No, no, it can't be December already!

All our pups go home today, then it'll just be ours. After a week of contractors working on the floor, and a houseful of dogs, I'm ready for a day or so of quiet.

I got out to do black Friday shopping. Made it to PetSmart (for the "kids", Lowes (for their 50 cent poinsettias) and Walmart (waste of time looking for a tv), then back home in 2 hours. Still trying to decide what to get my husband. His only hobby is video games andhe has everything he needs for that, so I'm stumped. Honestly, I just suck at buying for anyone over the age of 12.

Adults are hard to buy for, because we tend to (at least men do) just go buy what we want, thus thwarting the gift-giver.
However, as another gamer, a minor gift (or not so minor depending on what you buy), keyboards or mice or controllers (depending on what he uses) fail every now and then, and a mad rush must be made to the local store to replace them so gaming can continue. Does this give you an idea? Beware that sometimes personal touch is required though, I mean I buy a mouse based on how well it fits/feels to my hand.

Hi All!

I have nothing to report about the garden.

Tomorrow I'll clean up the property from those insane winds. And look for the lid to the compost bin. Josi's doghouse collapsed in the wind. It's not an igloo, but it's made from plastic like an igloo, only it has a more traditional style. She is like Snoopy and likes to sit on top of it. Hopefully Tom can use some of that liquid nails stuff and put it back together. I can't believe the wind did that! The dogs haven't been spending much time outdoors because of the rain and cold so she hasn't needed it.

Tom was able to clear the kitchen sink drain by going to the roof and doing something with a vent. I don't understand, I'm just glad it's fixed.

We had a good Thanksgiving and a fun Black Friday. Tom and I go to breakfast on Black Friday and pick up our keepsake ornaments from Hallmark at Sooner Mall. I also make my yearly trip to Bath and Body Works for the holiday hand soaps and candles. I also get a bottle of Twisted Peppermint bath soap. It really is a tradition for me. During the rest of the year I use the more "healthy" products, but it's not December if I can't go to Bath and Body Works to get those items. It's a tradition.

It was sorta funny that the Melaleuca pumpkin body wash lasted exactly thru Thanksgiving.

The tree is up and decorated. I love it. Hopefully the cats won't destroy it. They're being fairly good.

I'll decorate the rest of the house tomorrow.

And then I need to CLEAN....deep clean. I like to do that in December and then again in the spring.

I'm trying not to think too deeply about Garden 2020. It makes me anxious and I want to enjoy this time...even though it's dark and cold. There's a purpose in this time too.

Thanks for the suggestions, dbarron. I shouldn't complain, he says the same thing about me. Holidays were never a priority in his family, so it's difficult for him to grasp the significance in spending thought to pick out something for another person. He tries, though, I'll give him that.

Going through my seed box to thin out all the stuff I don't plan on growing this year. Some have dates from 2001, so I may try them just to get fresh seeds. If they don't grow, I'm not out anything.

Plan is to haul out all the christmas stuff this week & see what all I can put up in dog friendly zones.

dbarron, I know! It snuck right up on us, didn't it? Even the grandchildren, aged 5 and 10, expressed dismay and said it couldn't possibly be December already. It just feels wrong to jump right from Thanksgiving to December in just a couple of days.

The good news is that usually lots of seed catalogs start arriving in December. I got another one today---Seeds 'N Such.

Jen, Men can be hard to buy for. Tim either just buys what he wants himself or he says he doesn't need or want anything, which does not give me much to go on, does it? Sometimes I just tell him "I am going to buy you a 'whatever' for Christmas, so if that is not something you want, tell me now and then tell me what you do want." Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. At least that way, though, he cannot complain about not liking his gift because he had a chance to tell me he didn't want it before I bought it. I have surprised him with a few things over the years. Long, long ago with Garmin GPS jogging trackers were brand new (second year on the market, I think), I surprised him with one and he adored it. That was in his marathon-running years and he really did use it. Another year I bought him a home-brewing kit to brew his own beer and he had more fun than you could believe with that. I didn't buy one of those little kits they sell at Bed, Bath and Beyond or whoever---I bought direct from a home brewing supply store and got him tons and tons of stuff. He had a lot of fun making his own beer. Another year I got him some really warm outdoor clothing from Duluth Trading Company, and he wears that stuff all the time in winter. Some years, though, he has said he didn't want or need anything and I couldn't come up with anything particularly inspiring on my own either, so he got something practical like heavyweight flannel shirts or thermal long johns or new work boots. This year I have no idea. Well, I have one idea. He needs a new chain saw, and I want for him to have one because there's some trees and shrubs I want him to cut down as part of our landscape renovations. Since I have no idea what chain saw he would like, I think I'll have to drag him to a store and have him pick out his own.

Jennifer, The wind was so hard on your place this time.

I'm glad Tom got the drain fixed.

