Celebrating

The last day of Christmas
and the beginning of Epiphany.

Oh and Vicktory Farm & Gardens
is now an official business in the state of Washington!

Dirt is taking his home girls out to dinner to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Parkland - you know "We three kings from Orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar..."

We usually stay home and try our hand at various delights with Eastern flavor but we decided to take it easier this year because the girls and I have been laboring outdoors (and a little upstairs) and not in the kitchen.

Toot-a-loo Dear Reader and we will visit soon. Honest.

The Middle Part of Christmas

Before an entire week blows by, I thought I would recount the middle of our Christmas; Day Six through Day Nine. My camera has a hard time finding its way out of its case lately so the only pictures I have for you are of The Fifth Day of Christmas and bringing back the Orange Tractor to the Farm.


The Orange Tractor Returns
So indulge me in a bit of back tracking. Dirt and Mike did a little equipment swap this summer, Mike brought out his back hoe and took our Orange Tractor in. Orange Tractor is an Allis Chalmers 1950 WD. It came to live with us nearly the first year we were here at the farm, it came here in the spring of 1986, from the Huckleberry Mountain range in Eastern Washington where my brother had spent some time raising buffalo.

When we first had the Orange Tractor we were warned that the tricycle type of tractors were dangerous as they tended to roll easily on hills. Not to worry, we farm flat land, low, wet, flat land. Not only is it hard to get parts for a tractor made in 1950 it is extremely hard to find the wheels for the front end, so Orange Tractor has been limping along in one front wheel for a long time.


The back wheels got a treat while in at Mike's. Mike bought Dirt tires for the back wheels and because the wheels were off and tire-less, Mike insisted that Dirt paint them up. Problem is now, the back wheels look new and the rest of the tractor looks old, including the bumper sticker on the cowling (the long upper part of the tractor where the exhaust pipe comes out of). The bumper sticker? ReElect Dan Evans for Governor. Which would mean that the bumper sticker has been there since 1968 or 1972 take your pick. Either way the bumper sticker has been on there a long time and the Orange Tractor is long over due for some tangible love.

I say tangible because trust me it is loved, well loved. The day my brother brought it here and I learned how to drive it I fell in love with my tractor and quite frankly green just didn't matter anymore. Orange was the color to be if you were a tractor. I think quite frankly that I would rather be orange, persimmon really, but orange for ease, than green any day. If like me you are getting weary of hearing about how we ought to be green, rebel against the established nonsense, be orange!

So I feel way better now that my tractor is home, it came home because it has some work to do, it has a lot of work to do, but hopefully Dirt can plan a time where the Orange Tractor can have some more beauty treatment.

Wednesday, the Fifth Day of Christmas found Dirt and Anna shearing some Romney sheep in town and Bet and I down in Sumner at McConkey's and McLendon's Hardware. McConkey's is a warehouse for nursery and greenhouse supply, I needed some sterile soil, a germinating mix, and to chat with the poly film expert about my poly tunnels and the best choices for them, be looking for a post on what I learned, it was pretty fascinating stuff and a real eye opener.

Anna managed to shear most of one ewe, they are big and Anna hasn't been out shearing in a while and wasn't in shearing shape, so her dad finished it up for her. When Bet and I got back up the hill to pick them up Dirt was almost done and his customer was advising him on an accounting program for when we go real this year.

Thursday The Sixth Day of Christmas and New Year's Eve was one of work, Dirt rebuilt one of his creep feeders, I'll post a few pictures of them and tell you all about creep feeders. Bet and I ordered her chicks and poults, and some turken pullets for my silkie rooster and future show girl chickens. We ordered from Welp Hatchery this year because they had everything we were looking for and they are not sold out 'til June like a lot of other hatcheries are already of those said birds we were looking for.

Bet is determined to produce her own meat hybrids and pasture raise them, so we ordered White Laced Red Cornish and Partridge Plymouth Rocks, a rather dark combo for a meat bird, dark pin feathers and all, but we will be marketing to a heartier type of consumer who won't be put off by a few dark pin feathers on the birds.

