and, and works with a lot of different nonprofit organizations. Um, and I was trying to run through my head. I'm not looking at any of my notes. I think that might be all of our board members. So, on to the next slide. I wanted to talk about some changes I mentioned that our secretary just accepted a job up in Massachusetts with an arboretum up there. It's going to be the curator and the assistant director up there. So we're really sad to see Emily go. She's done a lot of great work with made a plant society, and with the UK arboretum and Lexington. Um, so we had appointed a new secretary and we're really excited to have Kelly Watson, Dr. Kelly Watson. To join our team. She is a biogeographer and GIS specialist and also a botanist that that you think Kentucky University. And she's also a heavy competitor in our Kentucky botanist big year, our naturalist competition friendly competition that we have amongst a super nerdy plant folks to see how many plants that we can see in a year. And then I also have on this slide, kind of a shout out to Nick Kenick. He was a committee member and help us out on several different projects with made a plant society over the past couple years he was also an associate editor of the lady slipper. And he has also recently moved on to Cambridge, England, and he's currently getting his master's so we are sad to see Nick and Emily move on. But, you know, there are losses is there games they'll they'll do some great things and hopefully our paths will cross and Kentucky will suck them back in again at some point. In the coming years, and we can get them back doing plant work but so really appreciate everybody on the board and our new secretary. And, yeah, so that's so that's who the native plant society is. Last year during the pandemic was kind of a crazy year for a lot of folks. We didn't have any field trips it was kind of a shopping way. So, if we were able to have a couple of hikes. So we're really, really excited to get our hikes and field trip program going. So we were able to successfully have three hikes. They were all kind of in the later summer and fall time periods. And our first one that we had was in Western Kentucky it was kind of a driving tour to six or seven different spots. And Gerald Burnett, who is a biologist and a land manager out in the WMAs and far west Kentucky you were Kentucky. The really great biologist and botanist and photographer, and he, along with Jeff and Robert Dunlap. I call them are close to point collective. Those three folks out there and far Western Kentucky, you know, have been looking at really cool sites and so they came up with the idea to have this driving tour as our first field trip for the year. And that was really successful. It was a full hike I think we had, you know, close to 20 folks that joined that. And you can go on our website there's an article about it that has some, some of the plants that they saw so that was that was really awesome. And then here in central Kentucky, just over the past month and a half. Alan Abbott, who is a local botanist and he's also really active on Instagram he's got a plant account there that a lot of us follow. He's held two hikes at Plain Creek Barrens. And Alan's a really interesting guy he does a lot of botanizing in Kentucky and also in southern Indiana. And he has a particular interest in grasslands. He visits a lot of different barren systems in those areas and, and he's got a really unique way of, of kind of sharing what how how he has learned plants over the years and you know, and, you know, and how he teaches other folks about these things too so. He's Kentucky Woods on on Instagram so you can follow him there and there where we've had articles about the two field trips that he led to so lots of cool plants that that they saw some some gentians and late, some rare late stresses that the barrens community in general so so that was really great and I know that later on in this meeting, Dr is going to be talking about our field trip committee and how we can work together to organize even more field trips for 2022. The lady slipper for members is has been the, the newsletter of the Kentucky native plant society since 1986 was when the first, the society was formed and the first lady slipper came out type written format on multiple copies. And while I'm mentioning that the entire archive of all of the ladies slippers published since 1986 are so in 2020. The decision was made to switch to a blog format on on the website. And so that way we can we publish the articles there on the website, always available. Each month we send out a monthly email digest. For the goes to members and friends, and that email digest as a link to each of the articles that was published in the previous month. So, this year. Since January through the latest issue in 2021. We published over 58 58 articles in the lady slipper so be sure to you're all on the email list. So, yeah. And Susan, along with her associate edit who is managing editor and the associate editor. Jonathan Cubish and Kendall McDonald. They do a magnificent job getting the articles in shape and looking good. And they are always looking for people who would like to write articles. So, they can be anything we've had a poem in the last issue we have very technical articles we have general articles about gardens. So, if you if you like to write about native plants. The easiest way is to contact the editors by and I'll just type it into the everyone meeting type it in here just send a lady slipper. So, email to that location, if you're interested in in writing for the lady slipper so. And with that, we'll go to student grants. Okay. So, every year we try to give out student research grants to students that are studying botanical efforts here in Kentucky. This year we've had very few applicants so we really want to push this out there that we have funding available for any students who have interest in studying