AMHERST, CAMPBELL and LYNCHBURG Karen Sacasky	President/Coordinator Ken Smith recently traveled to Washington D.C. to accept a national award from Keep America Beautiful on behalf of Hill City Master Gardeners and Citizens for a Clean Lynchburg, Inc. As part of the education, an MTD Yard Man Vac was demonstrated to the public and Master Gardeners talked about how to turn yard waste into mulch or compost. This project won nationally as Best Sponsor Support for KAB’s Great American Cleanup. During the fall, we have been involved in a new project redesigning the entrance gardens at Amherst County High School. Technical students, administration and faculty worked under the direction of Master Gardeners to remove all old, overgrown plants and replace them with a more pleasing combination of plant material. Our Extension Agent invited a few Master Gardeners to participate in a meeting with Dr. Pat Sobrero when she visited our Extension Office in the fall. We certainly enjoyed meeting our new VCE Director.
CHESAPEAKE Pinky Derieux	The Eighth Heritage Arts Festival took place on November 6 and 7. CMGVs displayed a farm theme consisting of a barn façade decorated with hay bales, pumpkins, gourds, mums and pansies. As a prelude to the Festival, Virginia Dare Soil and Water Conservation District held Farm Days At the Heritage site on November 5. 400 first-grade students, teachers and parents toured eight hands-on educational stations where they learned about the many facets of agriculture and natural resource conservation. CMGVs provided a craft station and an interactive skit called “Who Polluted the Chesapeake Bay New intern training classes will begin on January 25 with a class of 31 interns. Agent interviews were conducted on December 3 and an offer has been extended. We anxiously look forward to the services of a new agent.
FAIRFAX George Graine	Outreach. We are in process of developing a series of articles to help citizens in Fairfax County with their gardening efforts. This ambitious idea is designed to offer homeowner/civic associations horticultural articles for inclusion in their in-house publications such as newsletters. Diagnostic Laboratory (Jan-Oct 2004). The laboratory facility is supervised by our Extension Agent. Eleven MGs identify specimens and record results. Three MGs provide administrative support. 633 samples were evaluated and reported on. Summary of diagnostic results by percent: Disease (26), Insect (21), Environmental/Cultural (13), Insect ID (12), Plant ID (18), Miscellaneous (10). Training Update. In 2005 we will have ten one day/week classes and they will be repeated on the same evening starting in January. 205 students have signed up for training. NoVaMGCaucus. On October 15, Fairfax was host to 15 Extension Agents, other VaTech employees, and MGs from Fairfax/Greenspring, Arlington-Alexandria, Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier.
FAUQUIER Linda Pranke	Activities of the Fauquier County Master Gardener Association are dwindling with fall and the coming of winter. The demonstration gardens have been put to bed and Farmers' Market has shut down. Even our Phone Hot Line has quieted after a growing season in which calls almost doubled from last year. We're happy to report that a new Master Gardener training class is well underway with 24 new trainees. After a challenging year in which we often struggled to meet commitments without help from a new class, we look forward to their help next year.
FLUVANNA Pat Platt	The Children’s Garden at Central Elementary has been harvested, sunflowers seeds brought in for winter bird feedings and new indoor projects emerged for our weekly visits to the classroom. The Horticultural Help Desk committee wrapped up the final details from the first season of successful of operations. The newest Master Gardener class graduated 23 students giving us many more pairs of willing volunteer hands. Programs at our meetings included area forester, Steve Pence who discussed many aspects of trees in our area. Master Gardener, Rosalyn Koontz presented a wonderful program on growing garlic and Fluvanna Extension Agent, Scott Byars talked about ponds. Check out our website at: www.FluvannaMG.org.
GLOUCESTER Bonnie Bernard	We continue to keep busy with the Horticulture Help Line and Therapy. In January we will move our Horticulture Help Line from the VA Tech Cooperative Extension Office to the new Gloucester Library one day a week to provide more visibility and better service to the community. Recently Master Gardener Jane Smith assisted the Abington Elementary School pre-school with an SOL planting activity. December’s meeting found us welcoming eight new enthusiastic interns ready to share their newfound skills and knowledge to our program. In February we will again man a booth at Gloucester’s Celebrate Families. Since this activity is geared for families especially children we have decided to make “poisonous plants” our main theme. We will run a computer slide program throughout the day profiling our activities throughout the year.
GOOCHLAND-POWHATAN Alexandria Haselman/ Chuck Miller	We held our annual Transition meeting in Nov. to begin the process of the old officers turning over the jobs to the newly elected officers.  Our volunteer coordinator Joe Florino will be replaced in January by coordinators Howard Sheppard and Phil Morris.  Dave Close will be our featured speaker at our January meeting . We have set our sights on a Spring Family Garden Fair (Extravaganza) for Saturday, April 30, 2005.  Three other projects, Invasive Species, MG Calendar and the Amelia County Library should be completed in 2005. We will also continue our Green and Clean Program, which reaches out to the community.  For the December VMGA meeting we borrowed the VCE van and had 5 GPMGA members in attendance at the meeting including our present coordinator.