She also ordered some replacement turkeys for her existing flock, five Narragansett and five Bourbon Reds, her slates are doing just fine, and one new breed, Midget Whites. The Midget Whites are...you guessed it Dear Reader, smaller than most turkeys and therefore a bit more usable for families year 'round and not just a holiday overindulgent roast-a-rama, but they also were named most flavorful turkey followed by the Bourbon Red in a taste test cited somewhere out there in cyberspace the location of which I have forgotten.

After we ordered chicks and poults we went out and measured up the dormant plant storage shed for the possibility of using it in its off season (Feburary to November) for a chick brooder shed. It looks like it will work out just perfectly. Now to find a GQF Digital Sportsman 1502 incubator on Craig's list a little closer than Worley, Idaho, so that Bet can incubate and hatch out birds to provide six families with their all their white meat year 'round, which is her 2010 goal as poultry manager of Vicktory Farm and Gardens.

We spent a little time tidying up a bit around the building and making tentative plans for the surrounding area. But I'm glad I didn't plan too much as I found out on Friday that Dirt has his own set of plans for the area. Not a huge conflict just a little terrain changing and so I get to rethink my plan and perhaps expand it.

Friday the Seventh Day of Christmas and the New Year, found me prepping some germination flats for onion seeds - I am attempting this year to stick to the moon and planet signs for planting and such at the Farm, I'll tell you more about it but for now, suffice it to say that Tipper and Momma Coulter are responsible.

But the bulk of the day, not necessarily in hours but more in enjoyment, was spent at the Bowerman's. It was a great late afternoon and evening, chowing down on a little brisket barbecued (slowly) earlier in the day by Dirt at the Farm, some wonderful beer selections and followed by a lovely pasta dinner and some good hearted fellowship. However, during the afternoon my balloon was burst when Dirt gained support for not playing along with my idea on how to do a second bathroom in an attached solar heated green house on the south side of our house and so I am greenhouseless for yet another year. Or more really, as I am not keen on the idea of having my back yard tore up in August, the suggested date of beginning the revised and "practical" doing of said project. So who knows if it will ever get done and if I will ever move out of the cramped spaces of the laundry room and into a real hot house leaving the laundry room for a revision into a fiber arts shed.

The Eighth Day of Christmas, Saturday, Dirt went to the lumber store for the second creep feeder and while he was in there he purchased, along with more beer,an accounting program. I may not be blogging nearly as much as I would have hoped after the holidays as my computer time will be taken up with paper work and setting up our books. But you have gotten by without my shenanigans before Dear Reader, I am sure you will do just fine without my planned daily postings, no really, I did really think I could get back to daily posting. Perhaps I still will, I do have a lot to record. I just need to learn to write shorter post, today is not one of those learning days however.

Our wonderful friends from the north came down for yet another great day with us. They are so accommodating to our not being able to leave the Farm easily, that it really makes me feel like a schmo when we always seem be the ones to ask them to travel this way for our get togethers. So we spent the day schnick snacking our way to dinner, steaks grilled (quick) by Dirt, the pronounced red meat guru by said northern friends, when the Bowermans joined us for another wonderful but abbreviated beef and brew fest. Yum. We really must figure out how beef can work a little more strongly into the Vicktory Farm and Gardens scope of things, we are running out of Chuck (our last briefly visiting steer) and he wasn't even the provider of the majority of our recent red meat rendezvous.


And now here we are at the Ninth Day of Christmas, Sunday, I have coffee, shortbread and computer and I am looking out my big beautiful new window in my new still-small but wonderful room at work to do. So I'm going to slug down the rest of my coffee and head out soon. Yesterday I had Anna bring in my box of garlic from it's storage place in the well house and my Shandong harvested this fall is already sprouting, so instead of letting it go to waste I am going to go find a bed where I can put it. "Why?" you ask Dear Reader. 'Cause who can have to much garlic growing in one year. Ahhh... two more problems to solve, where to plant garlic, and where to store it next year so I won't loose my eating garlic to early sprouting. Where did I store it before when I didn't have this problem? Ahhh the mysteries of living in Lanny Land.

Hope you don't find too many irritating spelling and grammar mistakes in this post Dear Reader, but I am sure if you do, you will find a clever and tender way of telling me you did.

