Giri Guide Notes.

Southland Times, Issue 20014, 30 October 1926, Page 23

Giri Guide Notes.

(By “Tenderfoot.”) Thursday, October 28. Everyone must admit that the Guide Rally on Monday was a huge success. The weather was all that we could possibly have wished for, the large number of enthusiastic, happy-hearted guides did the rest. The different racing events during the day took so much time that it was impossible to have the songs and dances as we originally intended, but that will come next time. Of course the wonderful surprise of the day was the beautiful cup presented by Mrs J. L. Watson, to the champion company, wasn’t it? High School Company was fortunate in gaining the highest number of points this time, but I’m sure the other companies have quite decided that the cup shall not stay longer than one year in their possession. Every guide must feel very grateful to Mrs Watson for the great interest she has taken in guiding. The winners of the different events on Monday were— Throwing the Cricket Ball: J. McGregor 1, R. McKenzie 2. Relay Race: High School 1, Orepuki 2. 75 Yards: J. Foster 1, M. Wall 2. 100 Yards: N. Clare 1, A. Watson 2. Skipping: lola Hannah. Whistling: Helen Fox and Helen Andrews. Blindfold Driving: Nancy Clare 1, Clare Camm 2. High Jump (Junior): M. Macdonald 1. High Jump (Senior): C. Camm 1. Long Jump (Junior): Nancy McLean 1. Long Jump (Senior) : V. McKenzie 1. Knot Race: St. Aidan’s 1. Potato Race: N. Clare 1. Tunnel Ball: Orepuki 1. Overhead Ball: St. Aidan’s 1. The Brownies were quite as keen and enthusiastic as the Guides, and their sports were quite as successful. COMPANY NOTES. A member of the High School Company writes— All the patrols of the Southland Girls’ High School “A” Company are at present very busy. They are keenly engaged in a competition, the object of which is to raise as much money as possible from 2/6. On October 12 we were inspected by Provincial Commissioner Andrews and District Commissioner Watson, while on Saturday, October 9, some members of the A Company walked over to Otatara and spent a very happy day.

The St. Andrew’s Girl Guides’ Company held their weekly meeting on Friday, the 22nd, at 6.30 p.m. All Guides were present. We tried a new folk dance and several new Guide songs. The different patrols then went through some of their second-class work. Altogether a very enjoyable and profitable evening was spent. At the St. Aidan’s Girl Guide Parade on Tuesday, October 19, two little Brownie recruits were enrolled by the Guide Captain, the ceremony being performed in the midst of the Guide Horse Shoe. A vote of thanks was passed to the Girl Guide Committee, who were in attendance, for the fine work that they had done for both the Guides and Brownies. At the previous meeting on Tuesday, October 12, the Provincial Commissioner was present, and during the course of the evening a general inspection was held. On Tuesday, November 2, the annual Girl Guide meeting is to be held in the Women’s Club rooms. All members of the local association, company committees and all interested in Guide work are invited to attend. BROWNIE NATURE STORY. HONEY FOR SALE. I like honey—don’t you? I like to think, when I am eating it, that every single drop was once buried deep down in the heart of a flower, and I sometimes wonder what the flowers in the vase opposite would say if they knew it was their honey I was eating. I don’t expect they would mind because, after all, it wasn’t any good to them, so, like all sensible folk who have got goods to dispose of, they advertised. All the gay colours and graceful shapes and sweet scents are not there simply to beautify our houses and gardens and give poets something to write about. They have a definite purpose—they are there to attract customers. And I leave you to decide whose way of advertising you like best—the lily’s or the grocer’s! You have only to sit down beside a snapdragon or convolvulus flower on a warm sunny day to find out who are the customers.

Some plants are always taking half-holi-days. You will notice a big yellow weed, rather like dandelion, which always shuts up its flowers’ shop at noon. Other flowers cater for night-customers. Now, bright colours are no good at night, so they advertise with pale-coloured petals, which gleam in the darkness almost like white lamps. Do you know what the flowers ask for in return for their honey? Have you ever smelt a lily so close that your nose was all covered with yellow dust ? I expect you have, heaps of times. This dust is very precious, indeed no plant can make its seed without it, so you can imagine how valuable it is. Now, strangely enough, all plants prefer to exchange their own pollen-dust with their neighbour, rather than use their own pollen for their own seed.

So bees and other insect customers, in return for the honey, carry away the pollen and deposit it on a neighbouring flower. They are the carriers, the errand boys of the floral world.

If you hadn’t poked your nose into the flower and carried away the pollen, a bee would probably have come. and taken it away on its legs. “O, velvet bee, you’re a dusty fellow,

You’ve powdered your legs with gold,” says the poetry book. However, as you have taken the pollen, it is a pity you are not small enough to run along the dim flower-corridor into the little honeychamber at the end, and claim your sweet reward. There are certain horrid little insects, which instead of entering the flower the proper way, and taking away the pollen, break straight into the honey-chamber and steal the honey. Don’t you think it’s very mean of them?

I don’t expect you ever thought there was so much industry going on inside each quiet, gentle-flower, did you? But don’t you always find that it is the people who do their work with the least fuss who get through the most?

EXTRACTS FROM SPEECH BY GREAT BROWN OWL OF AMERICA.

It is difficult, isn’t it, to talk very long about Brownies without mentioning imagination. It sometimes seems to, me that the world nowadays is suffering from a sort of slow atrophy of the imagination. It’s such a great power, and it’s going to waste in so many of us. Perhaps it’s worse with us in America; we’ve less tradition, and tradition is such fine food for the imagination.

Imagination is such a huge word. I like to think that part of it almost spells “magic,” and magic can have so many wonderful interpretations—from our “let’s pretend” in the Pack, all the way up to that rare enlightening vision that makes us find fun and joy and beauty all along the way.

American Brownies, I think, find those first steps in magic rather difficult. They are such sophisticated little mortals: what with the cineqia, and the radio, and the elaborate toys, such a lot of imagining is done for them. They’re not thrown on their own resources to find the joy of using their heads and hands. And- of course that’s where the Pack stands ready to help. There’s always a danger of thrusting too much magic at them, isn’t there? but in America I think we’re more apt to suffer from the opposite extreme; that of (oo much practicality, and, above all, too much the pedantic point of view. By that I don’t mean that the teacher does not make a good Brown Owl—the true teacher is comrade and friend and leader always. I’m thinking of the old/fashioned “school mistress” who sees in her Pack only one more class. It must be quite difficult to be a school teacher and a Brown Owl and to do both well, the school mistress point of view is so apt to trip up the Brown Owl.

The truth of the matter is that a Brown Owl is born and not made, and although training will help her tremendously, in any case, it cannot create in her those characteristics which are so essential.