Susan, one of our winners, with her completed barrel

Susan, one of our winners, with her beautiful, completed rain barrel

There have been many wonderful changes to the SPCA campus. One of those is the landscaping around our Medical Center, Adoption Center and new Education and Administration Center. This completed beautification project has increased our water usage greatly. To help lessen the demand on our water supply, we have recently acquired six 55-gallon rain barrels with the help of an anonymous donor.   Placing these rain barrels underneath our gutters can provide a barrel full of rain water in a downpour, which in turn can be used in practical ways such as watering our new Florida-friendly plants and flowers!

Instead of placing these plain, “boring”, blue barrels out right away, we held a contest among our volunteers to decorate them with the SPCA logo and mission in mind. Over 20 designs were submitted, and on May 18 the Board of Directors voted on those submitted by: Lena Eldridge, Susan Schenk, Karen Mitchell and Emily Hendricks (she had 3 winning designs!).  Currently, the winning volunteers are painting the barrels and they will soon be collecting rain drops and out for all of our visitors to see.  We would like to say a special thank you to all of those who took the time to submit a design for us, and congratulations to our winners!