Hip hip hooray for the coming long days of holiday-less winter, dark and bleak and wet. I am not looking forward to the end of the Christmas holiday season, I for one wish the holiday was longer or at least situated a little farther into the heart of darkness. Yes, I know, the days have turned around, we are on the upswing of longer days and more light, that is if you don't live in the Pacific Northwest, where the sun may very well be behind the iron curtain of grey but you really couldn't bank on it for the amount of light your eyes detect.

Yes, Dear Reader, if you caught a smidgen of winter doldrums and sarcasm you have made it to the end of this post awake. I will go and look at the calendar that tells me yes, we are headed for sunshine and dry land, in spite of my feelings of eternal damp and dark accursedness. My brain clearly is not one of the more evolved ones and I am stuck back in ancient superstitious times where uneducated dolts like myself thought for sure that this, December and January, was indeed the end of my small world and that the evil cloud gods have taken over and they will never let go now that they have gained control. I am going to go out and build a bonfire and see if I can burn them away.




Actually I am going to read a bit of His Word and pray a good while, while I lite that bonfire that I need to have to burn up rotting scrap wood, not the clouds. Please, feel free to comment about my spelling and grammar or the tractor etc. but could you be so kind Dear Reader as to resist telling me what I already know about winter depression made worse by the anniversaries of death and soul abusing events. I know what I ought to be doing nutritionally and in other ways to help my brain snap out of this spot, part emotion and part actual physical chemistry. I promise I will be better in awhile for I have not lost heart, I appear to be troubled on every side, yet I am not distressed; feeling very perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me, including making it through these next few months of darkness and remembering.

Bits of the First of Christmas

Dirt and Anna work on the lights

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This is where I left you Dear Reader, just before our Christmas tree decorating night. Sorry if the break bothered you, but it was a tough and quiet week before Christmas and not looking any better, if you want the details on why Dirt and I are not our raucous jolly Christmas Tomten selves this year, google Pierce County Deputy, we've dined and joked and campfired with the man who survived being shot by a forty-five in the hands of a angry drunk and it brings tragedy like this incredibly close to home, especially after two Seattle city police were purposely shot in Oct. and four Lakewood officers gunned down in a coffee shop in November. It just seemed to get closer and closer. But all that may or may not be for another post, when I am ready to understand the sorrow I feel mixed with gratitude for the life spared.
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This year Christmas tree night started with my lights not working, that always happens to a certain extent but this year only one little strand worked and all the rest were duds. Of course I was in denial because these lights were my favorite yet, I am very sad that they are no good now.

Bet tenderly unwrapping the ornaments

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So while Dirt and Anna worked on the lights for over an hour, Bet unwrapped all the ornaments that she wanted to use. I have lots of ornaments and most of them don't end up on the tree, especially when the tree is a living tree. Living trees fill the room just fine, a grand specimen of our Christian take over of paganism, but they don't have nearly the same amount of hanging room on them compared to the ones we go to the mountains and cut down.

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Many ornaments either stay in the box or are used in other parts of the house, but not this year, this year we are low key, the last left clunker on the board to be exact. Many ornaments have gone with the two older girls, each of our girls has a collection of ornaments that either I have purchased for them or their older wiser friends over the years have brought them. It is hard to see some of them go, but I know what it is like to start off with no ornaments.

Anna carefully stringing the working lights

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Anna got over her frustration of burned out lights and the wasted time of putting on the first string only to have to take them off so that we could break out the new lights (I always have a large stash of lights, I pick up at the after Christmas sales).

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But then her frustration returned and the hand full of lights got tossed at the tree at one point. Patience, not a big virtue in this household with the Lanny clones, patience is for Dirt and his clones. So Bet took her annual job back. As each girl has become the "oldest" they not only get to sit in the front seat of the car when just the girls go to town, and represent St. Lucia, they are in charge of decorating the tree. Each has patiently waited their turn and went through training.

Ornaments collected over thirty-one years

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But Anna has claimed special circumstances and is requesting (nice euphemism for demanding doncha think Dear Reader?) that she be given a chance to do a few things, like decorate the tree. Hmmm where was she on the morning of December 13th?