any botanical related projects. They could be field based and typically we have projects that contribute to the knowledge of Kentucky's flora or natural communities. And they are available on our website where you can look more into it as well as apply for it there so if you have any interest in that reach out to us we would be happy to look at your proposal. Or if you know a student who might be interested. I, are we still doing the rare native plant restoration grants and the native plant inventory grants. I said on the slide but it's still posted on the web page and those would be open to people who are not so a broader group. Hey, Jen, I can speak to that yeah we still are offering restoration grants that the grant funding that we had gotten for for that pot was for a kind of more globally rare plants so that's why it says to work with me. Office of Kentucky nature reserves for those grants, but I know that the board is currently discussing whether to open up those research grants for just kind of general native plant restoration right now it's targeted more for globally rare plants so more on on on that grant program in the future. So, so I'm still McFadden I'm the, the treasurer for KMPS. Can everybody hear me. You're good. So, pretty simple on the left you can see our total cash balance. We've been increasing our funds over the past decade. You can see from 2011 2021. On the right you can see what our expenses were for, for those years as well. And the last two years, we haven't been able to spend as much money and a lot of that is due to cover it obviously. So hopefully next year, things will be a little bit back more than normal. And we'll be able to spend more money, take more hikes, have more speakers that sort of stuff. And currently our total assets are about 41 K. And today we're, we're in the green about $4,000. And that's all I've got. Okay, thank you steel appreciate that. Okay, besides being webmaster I'm also membership chair currently. And just a few stats I think would be of most interest. Currently we have 550 current active members do's pain, they're all paid up. And that includes 167 life members and that's always an option if you don't, don't like having right to check every month every year for membership, you can become a life member of the society. So 2021 this year we've so far we have 136 new members and 83 renewals, and those are both the most that we have had since I became membership chair several years ago. And it is our week long virtual wildflower week. Last year, we got our main in April, we got a lot of people who were popping in, they, they saw articles about it the events in the lady slipper. They popped in and joined and renewed so it was it's it's looking to be a good year. And we depend on members to not only fund the things we're doing, but as we'll talk a little bit more later on is most virtually everything the society does is done by volunteers and as we discuss committees later on today we're going to talk about how we can try to get, get, see more members who want to get involved in, in activities of the society will be able to get, get so involved. Well, and just the end of her of. Again, I didn't realize it but pine Creek Barons this was at our full membership meeting in October of 2018 was at the Bernheim where we had the membership meeting. And then we went on a field trip out to the Barons. And that was Tara talking to the group about the Barons ecosystem. Hopefully by next October, we'll be able to have in person fall membership meeting again, and all get together and not only see each other but get out and see some plants as well so we can keep our fingers crossed and that's it about membership if you got any questions, put them into the chat window and will answer them. Tara, are you ready to talk about the botanical symposia. I am so I, I am able. I don't know if you guys can see me. I'm connected to the Internet through my phone and I'm in like an old cemetery. So it's kind of spooky. Anyways, Internet still not working at my house so I had to run up the hill. Okay, so the botanical symposium so we've been organizing a botanical symposium since about 2014 I think is when we started doing that. You know, our fall meetings and is more for members are our spring wildflower week is more for general public. And so we decided to start organizing these botanical symposiums for Kentucky to kind of bring together all the different professionals and academics and community scientists that are that are working on different plant projects across the state whether it be management, monitoring research so a little bit more formal type projects that folks are working on across the state because this is probably a theme for a lot of different disciplines but you know, there were many years where folks just didn't work together didn't know who was working on what so. So this was this was a way for everyone to just the botanical community to come together and figure out well who's working on what projects all across the state so it's been really successful and helping build our botanical community a lot like a lot of our other projects but so last year during the pandemic. It was quite a learning curve for us for for organizing things on zoom and virtual so we decided to just continue on and and organize it virtually and and actually it was very successful. We had Alan weekly Dr Alan weekly who is a professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He was our keynote speaker he's a phenomenal speaker and has written the floor of the southeast and you can actually download a free copy of this PDF of, and you can filter it for just Kentucky as well. So phenomenal researcher and taxonomist and botanist and kind of helped set the stage for the diversity of the southeast how Kentucky fits into that diversity. So that was great. In addition to that we had a lot of folks from the Office of Kentucky nature reserves, give