On Black Friday we did a little bit of easy shopping (nothing special, nothing on sale for Black Friday) in the morning, and the girls came over in the evening to spend the weekend. So, on Saturday, we took the girls to the quaint little shops in downtown Gainesville, TX, on the courthouse square, and taught them about buying locally on Small Business Saturday, an idea that totally enchanted them. They loved walking through the beautifully decorated central business district carrying their little bags from the boutiques and antique stores, and they loved chatting with the business owners and their employees in all the little shops. Then it was off to the movies for Frozen II. Could two little girls have had a more perfect Saturday? lol. On Sunday we took them to Cabela's in Fort Worth, and our sole purpose really was to let them look at all the wild animals (had to explain what taxidermy is) in the various dioramas. They loved all of them and spent forever looking at them and discussing the various animals, and Lillie described it as being like a museum in a store, which she thoroughly loved. Then....we reached the Africa section with its elephants, lions, hyenas and such and the two of them thought that The Lion King had come to life just for them. After that, it didn't matter how we spent the rest of the day because they were floating on air after their wonderful experience at Cabela's. We did buy one sweatshirt while we were there, and a Hershey's Chocolate Gingerbread House kit. We had fun, but by the time the kids left this morning (Chris picked them up on his way home from his 24-hour shift at the fire station), I was totally exhausted. They are great kids, but highly energetic and they keep me busy, but a good kind of busy. The only bad thing about the holiday weekend is that I-35 was a total wall-to-wall backed up mess the whole time, and we cannot go anywhere from here without getting on I-35. We quickly learned that once we crossed the Red River into Texas, it was smart to get off the interstate and travel the back roads because at least the traffic was moving. It wasn't that there were a whole lot of wrecks, just that traffic was very, very heavy and moving slowly.

I bought a gorgeous poinsettia plant at Costco on Saturday because the Ft. Worth Costco is pretty close to Cabela's. The Poinsettia is about 32-34" tall and a couple of feet wide and is just thick, lush and gorgeous. A lot of thought and care (and engineering!) went into packaging these large poinsettias. They were in a nice big plastic pot with one of those attached trellises that looks like a short tomato cage. The trellis is about a foot tall above the top of the pot. The bottom of the pot is wrapped in foil as poinsettias usually are. However, for the rest of this very tall plant, they had what looked like your standard cellophane plant/bouquet wrap. When I took it off, though, you could see that the cellophane was only the top foot or so, and sewn or glued to it, to cover the couple of feet beneath the cellophane and thence down to the pot was actually one of the floating row covers with little perforations in it to allow air flow. I've had this kind before, and I think mine was Reemay. I didn't even realize it was there until I took the cellophane off the pot, but it did make sense. I had worried about the plants having fungal issues from poor air flow when I saw each one was wrapped in florist's cellophane, but obviously they put a lot of thought into encouraging good air flow while the plants still were on store shelves (big, huge, rolling racks). This is the first time I've seen a row cover fabric used to wrap pots on store shelves.

The weather was gorgeous today. When I was outside this morning, I saw a hawk headed straight for our yard the minute I let the chickens out. Well, I didn't have to worry about the chickens because the Crow air force, busy gobbling up cracked corn that I put out for the mourning doves, rose up into the air, intercepted the red-tailed hawk, squawking and carrying on and harassing it without mercy, and then they escorted it northwest a great distance until it was pretty much out of sight. I don't believe for one second that the crows were setting out to deliberately protect the chickens, but the hawks are territorial and don't tolerate either owls or hawks hanging around "their" property where they feast daily on "their" cracked corn. The result? Even when I think the crows are not around because I do not see them, every time a hawk, Mississippi kite or owl of any kind appears, the crows come out of nowhere like Guardian Angels and escort the predator bird away from our property. I always will feed the crows for this reason, and it is a good thing that they and the doves peacefully share the cracked corn.

Acorns are annoying. There. I said it. The mast crop is huge this year and we have acorns everywhere because almost all the trees in our yard are oaks of one kind or another, and the ones that aren't oaks are pecans, which also have a great crop this year. The bur acorns are the big issue because when you step on one of them it is like stepping on a ping pong ball or something similar in size, and there's dozens and dozens of them on the ground beneath every bur oak. The pin oaks, post oaks and Shumard red oaks all produce smaller acorns that aren't so hard to walk on. I guess tomorrow I need to rake up a lot of acorns. One thought about all the acorns that comes to mind is that they provide a bountiful feast for voles, so a great mast year is usually followed by a huge vole year. I don't want a huge vole population next year, but I bet we will have one. When there's lots of voles, there's lots of snakes showing up to feed on them...I'm starting to get a headache thinking about gardening in 2020 with an excessive number of voles around.

The kittens are at the cutest stage ever. They play-fight, often hopping sideways trying to intimidate one another. They roll, tumble, climb, jump, fall and even raise up on their hind legs to play-fight one another. It is hilarious. They are climbing over the top of their kitty playpen now, so it isn't really containing them and keeping them in place now. I put them upstairs in the girls' room a lot because I wouldn't get anything done if they were downstairs with me all the time---I'd just sit and watch them being cute and adorable and I wouldn't get anything accomplished all day long. I am staying pretty busy transitioning them to Kitten Milk Replacer II, which is a weaning food to be lapped up from a shallow dish instead of fed by a bottle, and also continuing the transition to canned kitten food. At first, I really had to water it down to a form of gruel they could lap up pretty easily, but each day now I am making it a bit thicker than the day before. They tolerate change well if you do it in gradual stages. Today I introduced dry kitten food and they were pretty unimpressed to say the least, but then they weren't that crazy about canned kitten food the first time they had it either.

The amaryllis flowers that were in bloom last week are fading fast now. I hate that. I wish the flowers lasted a bit longer than they do.

While the nights still are cold (28 degrees last night seems excessively cold to me for early December), at least the days are sunny and somewhat warm. I think the next few days warm up a bit more than today. All you have to do, though, is turn on the TV news and look at all that snow and cold weather in other parts of the USA and it gives you a great appreciation for a sunny, warm, 55 or 60-degree day.