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My ornaments go back to 1978 and my first Christmas tree away from home, when I was learning what it was like being autonomous, why I should never have been on my own, and why I value multi-generational living. But back to the ornaments. My first tree had only three ornaments, green glass holly leaves, a blown glass angel blowing a trumpet, which she misplaced years ago, and a clear glass bell. I still have all three.

One heirloom but many fond memories are collected here

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Doncha just love my gorgeous trays? They were an Ikea find. When my second oldest daughter was getting married here at Victory Farm and Gardens, I knew I needed some trays for my servers to carry the food to the tables so when I was at Ikea picking up ten cent champagne glasses (glass glasses) I found these for ninety-nine cents apiece. You know I bought those, the crazy design covers easily with parchment paper and these trays are tough and sturdy and big.

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Back to the ornaments. There is a real oldy in this second batch, the ball with white and colored sections, middle top of the tray. This ornament is the only one I have of my childhood and it brings back so many memories. My brother Chris, only two years older than I, would sit with me in the arm chair next to the tree and we would share twisting up the string that this ball hung on and then watch in awe as it spun itself around and around.

The lights on and the ornaments almost all hung

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For years, while the girls were little, they sat and watched from the couch as I carefully loaded the tree with lights, then ornaments, then on some years garland, some years ribbon, or bows on the tips of the branches. I only tackled tinsel one year, but on living trees it just means a mess and on a live tree it means that the goats and sheep wouldn't get their treat on January seventh so tinsel doesn't play in Vickville.

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Besides, the tinsel these days is no longer actual tin. My mom kept her tin-sel from year to year on special card boards she designed for holding it. She would carefully pick it back off of the tree at the end of Christmas, place it on the cardboard and when it was full she would tenderly wrap it in newspaper so that the tin-sel wouldn't get bent and crumpled.

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She was especially crazy covetous of her tin-sel, taking painstaking care of it, once it changed from tin-sel to plasti-sel. Plasti-sel develops a static charge in the winter air and clings and globs, not the pretty straight hanging shimmer of my childhood. She also carefully swirled angel hair around C-7 lights. Her trees were always so beautiful and carefully done.

Just the red berries need to be placed on the brances

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I'm terribly fond of mono-chromatic lights on my tree, I love visiting other folks' houses where they use multi-colored tree lights but Mom switched over to all white in later years and so did I eventually. Then I discovered that I really really like blue lights on the tree in my green room, in fact I even like blue trees.

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We have a lovely tall blue spruce by our flag pole now because I like blue with my green. But that year I didn't have any girls desiring to decorate with me. I decorated with long sleeves and gloves, alone. So I was incredibly excited to discover cork bark fir, or Abies Lasiocarpa Arizonica. They are an incredible blue, often blue-er than blue spruce but without the pain of the stiff poky needles.

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I have some Arizona fir waiting in the nursery area, just not big enough yet to handle the indoor job of shading the packages that Santa brings.

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This year we dug one of our unknown nursery trees here at our farm. It is a great tree, the dark green needles on the branches are long and full making the tree appear larger than it really is. I really like it. It does have a huge draw back, no fragrance. None. Zip. Even when you grab hold of the branch slide your tightly closed hand down the branch, open your hand and whiff, nothing. Blank. Gorgeous to look at but you really need to burn the evergreen candles because the tree gives you nothing for fragrance.

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We are looking forward to when our other trees can be used in the house and even more excited to go and pick up more saplings at the Lawyer's nursery sale, so that in future years our choices will be greater and we can share with those we love.

No cookie baking for the boys today

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The day after Tree Day was cookie baking day. Steph came out with the boys, but Kai decided that going to town to do errands with Dirt would be way more fun.

Oops they forgot something.

Now they are on their way!

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A long list of Christmas foods, treats and a few presents in hand and they were off. Kai was so excited and the stories Dirt told of his time with his grandboy were priceless. Dirt is an introvert, friendly but business first, Kai is an extrovert, eventually the business gets done, maybe, but it is people first. So getting through the friendly Christmas crowds four days before Christmas was a little difficult for Dirt.