updates on a lot of our projects across the state. Some of the projects that involved our roadside pollinator habitat inventory project that we work on with transportation. You know we manage a lot of the state nature reserves across the state so we had a monitoring and management of rare plants and communities on our nature preserves the plant conservation Alliance and some of the conservation horticultural that we work on across the state. Those are projects where we have a particular rare plant and we work with horticulturists that can actually grow those and then we plant them back so so so that was and we were able to record all of these presentations and have them online so you know, while we like meeting in person, I think that we're going to probably moving forward with the botanical symposium still have a lot of that online because it, it does bring in folks outside of Kentucky we have a broader reach when we have these things online and we can record them so that you know folks can go back and look at these presentations. So, moving forward we are continuing with organizing that it's going to be on December 9 this year from 10 to 230 we've got a lot of great speakers that are they're going to be talking about different projects highlight a few of the folks. Chris Benda, the aka the Illinois botanizer is going to be speaking, and he works in southern Illinois on rare plant monitoring. And so he's going to talk to us about some of the work that he's been working on in southern Illinois in regards to updating statuses of some other rare plants, and they utilize a lot of volunteers so I'm really excited about his his project and how they, how they're, rare plants, monitoring efforts over there. Brittany veers works for Southeastern grasslands initiative, and she's also works for quail and limited, and she works on a lot of grassland remnant restoration projects on private lands in Kentucky and Tennessee. So she's going to give an update on some of her projects that she works on. Joey Shaw, professor at University of Tennessee is going to talk about the Kentucky Tennessee plant atlas division of water nature reserve folks so please join that within the next video we're going to be releasing the agenda. So you can check that out online and if you are don't do don't have. If you haven't signed up for our ladies have learned lady slipper newsletter please do that because in the next issue that goes out in a couple of weeks, there'll be information on the botanical symposium there as well. And then move on to the next slide Jeff. Oh, I just wanted to mention, you know, we do also organize other things like plant identification workshops and those are really fun. And that's really some of my more, my favorite activities at at at Kentucky native plant society the last one we did was in 2019. We organized a sedge workshop workshop with Dr Rob Noxie from the New York botanical garden, and that was a fantastic class. We are in discussions with a few different professors for next year, trying to get some plant identification workshops for next year as well, in addition to field trips and, and some of our other meetings that we're that we're organizing so some of the ones that we're trying to organize are a statewide class, different types of grasses, and then also a golden rod and Astor workshop. And if you're interested nature preserve folks myself, Devin Rogers and Vanessa Volker are going to be teaching a said workshop at floor cliff in May of next year so you can go to the floor cliff website and sign up for that within the next month or so I think it's going to be advertised. Next slide. Oh, and just real quick touch on the plant Atlas this is something that native plant society has worked on over the past couple of years with several different universities and also the Tennessee native plant society. And the plant atlases are just a way that different researchers and interest plant people that are interested in plants can can figure out where these different native plants are distributed across the state and across the whole their whole range, and the global range. So we've partnered with Tennessee to do a Kentucky Tennessee plant Atlas. And so I think that in the materials that Jeff sent out or will send out, they'll be a link to this Kentucky Tennessee plant Atlas. There's several other plant atlases. Unfortunately right now, our plant atlases within the state are kind of. There's several different efforts separate efforts going on. And so one of the, one of the goals that we in native plant society have is kind of bringing all of these different databases together. So that we don't have to check five different databases to see where a particular plant occurs, you know, at nature preserves we specialize in rare plants so we've got probably the, the best distribution maps and locations for all the rare plants in the state. There's other plant atlases out there USDA plant atlases bone app. That's an acronym for the biota of North America plants. And then Julian Campbell has a plant atlas and then our Kentucky Tennessee plant atlas that also links to specimens, the urbarium specimens so. And then we've got iNaturalist that's a whole other separate database that helps us figure out where plants are distributed across the state so lots of really great efforts that are going on but we just need to talk more amongst all these different entities and figure out a way to bridge it all together. So that will be a committee goal probably in the plant conservation committee or one of our other committees so if you're interested in helping with those efforts, please sign on to one of those committees. The next slide Jeff. All right, Heidi and her green slide I like it. Hello everyone. I'm going to spotlight myself real quick. So, I'm the vice president of native plant society and I was in charge of organizing wildflower week last year. It was, it was different, we did