Dawn

Y'all who are saying you can't find gift ideas for your man--I'm sorry. Tom has a list a mile long. haha! It does annoy me when he buys something for himself in December...I'm like, "I could've gotten that for you!". BUT, there's always something he wants. Do your guys like to grill? Get tools for that OR even better, there's a ton of rubs and spices meant for grilling and/or smoking food. I could wrap up a big box of those and he would be thrilled. A lot of the BBQ people that he follows, have their own rubs and he is so into trying them all.

Tom is a little unusual in that he likes clothes, cologne, masculine soaps, shoes. He also likes any type of electronic gadget. And music and books.

Dawn, it sounds like you had a perfectly lovely day with your little girls. I really miss having little ones around. Do you think that Chris and Janna want more children someday? Mason mentioned that she doesn't want kids for at least 4 years! Sigh. At this point I'm just going to have another one myself! haha.

Oh, that reminds me, Dawn. The other day I remembered that you have a tiny house that you were going to make into a garden cottage or something. Do you still have plans to do that?

Your kitties sound adorable. There's not much cuter than a kitten.

I didn't get called to sub today, so get another day off work. I'm about to head out to Hobby Lobby and to buy a gift for a coworker.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the house decorated today as well. It's mostly done. I just need a couple of things...except I don't know what I want exactly which is why I'm going to Hobby Lobby. Hopefully something there will inspire me. I want something simple that can be changed out for the seasons.

I've been studying the Totally Tomatoes catalog. I know I said I wasn't going to think about the garden (much), but maybe I'll do what some of you do. Grow just one or two of several different varieties. Normally I choose 4 varieties and have about 6 of each. And then pick up (or am gifted at SF) with a few more. I'm going to keep it to about a dozen plants this year. Maybe 15. For some reason I have a desire to try Tiny Tim. I think my Mom and a couple of friends would enjoy those. They are so tiny and can sit on their patios.

Jen, I also have a strong desire to go through my seed, but I'm going to wait until January. I think I'm out of Sungold. You've all heard me say that I'll always grow it, but now I'm thinking about trying Sunsugar and maybe a "chocolate" one.

And peppers...I don't need a ton of varieties so I'm sure I will stick with pimento and bell for sweet peppers. I want some of the hot bananas that Bruce brought to SF. I loved that pepper. And jalapenos. Maybe habanero too. My neighbor had those and they were hot and good.

Okay. Hobby Lobby will be opening soon, so I'm heading out now. I'm going to leave the chickens out and hope that I don't regret it.

Speaking of, do Mississippi Kites kill chickens, Dawn? You mentioned them in your list above.

There's so many varieties of peppers with interesting tastes...how can you pick only one (or a few) ? :)

dbarron, for some reason my palate isn't very discriminating when it comes to peppers. I tried a few different sweet peppers last year, but honestly, they all sort of taste the same to me. I do like the Ashe County pimento a lot. It's very sweet. It is my favorite sweet pepper so far.

The hot peppers are a little different to me...I can tell some difference in those. The hot banana pepper that I picked up at SF from Bruce was very good.

It's possible I haven't tried enough varieties to appreciate the difference fully. Maybe that will be something for 2021.

I need a good a Thai pepper. Thai food is one of my favorite things to cook.

But they're all just so pretty, though. The different colors look lovely in the garden.

That's true, esp a lot of the hot peppers, there's even some like the ornamental ones that turn 3-4 different colors as they mature.

Jennifer, I can see where a guy who likes to grill could have a list a mile long. We do grill, but mostly only for the two of us, so we don't go through rubs and stuff like that very quickly. It was a lot easier to shop for Tim when he was running marathons because he always needed some sort of running gear, but he got older and his knees wore out and he gave up distance running. He still runs a mile or two a day but you don't wear out running gear very quickly at that rate. Still, he is pretty easy to shop for---he doesn't really care what he gets and he likes it all. I do try to pay attention to stuff he looks at and likes so I can get it for him.

As far as I know, and they've been pretty open about this, Chris and Jana have no plans for a third child. She is in nursing school so it isn't even possible now as they have such a tight, packed schedule and she's got 2 years of nursing school left. She had her children very young---she was a teenager when Lillie was born---and I believe she is content with 2, and so is Chris. It is a good thing that Tim's dad is not alive now because I can tell you that he would pressure them heavily and constantly to have a son to carry on the family name, and that probably wouldn't go over well with the two of them, so I'm glad they don't have that sort of pressure being placed on them. We are just happy to have the two girls because after Chris' divorce 10 years ago he seemed inclined to never marry again and we figured we'd never have grandkids, so these 2 are such a blessing. Jana is the best daughter-in-law you could hope for so we are blessed all the way around. Of course, they might surprise us somewhere down the road with a third, but I'm not holding my breath and waiting for it to happen. I do remember that not long after they started dating, Chris told me "I now live in a 'My Little Pony' world" and I just laughed. He certainly understood then what he was getting himself into.