HALIFAX (Southside Master Gardeners) Grace Elliott	We had a Fair booth "Good Bugs, Bad Bugs" which took 1st place, Civic Club presentations in Halifax County and three in Mecklenburg County. The Landscape committee assisted in landscape planning at three schools and one church. The Hortline was manned by 29 MG's for 353 hours of volunteer time.
HANOVER Pamela Armstrong	Colleen Calderwood was appointed the full-time Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent for Hanover County effective November 15,2004. This position includes the role of Master Gardener Coordinator.
MATHEWS Jo Anna Brown	The Mathews Master Gardeners sponsored a fall training session at the Mathews Memorial Library. Fourteen trainees from Mathews, Middlesex and Gloucester successfully completed the course. This is the first time that classes have been held in Mathews, but we are hoping to alternate with Middlesex, and possibly Gloucester in the future. We will again sponsor a Winter Lecture Series. The speakers will be: January 24 - Bob Goodhart, on Camellias, the Perfect Plant.    February 17- Bill Roberts, Bayscaping. March 29 - Andy Hankins, Organic Vegetable Gardening. The lectures are held at Kingston Parish in Mathews, and are free and open to the public.
NORTHERN NECK Jinny Estell	On November 9^th we completed the Final Exam for our 2004 Master Gardener Training and have added 14 Master Gardener Interns to our group During our last SUMS program at Lancaster Elementary School (the week before Thanksgiving break) the children and an adult of their choosing created holiday table decorations. Hort Therapy at Rappahannock-Westminster-Cantebury continues with indoor activities, the last of which was making treats for the birds to hang in the garden and outside of residents’ windows. We are working on Gardening in the Northern Neck, our spring public education program, titled “ A Beauty or A Beast” which will be held on Saturday, April 9^th at Chesapeake Academy in Irvington. The focus of the all day program will be shoreline management for homeowners. There will be three discussions: Where the land meets the Water, Slopes and Banks, and The Uplands surrounding your House
PRINCE WILLIAM Pat Reilly	MGs measured and sampled soil of a total of 531,642 square feet (12.19 acres) for 55 nutrient management plans in 1^st quarter, bringing the total since program inception to 12,843,939 square feet. The MG Class of ’04 has achieved 100% certification.
ROANOKE Kathryn Debnar	MG Training Certificates were awarded to 16 new interns.  Mentors will be assigned before our first scheduled meeting of the New Year, which will be January 4th.  The event was a potluck supper at the local nursing home where our hort therapy volunteer activities are held.  Our annual December meeting is a dinner out, where we had a record 52 attendees Roanoke would like to send a special thank you to the Prince William folks who shared some of their unit expertise with our incoming VP, Virginia Craig.
ROCKBRIDGE AREA Ted Jenks	In November the Master Gardeners of the Buena Vista Visitors Center demonstration project conducted a tree and shrub pruning demonstration. Although attendance was poor those present were attentive and appreciative. The Rockbridge area Virginia Cooperative Extension office was a local host to the National Sudden Oak Death Training Teleconference on October 26, 2004. About a dozen local Master Gardeners, Forest Service, and area Tree specialists attended. Preparations are nearly complete for our next training class, which will begin in January.
VIRGINIA BEACH Liz Maurer	Annual Project Review- we recently completed our review of all Virginia Beach projects for volunteer hours. All projects were continued and we added two new projects. 1. Adam Thoroughgood House Gardens. A historical house built in 1621. Master Gardeners will rebuild and maintain the gardens with native plants. 2. School tours of the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center Display Gardens and Arboretum. This is the formalization and expansion of an existing program. Master Gardener Appreciation Picnic in October with David Close and family in attendance as our guests. Mother Nature required us to use a greenhouse for the picnic. Weed Seminar in October for VBMGs conducted by Dr. Jeff Derr, Va Tech (HRAREC) and Master Gardener, Sherry Kerns, MS Horticulture, Va Tech.
WISE COUNTY (Sourhwest Master Gardeners) Barbara Hayes	Joyce Giles did a workshop on Christmas centerpieces at our meeting in December. In January we will continue to be involved in the wetlands conservation effort at Saint Paul High School called the Extona project.
YORK Jackie Lohr	We welcomed our new Master Gardeners at our November general meeting/plant exchange. Our Junior Master Gardener program is now in three schools. The program has a new website - "a fun site for York County’s youth." It’s reached by clicking on the ladybug on our VCE website. We recently completed our annual Christmas decoration of the exterior of the Digges House in Yorktown. Some of us are planning to act as moderators for Christopher Newport University’s 2005 Garden Symposium on April 16. We’re looking forward to our pruning training in January in preparation for our annual general public pruning seminars. As always, we continue to work in the learning garden.