a virtual wildflower week, but it was very successful we did virtual field trips, and we had over 17 different videos submitted for that. And then I was just looking at all the different views on the on the YouTube the other day, we had over 1500 views of all of those videos. So, a lot of people were very interested in them. We also had a week long i naturalist botany blitz, where all of our members joined the i naturalist group, and over 100 different members joined this, and we got over 3200 observations, and 450 species observed in over 60 counties, and that was all in one week. So, it was really great and we're going to redo it in 2022. You can see some of, oh, okay. And so, you can mark your calendars for April 8 through the 10th. That is going to be our next wildflower week, and we're going to do it in person at natural bridge state resort park. We're going to do the traditional wildflower weekend that we have had in the past before coven. So we'll have a Friday night social, and we'll have hikes on Friday afternoon Saturday and Sunday, and then we will have presentations on Saturday evening, and then trying to kind of incorporate the events that we had this year with our virtual wildflower weekend. We are going to do a week long i naturalist botany blitz following or proceeding to that weekend so then the last day of the botany blitz will also be the last day of the wildflower weekend. So, very excited and looking forward to that. And we are reaching out to people and seeing who will be our presenters and as soon as we do we will let everyone know. So, looking forward to seeing you all in person again. And as most of you, I'm sure, realize, there's a lot of things that Kentucky native plant society wants to do and does each year. The more we can get our members engaged with the society. And the way we, the more we can get done to pursue the mission of the Kentucky native plant society, which is to preserve, protect and defend native plants in Kentucky in our region. And the vibrant active committee structure can really help that move forward committees are so important. They, the, when the society was originally formed in 1986. Standing committees was one of the 10 articles of the bylaws and you can always find the bylaws on our native plant society web page. And so, they reckon the group recognized right at the start that in a volunteer organization. If you can organize volunteer volunteers around different topics and that a lot more can get done. I'm going to talk a little bit about why we're talking about committees right now but let me just quickly go through what our standing committees are in in. I won't read these, you and yourself, but the field trips committee organizes our field trips, they find people to lead field trips they find new areas to go for field trips. And the more members we have on that committee, the more active it can be. The programs committee, which is one committee one committee in the, in the bylaws that the chair person of that is the vice president of the society so the Heidi is our chair of the programs committee, and they do a lot they plan and do a lot of local events for the committee and we talked about several of them, the spring and fall membership meeting wildflower weekend, the symposium and workshops. So, and there is always a bit of work available for members of that committee. The newsletter committee. It's responsible for the publication of the ladies flipper newsletter. And we have a, they beside the behind the scenes, they develop things such as authors guidelines and submission guidelines for the newsletter, and so forth. I noticed, Susan. You joined came to the meeting just a little bit late so do you want to say anything about the newsletter. Can you hear me. Yes. Probably not because they have their entire. Okay, we talked together so much that I know you covered everything that was important I trust you completely. Okay, thank you Susan. Everyone that was laryngitis. Susan Harkins or editor of the newsletter. The plant conservation committee is one that Tara has a lot of personal interest in it's an area that she has taken the lead in. So, this is a committee that can do a lot more than it currently is and I know, Tara has some visions of what, what such a committee could do. So, this is a, that's a committee we're going to, going to have to get, get much more active. The committee that I'm chair of talked about that, mainly keeping our data base organized. Maintain the mailing list on a mail champ that sends stuff out to everybody, and occasionally do member drives certification program. Tara, if you don't mind, say just a couple things about the certification process, what certifications had done in the past and what we'd like to do going forward. Yeah, so I'm trying to remember the years I think it was between 2008 and 2014 for like six or seven years. Every year, we held a native plant stewardship certification program. It was part course that we offered throughout the year that dealt with all the issues that you would need, need to know to restore native plants on on your property or on natural areas so there was courses on natural communities across Kentucky, a general native plants identification course and invasive species and management course, a native plant gardening and seed collection course, then we would have actual like field trips for, you know, invasive and, and, and, and things like that so that was a six port course and then at the end, whenever you completed all the course you got a certification. I know in that it was a very successful program that we had over I think 100 and 15 or so folks that that went through the entire course got the certification it was a combination of students we had a lot of students we had a lot of consultants, a lot of consultants, and then a lot of just, you know, general citizen scientists and amateur type botanist that just want to learn more. So, really