The tiny house sits downhill from our house, to the NW of it, and someday it will be a little garden house, but it is not likely to happen this year. The house isn't completely finished on the interior and I'm not in a big rush to tackle it. I think it might be a great project for Tim after he retires in a few years. We'll see. We never have much time on the weekends since the girls are with us so much, there's no time on weekdays because his commute adds 3 hours to his workday, and it is hard to get him to take a week off at all ever since he became Asst. Chief because his workload is so heavy. I don't think he's taken off a whole week except for maybe his first year as Asst Chief, and I'm not even sure about that. Even when he takes time off from work, his phone allows everyone to be in touch with him 24/7 and he can work remotely from his laptop, so it is like he is at work anyhow. (It drives me crazy---I think that time off from work really and truly ought to be time off from work.) I don't know how there ever will be time to finish the Tiny House and do something with it, but maybe one of these days.... Any time I think we are going to have available time to work on any project, it seems like wildfires start happening and then that goes on or months and months while nothing at all gets done at our house. I feel like our place would be so much further along, and our To Do list so much shorter, had he never joined the VFD way back in 2002. It isn't that I mind him being a firefighter, but I miss the spare time we had to work on projects before he became a volunteer firefighter. As it is now, he barely has time to keep up with mowing during the growing season and he never has time to help me with the heavy lifting required on garden projects, and I don't think that changes until he retires.

The kitties are precious. They are growing up so quickly. Bottle feeding is over, and that is sort of sad, but we make a point of sitting and playing with them every day and cuddling them so they will be well socialized to human contact.

I hope you found what you wanted at Hobby Lobby. It is rare that I go in there and come out empty handed, but it does happen every now and then.

There's so many tomatoes available. I've grown almost 1,000 varieties over the decades in the search for the best ones, and one thing that astonishes me is that the best ones for me mostly ended up being some that I have grown for the longest period of time. It isn't that there's nothing new under the sun, but just that all the new varieties, whether newly bred hybrids or just recently discovered open-pollinated heirlooms, are not any better than, and often not as good as, the ones I already grow and have grown for a long time. If I'd know that 15-20 years ago, I could have saved myself tons of experimentation and money. Tiny Tim is a great small plant, but the fruit wasn't anything special and it doesn't produce a very large volume of fruit. There are better dwarf varieties around, including Red Robin, Yellow Canary, Orange Pixie, Tumbling Tom Red and Tumbler that produce more fruit for the space used than Tiny Tim does, and better-tasting fruit as far as our taste buds are concerned.

I used to grow 30 or 40 varieties of peppers per year, but then I drove myself crazy trying to use them up. I cut back and cut back and cut back and only grow a very few varieties now and I am much happier because the pressure to figure out what to do with them all has gone away. I am just as happy growing ornamental peppers as edible ones.

Mississippi kites normally eat insects, but will feed on birds (including small chickens), rodents, etc. It probably depends on how scarce insects are at a given time. I know that our chickens are afraid of the Mississippi kites---when they hear a kite, they scatter and go into hiding.

I have a cold. A really bad cold. At least it is not the flu. I am on Day 3 of it, and fighting hard to keep it from settling into my lungs and leading to bronchitis or pneumonia. Last night, Tim was such a good husband---he stopped at the store on the way home from work and bought me OTC medicine (and chocolate!) and then he stopped at Whataburger to bring home dinner because he knew I was too sick to cook. He gave me a Whataburger box when he got home and said he brought me my favorite meal from them---a chicken strip dinner. I thought it was going to be lovely...and yummy. Then, I opened the box and it contained...a bag of French fries and a piece of toast. No chicken. No gravy. Well, excuse me for being irritated with the folks at the Gainesville Whataburger, but I think that when they sell you a chicken strip dinner, maybe it ought to include chicken! I generally don't even eat the French fries, and the toast was pointless without white gravy to dip the toast into. Tim called the store repeatedly to complain, but they wouldn't answer their phone, so finally he called the 1-800 number and let them have it (nicely, of course). The person with whom he spoke on the 1-800 number was extremely upset that the store was not answering its own phone and promised to take care of the situation. In the end, he got a call back maybe an hour later from the local store's manager (we are guessing shift manager or Asst Manager and she probably had been chewed out by the store manager because she was almost in tears), who apologized profusely for giving us a meal that was incomplete. Now, in a normal neighborhood type situation, it is easy to run back to the fast food place and get your replacement meal, but since we live in the middle of nowhere, that's a 40-mile round trip and I'd never let Tim do that after he just drove home 80 miles. From what I could hear of the situation from just hearing Tim's side of the conversation, it reminded me of Tim counseling one of his employees who'd had a bad day...he told her repeatedly that we weren't mad and that of course mistakes are made and these things do happen, but that he also wasn't happy about bringing home a non-meal meal to his sick wife. So, tonight I'm having a chicken strip meal courtesy of Whataburger, though, technically, they do owe it to us because we paid for a meal we only partially received, so it isn't like they are giving us a gift.

Yesterday I tried to do too much. For example, I spent the morning making homemade chicken noodle soup, which was tasty, but also didn't seem to fill me up. (Soup never seems to fill me up unless it is a really hearty soup with a lot of meat in it like Taco Soup.) Today I am going to take it easy. I have gardening books to read and a couple of recently-received seed catalogs to flip through.

I need to get over this cold quickly. Chris and Jana take their long-planned honeymoon cruise next week (scheduled for her winter break from nursing school), and we'll have Lillie and the birds all week so we are going to be busy. Aurora will be at her dad's house since he and Jana have 50/50 shared custody. Of course, if a person is going to be sick at this time of the year, then being sick midway between Thanksgiving and Christmas isn't the worst timing. I'd rather be ill now than the week of Christmas.