Just a small sampling of the beautiful and tasty cookies

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The girls had a ton of fun making cookies and I had a ton of fun potting up forty-three Brugmansia plants that rooted since being trimmed off of the parent plants before they went into dormant storage earlier this fall. Ahh forty three water guzzling, fertilizer demanding tender tropical plants that are fragrant in the middle of the night.

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I could have sworn that I was not only not going to have any new brugs (brugmansias) but that I was going to bring the ones I have into bloom earlier than I did this last year and adopt them out to someone who has way more time behind the hose than I do. But Dirt has promised me an automatic watering system for all my fussy pots and so here I am the proud parent of forty-three big fat babies. Fairly evenly divided among three colours, white, yellow (Dr. Seuss) and peach.

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Funny, as a matter of fact on Tuesday and Wednesday, after Monday's Cookie and Brug Day, we went up to visit the folks where I first acquired my brugs a year and a half ago at one of their local nurseries. It was a lovely memento of a terrific trip up to visit newly acquired life-long friends. So really, I could never get rid of my brugs, even though the parent plants are no longer able to fit in the back of an Explorer let alone five of them all at once, they still remind me of the great time we had getting to know our Coulters better and further cementing our friendship. Now they are simply framily.

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We had a great time up in Coulter-land, just Dirt and I, the girls stayed home to take care of the farm and do the final touches on our easy quiet Christmas. We looked at lights, did a little shopping in Mt. Vernon, went to dinner one night at a great little public house and the next late afternoon in downtown Burlington at a terrific ma and pa Greek and Italian eatery. They have some wonderful yarn shops up there and Becky and I tortured the fellas with a couple of stops.

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We got home late Wednesday to a cozy home and happy girls looking forward to our Christmas Eve shopping date the next day. Due to November's remodel and lymph issues, December's pneumonia for me and Chippy Hacky's infirmity, we hadn't had a chance to get all of our gifting done, whether made or purchased.

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The plan was to spend most of the day out and eat dinner at a restaurant so that we wouldn't have dishes and clean up to deal with. We got a late start due to chores taking a bit more time than expected and the shopping didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, some decisions had to be redecided a couple of times, by the time dinner was the next activity not a one of us was in the humor to wait to be seated, wait for food to arrive. So we grabbed pizzas (Dirt grabbed a turkey pot pie) and we went home to the oddest Christmas Eve we have had. That won't be happening again, if we can help it. It wasn't horrible, just not the lovely Christmas Eve outing that we thought it could be.

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The Tomten came through for the girls and dropped off their all time favorite jammies. Warm, snugly fleecy jammies, Anna's with penguins, her favorite, scampering all over the bottoms and Bet's have the cutest little bone chewing doggies, but Martin is a little put off by the raucous little invaders. It made for a wonderful fun and cozy Christmas Eve.

Lady Amber enjoying her Christmas treat

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Ahhh Christmas Day. Everyone found a little somethin' somethin' for themselves, even the dogs. The married children stayed in town a little later this Christmas morning and didn't arrive at the Farm until nearly eleven. The girls, Dirt and I had a lovely morning, I had decided the night before to just go to bed at nine and get up at five and finish the wrapping and packaging that I had left to do. That was one of my better ideas, a stellar move! So I was up and coffeed well before anyone else was up. Dirt made a nice unpretentious little breakfast for him and I, but the girls were up later and snitching cookies instead.

Aksel and Vicktory Farms 2009 Christmas Tree

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The boys came out to the Farm in their jammies and had a wonderful time just lounging and playing until dinner.

Steph put some past Christmas photos together for all of us

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Christmas Day was joyful and joyfully followed by the First Day of Christmas, or St. Stephen's Day or Boxing Day if you please, we opened our house to some friends for the day, meatballs and taters, Kathy's lefse, Pat's tiramisu, Pablo's, Fryers and Long's pies and treats and Bet's coconut cake, the Coulter's provided a beautiful prime rib that Dirt barbecued - slowly and the Bowerman's brought a keg of Pipeline Porter. Dirt was in beef and brew heaven for the day. Well, we all were, all thirty-five or so of us in less than a thousand square foot, one bathroom home.