successful program. It kind of stalled over the past few years, primarily because I taught the natural community and plant identification course but several of the other courses that that we had Mary Carol Cooper taught our native plant gardening course and she passed away several years ago and she also helped move that program along so we just haven't really gotten it back organized in 20 in the beginning of 2020 we read really high hopes of starting that program again, and then coven hit we even had gone so far as to, you know, have some some folks interested in, and, and coordinating that program with us but we just haven't gotten it back together again. That's definitely something that that we would like to do and I think that there's a need for that within the state. But yeah, that's so that's kind of that that in the nutshell so if you're if anyone is interested in helping push push that again. That would be great that the one thing that we didn't do with that program and it went on for six or seven years but you know we had gathered so many trained folks at that point. We really needed to unleash them on all of our different projects that that needed help like adopting certain areas for native plant restoration or rare plant monitoring. And then connect the graduates of that class with specific projects to kind of lead and move forward so. So, we, we, yeah, we hope to get it going again. Thanks chair. Oh and the outreach committee is basically in charge of getting out educating spreading the mission of the society to groups to schools to gardeners group master gardeners groups through educational programs through talks through educational materials and all that. And that's an area where there's a lot of interest but needs a lot of hands to help so there's going to be a little bit more about how you can get involved in these things in just a minute here so the strategic planning committee is responsible for developing long term strategy. Plans, and then for the society and then developing action plans for that. And we had a really good initial strategic planning committee meeting back in February at the end of February of 2020. We talked about it just went really well there was about 25 people involved. Members of society, we talked about a lot of things strengths and weaknesses challenges and opportunities. And we were coming out of there with a plan to now move forward. And then guess what COVID hit. And interestingly enough, global pandemic was not one of the challenges we had considered in our strategic planning process. So the strategic planning process was basically on hold. And now that we seem to be coming out of the pandemic. Hopefully we can get that going again and and move forward in the long term. And then finally the last committee website and social media. This committee's maintains our internet presence. Right now we have the website of which I'm currently the webmaster. We have a Facebook page and a Facebook group. We have an Instagram account, which are departing secretary Emily. Pretty much ran so we're going to be looking for somebody to help run the Instagram account. We've now got a YouTube channel. And so we'll be looking for people to kind of come on board to help us expand this committee and do some of those things. The next steps what we what we hope to do over the next several months is we're going to poll you and and all the rest of our membership. Explain some of the things that committees do and try to see how many people or who is interested in which committee out there. I know when you join or renew we have on our membership form where your interests lie and where you might like to help. But, and we really appreciate that input and that's where we get a list of people to reach out to, but this one we're going to ask people to simply indicate one committee that they'd like to help out at. And hopefully this winter for every one of our committees we can get a two or three or more members willing to participate. And maybe one nice good thing to come out of the pandemic is one of the big problems with committees in volunteer organizations is everybody's busy and has a life outside of the society there. And most of them are volunteering for multiple organizations as I'm sure you all are so getting together to discuss committee business was always a challenge. And the pandemic showed us that we've got this technology we're using right now, which can really help to move that committee work of getting together to see each other face to face and discuss things in general. And then a lot of the work can then be taken care of in emails and so on and so forth. So our goal this winter is to find fine recruit people for each of the committees, and then for each of the committees have a zoom organizational planning committee, and then hopefully they'll, the committees will take off so okay I guess we're open for questions and I'll stop sharing and we can see each other, everybody. Okay, well, unless there are. Are there any questions at all. Tara you want to say goodbye to everybody and call and wrap it up. I really appreciate everyone given their time today on Saturday on on this nice beautiful fall day. I hope you get had a chance to get out and enjoy your day and continue to enjoy it afterwards but yeah I'd like Jeff said he's going to be sending an email to, to everybody. And, and please get involved or reach out to us if you have any ideas or questions or comments about any of the things that we talked about or any ideas that you may have as a member that we can do as an organization to be more effective or efficient or to reach our missions. But yeah it's it's all about building up new leadership within our organization and, and, and bring together all our, our botanical community so. Yeah, we need help. So, yeah, it, I guess, thanks for joining and, and you'll be hearing from us soon through email. I guess, I guess that's it.