Dawn

This is a beautiful day. I went out to work on my potting shed, and first thing I got the lawn mower stuck. There were some sacks of ready-mix in front of the mower so I though I would get the concrete out and mix it to set a post. I thought that I would use the mower to smooth out some tractor tracks in the lawn. My lawn is soooo wet. I had to stop working on my shed last spring because the tractor was cutting up the wet lawn. Then it got too hot for me to fool with the shed, now it's wet again. It looks like someone is looking out for me, because I am not supposed to be lifting anything over 10 lbs.. My help will be back tomorrow after school and fix everything I have screwed up. I do not handle this "set back and watch someone else work thing". I seem to think that no one can do it as well as I can, which is not true. The young man does a great job, I just have to show or tell him how on a few things.

My garden looks okay for what it has been through. Most of the greens are coming back. Most of the cabbage plants wont make it. The red cabbage plants that the Farmers Co-op gave me still look pretty good. They look much better now than when I planted them.

My wildlife garden is pretty sad. I just did not have enough time between burning the brush piles and getting seeds planted. The rye grass has come up better then any of the other seeds planted, also that is where nearly all the deer tracks are. I am still waiting on the man with the track hoe to come and work on the last brush pile, all the rain has him running behind also.

I have been in touch with the state people about my "quail project", I am still waiting for the Federal people to call me back. It does not matter a lot what the federal people say, I will still go ahead with what I am doing, it will just be on a smaller scale. Which may be best because I am just not able to do all that I want to do.

Gifts are no problem for me, I just give a check or a gift card. As far as Madge goes, she get anything she wants an at any time she wants it. I know better than to say anything, and I do pretty much the same. Most everything I buy is some kind of tool, seed, or diesel fuel.

I want to cut back on the things I plant also. I am not sure how that is going to work out. I have said for years that we dont need more than 12 tomato plants. I have never made it down to 12 plants yet. I do want to grow more peppers though. I hope to have some of the Ache county pepper seed to plant this spring.

Madge has gone to sleep, I think I will sneak out and see what I can get into.

The Avenue (plus size clothing store) was having a 50% off sale, so my husband...ahem...bought me a coat and 2 pair of pants for Christmas. I saw the Gorilla cart on FB today and put that on his Amazon list for the kids to see.

I can't do hot peppers any more, though I do one jalapeno for Ron and daughter each year. I don't even bother with bells any more because the pimentos are so much better in my opinion. I do like the Elephant Ear, which is a flattened out bell. Bell papers never were prolific enough for me. I don't have room for plants that will only give me 2 peppers a season, and be thin walled to boot. I also liked the frying pepper (name forgotten), but they weren't really something I cooked with. I used to like sweet banana peppers for salads, but the last time I grew them I got a sweet one and a hot one, from the same pack of seeds!

Going to a cookie exchange tomorrow. I tried to bake. First thing I did was spill a half cup of brown sugar on the floor. It doesn't sweep up well and I was bare foot. Finally got a wet rag and got rid of most of it. This was an old recipe of my aunt's and it was made with shortening. It didn't incorporate the ingredients well and I deemed it a failure, so I made peanut butter cookies, which turned out better, but still not great. I'm not a baker.

I shelled a bunch of pecans today. We may do something with those, like sugared pecans or a pie.

I wasn't even thrilled with Red Robin, though I only grew it once and the weather may have effected the taste. The best dwarf tomato I have grown was called Fred's Tie Dye. It's not very small, really. I mean it's maybe 3 or 4 feet tall. It has good tasting "dark" tomatoes. You can get it at Victory or Sample Seed Shop. What I've found with dwarfs is if you grow them in the little pots like is convenient for a patio, you don't get much production.

Cliff called me at work today and said he was making it easy for me & would "let" me buy the sound system as his Christmas gift. Translation: he's tired of looking at them so he's passing on the work to me. He's so predictable. His mother ruined gift giving for him so he really doesn't care one way or the other. Threatening him with "coal in his stocking" is meaningless, he just replies with "that's more than I got as a kid." So, now I'm on a hunt for a sound system.

Dawn, I am so sorry you're sick and hope you feel better very soon. I'm always terrified of becoming sick during December...and even more so for Ethan. He needs to stay well at least one more week for finals.

The Tiny Tim is SO tiny, so I think it would be fun for my Mom (and a few friends). I've seen Calikim's Tiny Tim plants and they look cute and full of fruit. They may not do as well here, but it could still be fun for someone who isn't expecting a giant tomato harvest.

Larry, don't overdo it!

Amy, I'm sure you're a better baker than you think. PB cookies sound SO good right now. Have fun at your event!

So, yesterday was a tough day and I felt progressively worse throughout the day and evening. I'm now ready to concede that Tim is right and this is the flu, and not a cold. Yuck! Regardless, I'm on Day 4 so should start feeling better soon, right? I had almost no voice yesterday, and it is hard to get your cats and dogs to obey you when you really cannot speak to them. They all looked at me funny, though, when I tried to say anything or to call them to come indoors. The baby kittens were the most puzzled and would come stand on my lap or chest and look into my eyes intently like they were trying to figure out what was going on, while I was trying to keep them away from my face and any flu germs.

Larry, We are so very wet as well. Water is everywhere still, and is seeping out of the ground uphill from our driveway and running down into/through the driveway like a slowly seeping waterfall. I'm so tired of the perpetually wet ground.

The kittens discovered the Christmas tree. Previously they just walked or ran past it and didn't care because they were too busy playing with each other. Yesterday, they got underneath it and began standing up on their hind legs, batting low-hanging ornaments with their paws. It was pretty cute, but made me nervous. I only have unbreakable ornaments on the lower portion of the tree. Anything breaker is higher up. I imagine they'll start climbing it any day now.

