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On Sunday evening, January 10, several friends lingered at Mount Ecclesia after the Chapel Service and two afternoon lectures, for Dolores Demick’s 99th birthday.  Her birthday would not actually be until January 12, but this was an opportunity to give recognition and have a little celebration with birthday cake and lighted candles while friends were present to recognize her special day.  Dolores ate her cake and seemed to enjoy it.

She thanked everyone for coming and invited us to come again.   Richard and Amelia H, Jean d, Patricia T, Madeline B, Massimo D (visiting from Italy), Angela P, and I all wished her a Happy Birthday, remarking on her wonderful achievement of 99 years and many, many years of service to the Fellowship.  Not quite a week later, in the early morning of January 16, Dolores must have decided that she had had enough birthdays.  She parted from us to join the others who had gone before her, all of whom remain pleasantly in our memories.

In the 1970’s, Dolores and her sister, Juana, came from Puerto Rico to live and work at the Fellowship. Dolores married Van D in 1982.  Dolores’s sister  predeceased her, and her husband died in 2002, but Dolores stayed on and continued to work in the Healing Department for several more years, until she retired in her 93rd year.

Dolores is survived by a stepdaughter, Mary Elizabeth R, a niece Angela in Florida, a nephew Francisco in Puerto Rico, and a grand niece with children in Canada.  A well-attended Memorial Service was held on January 24 in the Pro-Ecclesia Chapel with a happy gathering of friends wishing her Godspeed.

The second uncommon occurrence can best be told with a letter that we sent to the director of horticulture at San Diego Botanical Gardens

Dear Mr. Ehrlinger,

In 2002 and 2003 my husband and I were in your docent program.  We lived at the time in Oceanside and worked at The Rosicrucian Fellowship.  At the end of one of your sales, you generously donated many plants to the Fellowship for the memorial garden that my husband was building at the RF headquarters at 2222 Mission Avenue, Oceanside.

            The plant, Mediterranean Spurge, “Humpty Dumpty” or Euphorbia characias subsp. Wulfenii, is what I believe to be in the photo in the left foreground of the bigger plant.  It or its parent may have come from SDBG.

The parent produced seed, evidently, and now there is a very interesting growth on one of the offspring which you will see in the second photo.  These pictures were taken a week ago when I was in Oceanside, visiting from Wisconsin.  This strange growth may not be unusual, but if it is, I thought perhaps it would be of interest to you.

I am no botanist, but it brings to mind the rogue growth of a witch’s broom and of their value in propagation for creating dwarf specimens.   

The odd branching with the serpentine edge that has the dense fringe of little leaves was very interesting to me.

Is this a rare anomaly or just a common occurrence?

Mr. Ehrlinger responded:

Hello

Yes, that is quite interesting.

It is a rare witches’ broom anomaly that I haven’t seen before.

Thanks for the photo!

Dave  Ehrlinger

Director of Horticulture

San Diego Botanic Garden

P.O. Box 230005

Encinitas, CA 92023-0005 

            As long as you use asexual reproduction, (vegetative propagation) you can multiply a new organism true to form.   If it is successful it could be a new species that might be sold to a large nursery company.   It has a very distinctive and attractive form.

            Ken R and I, with the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society, had visited a man in Iowa several years ago who specialized in propagation from hard-to-find witches’ brooms and created new species from them.  Ken actually persuaded the man to part with one of his “babies” which was a dwarf pine that he had named the ‘Saint Clare,’ and had propagated from the witch’s broom found in a standard sized pine.  The new dwarf specimen, one of about 15 that the man was able to extract from the broom, still grows in its tiny size where Ken planted it in our yard.  This was where I learned about witches’ brooms.

            Jean d recommended Seth R, a volunteer worker at Mount Ecclesia who has an interest in plants, to be God’s co-creator to see if he can produce a new species from Euphorbia characias.  We will inform you of all positive developments. 

Finally, in the third uncommon development, it may have been only a few minutes after Angela P began her new volunteer occupation in the Business Office at Mount Ecclesia when a woman came through the door announcing that she wanted to buy some books.  She wanted one copy of every book that Augusta Heindel wrote.  Angela scurried to find the price list and to determine if there is any other book in print by Mrs. Heindel other than “Memoirs.”

“Memoirs” seemed to be it, and the woman started talking about how she had possessed all of Augusta’s books, 3 or 4 of them, and also some mementos of her great aunt, but all had been lost by happenstance.

“Her great aunt?”

Our visitor, K. Curliss of Joshua Tree, California, informed us that she is the grand niece of Augusta Heindel!  Her grandmother was Augusta’s sister, Louisa Foss Brockway.  Almost immediately, the camera jumped out of the bag, and, “click,” we got a picture of Angela selling Mrs. Heindel’s book to Mrs. Heindel’s grand niece.  Kathleen Louise May Curliss, who now goes by K. Curliss, left with her new copy of Memoirs and with The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception.

Tags: Augusta Heindel, Dolores Demick, Mount Ecclesia