With the warm days and sunshine this week, combined with the wet soil, we still are seeing cool-season weeds, including rye grass, sprouting everywhere. So, at least there's enough heat still to get some things to germinate. Maybe more of your wildlife crops will sprout while the weather is nice. I know we are about to turn colder, and some rain (albeit very low chances) is creeping back into the forecast. Today is supposed to be our last good day before the cold comes back. I think we are supposed to be slightly warmer today than yesterday, but then we have three successive cold fronts coming through over the next week to week and a half. Oh well, hopefully December will fly by quickly, taking us closer to spring planting.

Amy, We need a new wheelbarrow and a new Gorilla cart as the metal on mine has rusted through---it is very old though. Maybe Tim and I can go out and get those this weekend.

I bet the peanut butter cookies will be yummy. Enjoy the cookie exchange! I've been wanting to make Christmas cookies for a few days, but then there is no way I'd bake stuff while sick, so I have to wait until this flu goes away. Lillie loves to bake and she says the only time she ever gets to do it is when she is here at our house, so we likely will do some baking next week while she's staying with us, depending on how much homework she has to do every evening.

I have gotten good production from container-grown tomato plants of any type only when planted in molasses feed tubs. In containers smaller than that, production drops off sharply. Even in molasses feed tubs, it is really challenging to keep the plants well-watered in July and August, and in the worst drought spells I've had to water them three times a day---literally morning, noon and night---to keep the soil evenly moist.

Jen, Well at least you know what to research and shop for now! I just hate that Cliff's mom ruined the gift-giving part of Christmas for him---life just isn't fair, is it? If you were lucky enough to have good Christmases when you were a kid, and we were, then I think that affects how you look at Christmas for the rest of your life, and I'm sure the opposite is true as well. Don't get me wrong---my parents were very frugal and we didn't get fancy stuff, but we always had 3 or 4 presents each underneath the tree, and a stocking with fruit, candy and little novelty toys, and to us that felt like a big Christmas even though we knew plenty of kids who probably got 10 times as many gifts as we did.

I've noticed a pattern with our oldest granddaughter that her father disappears from her life completely about a month before and after Christmas and her birthday---which means he doesn't get her a gift or even see her for either. It frustrates her and makes her feel unloved because he doesn't even call and say Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday---he just disappears. We try to make it up to her by focusing on the holidays and memory-making via fun activities more so than gifts as we are trying to teach her that it isn't about the 'stuff' you get. He was supposed to have her for Thanksgiving, but never called, never made arrangements to pick her up, didn't even bother wishing her a Happy Thanksgiving---just left her hanging and wondering. I just try to emphasize to her that his issues are about him and not her and that she hasn't done anything wrong and isn't responsible for his behavior and his choices. It is hard for her to understand that it is not her mother's responsibility to hunt him down and "make" him act right (as if anybody could). I hope that she has enough happy Christmas memories from time shared with everyone else in her life that she isn't scarred for life by his behavior.

Jennifer, Thanks. This hit like a bolt from the blue, but then we were down at my sister's house on Thanksgiving Day and all her kids and grandkids were sick or had been sick the previous week, so I expected I'd come home from there and be sick within days....and I was. So there's that. I hope Ethan stays well through finals. Jana just finished her finals for this semester which is such a relief for her.

The most energy I am exerting daily, other than taking care of the cats and dogs, is walking down to the mailbox once a day. It isn't much, but it is about all I have the energy to do. So, yesterday, I stretched out the walk to the mailbox and walked slowly through the front pasture where I had broadcast-sowed wildflower seeds back in, probably October or maybe earliest November, to overseed the pasture with wildflowers. I was looking at the sprouting seedlings, and I found a lot. That alone is exciting. Best of all, I found quite a few bluebonnets sprouting in places we haven't had them before. I don't know if they'll thrive in that clay there, but just the fact that they are sprouting gives me hope. They really much prefer sandy soil or caliche soil with lots of limestone, but I always have a small stand of them in the clay, and every now and then a good stand of them, so I count every sprouted seedling as a victory.

There's gardening catalogs in the mailbox every day now. Of course, since I'm largely taking off the year from a big, hands-on veggie garden in order to focus on renovating the landscape, I am not that interested in the veggie seeds, but at least the catalogs are something to look at.

For Christmas I'm getting clothing and gardening books. I know this because I ordered them and told Tim that he's buying me clothing and gardening books for Christmas. lol. This is our system, and it works for us. I'd rather get things I like and want than to get random things chosen by a desperate spouse who doesn't like shopping and it doesn't bother me that I'm not surprised by my gifts. I stopped believing in Santa Claus long ago. : )

Have a good day everyone.

Dawn

What a beautiful day. I sowed 2# of wild flower seed and have not seen anything to shout about, but I dont know what I am looking for. I did notice some rye grass in the lawn where I had tossed some seed, so I lowered the mower as low as it will go and mowed a spot to sow some more seed. I think it is very late for sowing seed, but experimenting is more than half of the fun of gardening.

I am not expecting anything for Christmas, but know I will get something. I often get a gift card for Olive garden, which is great. Madge and I go there often. I enjoy having the family over more than any gift I could get, and we always have a great meal. I have ask that we cut down on the meals because Madge works too hard at preparing the meal (even though that is what she wants to do ). It seems as though Madge is ready to go to bed for a couple of day after cooking Christmas dinner. I would help but she does not want that, plus I might kill someone with one of my meals. We have tried buying the smoked turkey and other things, but still wind up with too much food. I like the times we have a very simple meal, sit around and visit, and play with the kids (as long as they dont run completely wild).

Well I am rested now, so I need to go play awhile.

Dawn, I hope you're feeling better today. I really have nothing to talk about and probably no one is interested in the run down of my day. haha.

Last night the cutest half-grown kitten was in our yard. Tom thought it belonged to our neighbors. He was a black cat (I have a fondness for black cats) and he is a Love Bug. I scooped him up and he purred loudly. I wanted to keep him so badly. BUT, we walked him next door and sure enough, he is their cat. He had a brother who was found dead with his bottom half stuck in a hole yesterday afternoon. They said it was a hole that rats had dug in their barn. (guess it has a dirt floor?) And that there was no injury to the body. I'm suspicious. That sounds like a shady story to me. The little black cat probably wondered off because he was lonely. They've made them barn cats, so they don't get to go indoors at all. They got them a couple of months ago. One was black and one was white. Their special needs daughter came over and told me about them back then. She was so excited to get them (she is 18 but about 6 mentally). I tried to get her to name them Niles and Nimbus (the white one would be Nimbus because clouds are white). Anyway...I hope the kitty will be okay.

Larry, as much as I like to cook and eat good food, I agree with you. Some of the best gatherings have a simple meal. That is why I like my Winter Solstice party. We keep the menu short and simple. Either Tom has smoked pork for pulled pork a couple of days in advance or I'll make a simple soup or chili. Normally just Sun cookies for dessert.

Well, since I have nothing interesting to talk about, I guess I'll get off the computer and do my exercises and then watch Servant. IF y'all are looking for a good new series--oh my word! It is so good and freaky. It's on apple TV.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. We start the blur of holiday parties tomorrow night.

Wow. I miss you guys so much! Why didn't someone send me a reminder note to check in. I've been grumpy and kinda sad and down. I have this doggone eye condition (blepharitis) and I HATE spending the 2-3 hours every day sitting with damp warm compresses over the eye.

I tell you, Dawn, as you were talking about the kittens. I thought, if everyone (that is everyone who thinks little ones are precious) gets only one present for Christmas and it's six kittens, they probably will think they got the best present ever. I certainly would think so.

H/J I think you would like this recipe, I made it this week. (It is easy). https://www.oliviascuisine.com/muhammara/?epik=dj0yJnU9QnE0TEltbkQ4QWNaZ0E2Q2xBS1QyZlNXdTBfaUpucEEmbj16cHBCS2NpQkpNQUQ5R3pySExEU2V3Jm09MyZ0PUFBQUFBRjNyMjdB 

Apple keeps calling me. I have no apple devices. I made the mistake of answering one the other day so now the robo calls have doubled. They must all be networked and tell each other "a sucker lives at this number".

I have nothing garden related I can think of. Ok, there was a picture of a centennial variegated kumquat on facebook today. I am a sucker for variegated the way I'm a sucker for peach colored flowers. But those things are EXPENSIVE. I got my lemon and lime at Atwoods for like $7 each. So far cheapest I found was $29. Anybody have trusted source for things like this?

Ron's on vacation till the end of the year. We went to Margaret's restaurant after the doctor yesterday. Yum. I have to know what makes the goulash taste so rich. This is German goulash, not a tomato sauce and pasta like goulash. Recipes I found have tomato sauce in them, but Margaret's seems to be a stew base, but it is sooo good.

Have a nice weekend.

Hi Nancy!

Thanks, Amy! Yum! That looks so good.

I'm about to start making food for our party tonight. Everything on the sign up list had meat in it. haha. So, I'm making a cranberry kale salad that is very good. AND a spinach artichoke dip.

Luckily those two things are easy.

I had many lessons on patience today. I think I did fairly well with them...I got a little antsy when the workers at Hallmark couldn't get their gate open in the mall. I had a coupon that I needed to use today on our keepsake ornaments. I really didn't want to drive back to the mall. Luckily, they got it open in about 30 minutes. The entire thing was ridiculous (in a funny way). Paul Blart showed up but was no help. LOL

I have to space out the keepsake ornament buying. I get one coupon before Black Friday and then a better one after. Ethan's series ended two years ago. It was Santa's Sweet Ride which was a perfect ornament series for a little boy. Now that he's becoming Catholic, I bought him an ornament of the Holy Family that is handcrafted by a guy somewhere here in Oklahoma.

It's a nice day. Maybe everyone got to spend a little time outdoors. I did briefly and noticed that garlic is coming up.

Alrighty, I'm going to get my food made and then feed the animals and get them settled for the night before we leave for the party.

I used to get my dad the star trek ornaments every year. He had enough to fill an entire tree, but then they stopped making the ships (he didn't care about the people ines) and I stopped. And I used to buy the Madame Alexander ones, since I collected the dolls when I was little.

Got the wreath in the front hall and the garland around the fireplace put up. With all these dogs I can't really put up my big tree so I'm either going to put the top half up on the kitchen bar or not bother at all with a tree this year. I hung some of the ornaments up on the garland and wreath, so I'm partly satisfied.

I hit the submit button too early on that. . . and it's not giving me an edit option today. Well, back to those kittens. . . so much fun picturing the delightful circus you have now, Dawn. I could identify with so MUCH of what you were writing about, down to the missing chicken strips. I haven't had that experience, but yeah, we'd have a 20 mile round trip to go get another meal, and we wouldn't do THAT, much less a 40 mile one.

A dear friend in town just "invited" me to the church's month of events. She later asked me if I got the invites. I did and thanked her but explained that last week, I had to go into town 7 days in a row and twice on one of the days. And next week have the exact same thing, starting today. It's crazy and now I remember why I didn't join anything. Makes me crazy to drive 20 miles more than once or twice a week, so am grumpy about that, too.

I also love to cook--and eat, and love the variety that comes with a big meal. But I can eat such a small amount, and even Garry has slowed down a bit on what he can eat. . . we're going to have a crowd tomorrow, probably about 20.

Nancy, I hope that y'all had fun. It has been years since we had 20 people in our house for a family gathering, and I am okay with that. When Chris' cousins were kids, everyone came here. Now that everyone is older and married and has kids it just makes more sense for the handful of us here in OK to drive down there to TX instead of expecting all of them to drive up here. That way, the ones who have to see not just our side of the family but their spouse's side of the family all in the same day aren't racing madly from OK back to Texas. It is hard enough for them to make it to one gathering at lunch time and then drive an hour or so in the afternoon to make it to an evening gathering....and then drive home at night.

I'd rather stay home too. Everywhere we have to go is too far, so we try to cram it all into one weekend day, with a very long, detailed shopping and errand list so we don't have to go back to a store the next day. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't, but we try to keep the driving to a minimum. When nothing is close to you, you learn to make lists, take them with you and get it all done while you're there. I've learned that if we forget things, there isn't much that can't wait until the next week. Really, it is so much better now because we have a Lowe's in Ardmore and a Home Depot in Gainesville, so both are less than a half-hour away one-way. Sure, it still is easily a 60-90 minute round trip when you count the shopping time, but that is half of what it used to me. When we first moved here, the nearest Lowe's was in Sherman, TX, about an hour away and the nearest Home Depot was in Denton, also about an hour away. Ardmore now has tons of stores like Academy, Marshall's and Ulta that we never, ever thought we'd have relatively close by. We'll never have all the shopping the DFW metroplex has, and I am glad, but I'm also glad that a handful of stores have moved closer and closer over the years. My dream is that someday Gainesville, TX or Ardmore, OK will have a Costco or a Sam's Club, but truthfully, I don't think that will happen in our lifetime. It might happen in Chris and Jana's lifetime though.

We tried to take the girls out shopping on Small Business Saturday, but Marietta didn't really have anything that appealed to us---we didn't want to shop at local convenience stores, lol, so we did the Small Business Saturday on the courthouse square in Gainesville, and we'll do it again next year and plan ahead better and have a game plan mapped out instead of randomly roaming from one store to another.

Every day here is a kitten party. It isn't always fun and games....they have started to climb the living room curtains, so we are having to be very watchful and vigilant about immediately putting a stop to that when it happens, and the Christmas tree needs a little repair work every evening to replace the ornaments they have knocked off. Still, there is nothing cuter than a little posse of kittens roaming the house and having marvelous tiny kitten adventures.

Jen, With a house full of dogs, I wouldn't be overly eager to put up a full-sized tree either. There have been years, back when our dogs were younger, that we had only a tabletop sized tree. I thought the big puppy, Jesse, would be the tree destroyer this year. Nope. He just ignores it and walks right by on his way to his basket of dog toys on the other side of the room. As far as he is concerned, there is not a Christmas tree in the living room--it doesn't exist. The smaller dogs, Ace and Princess, are the ones who won't leave the tree alone, and they are a lot older--they showed up here as half-grown puppies in November 2014, so they are somewhat older than 5 years old, and still big chewers and fairly destructive, though not as much now as they were then. Princess sticks her head up into the tree and pulls it out with lights or garland stuck to her ears or head or whatever. I'm now building a wall of fake presents (empty Amazon boxes wrapped in holiday paper) around the tree so she cannot get underneath it any more. In fact, she cannot stick her head into the tree any more, and neither can Ace. They are not happy---but the grandkids are thrilled that we already have presents under the tree. I didn't tell the grands that these are fake presents.

Amy, I hate robo calls with a passion and we have dealt with them in our own way. First, we dumped our land line about a decade ago and that took care of most of them. I don't miss having a land line either. The people who have an actual need to speak with us all have our cell phone numbers. Then, if we get calls on our cell phone that are not from people whose numbers are plugged into our phones or are not numbers we otherwise recognize, we just don't answer them. So, I never ever have to deal with a robo call at all. It is life changing. When I get a call on my cell phone and I don't know the number, I just block that number forever. Over time, we get less and less of those irritating robo calls/fraud calls because we never answer them. Every now and then, our phones flag an incoming call as a "Fraud" call, which is a rather recent development, and I block all those calls as well.

I don't have a trusted source for exotic fruit like a variegated kumquat, at least not one with reasonable prices. Logee's Greenhouse has all kinds of amazing tropicals you can buy online, but they are pretty pricey. I just watch local stores---sometimes Costco has variegated lemon trees in late winter/early spring when they get their big shipment of citrus trees, and sometimes they do have kumquats, but I don't remember ever seeing a variegated kumquat in their stock.

Does the goulash have a creamy tan or light brown gravy? If so, the ingredient that adds richness might be sour cream.

Jennifer, I feel a little better every day. You know how the flu is---recovery takes a while.

The cat that was found dead---I wonder if it got hold of a rodent that had been poisoned with a rodenticide?

Well, now I am caught up on last week's news and can work on this week's!

Dawn