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Sunday, the Second Day of Christmas, was a relaxing quiet one with our out of town company, we spent the day looking at pictures of our girls' childhood and talking about what we used to do for entertainment around Vicktory Farm and Gardens when Dirt and I were a young family.

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Monday, the Third Day of Christmas was a very very relaxed day, well for me. I was reading and planning knitting and garden projects, what the year and the next few months will look like. And early in the day Dirt and Anna went shearing. We came together later in the day and not unlike last Monday when we had spent an odd off day only to hear bad news in the evening, this Monday we heard that our friend's partner was taken off of life support. Hard news to hear indeed.

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Today, Tuesday, the Fourth Day of Christmas, we went to the Bowermans so that Dirt could pick up his tractor. The farm just isn't the same without the orange tractor. It was good to share a cup of warmth with my good friend Rebecca while Dirt got the tractor. They are much closer to the surviving sergeant and in fact it is the Bowermans who introduced them to our group of families. It is an odd and perplexing time. And it hangs in the middle of ordinary life.

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We here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens, hope that you have had a wonderful start to the Christmas season, that you have found all the time you need to reflect on our Lord Jesus and the incarnation of God and continue to as we go through the season of wonder and reconcilliation.

Done

The Garlic is in. Thanks to my hard workin' girls we gotter done. Poor Dirt came out to try and help and he wiped out, lost air and couldn't stick with us. Poor Chippy Hacky.

Any way, all the garlic is in but for some reason the count I gave you yesterday was off, oh now I remember how that happened, I have an amount that a 4x16 foot bed takes up but not all my beds were an exact four feet wide. So by the number on the bags, an exact count of the cloves I planted, six hundred thirty-six, but I do have twenty three holes that I didn't fill yet. Remember I said that I don't plant all the cloves in a bulb because small cloves equal small bulbs, I do have some left over cloves that aren't too terribly small and would be worth filling in the twenty-three holes that are empty.


It was just a little before four when the sky turned bronze and I finished up the last rows of garlic and now dusk is nearly done, the light is all but gone from the sky and it is only four thirty. This is going to be a long winter. I was having a hard time today with the sun shinning, working in the dirt, the temp nearly sixty or better at times, drinking a coke, having had our ice skating freeze already, having been sick in bed already, it all added up for one of those days that made it seem like spring already! And tomorrow is the first day of winter! Yikes, I'm in trouble! I need some cold weather to return quick or I'll never make it to May!

But now I gotta say I am headed to the tub and then to bed, I might knit a little bit although I found that knitting in the day light this morning really helped me see the yarn better. So I might find it too frustrating after my lightning speed I was able to get this morning and just sleep instead. All that to say is, no big stories today, no rants (aren't you glad for that Dear Reader?) no long rambly post. Not that I don't have a lot of stuff running through my brain, gardening does that for me, but I just don't have the umph to get there this evening.

A busy week ahead for most folks I'm sure, but Dirt and I are taking our time and just walking through the week, hope everything that has to get done does and I hope that everyone has the wisdom to see what is necessary and what is not. Memory making and keeping is great, I will be the first to say that for sure, until it owns us and we become a slave to ritual. Bondage, even to what might seem like good stuff is really only bad stuff. These words I write for me not necessarily any one else. These are things I really need to remember. Tootles Dear Reader, Anna is out of the tub so now it is my turn. Yep, only one bathroom in this sweet little Farm House at Vicktory Farm and Gardens.

I'm outa the tub and taking back everything I said about going to bed at 5:40 pm the night before winter. I forgot that it is indeed tree decorating night. Dirt dug up one of my nursery trees, it fits just perfect, and I will tell you all about it tomorrow including pictures.

All Done With Christmas, Have a Blessed Epiphany Day Today

Well the first of fourteen loads of dishes are in the dishwasher, my tea is hot and I need to sit already so I will tell you all about our Twelfth Night Party we had last night here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens.


My Christmas Kitty, still not really named, and I spent the better part of yesterday like this. She read the paper, I read the stack of seed catalogs at the top of the picture, and also did some dorking on the computer. But for the most part we were lazy lazy lazy.

Until I heard some cute little voices. This is Aksel. Have you met him before? He is the youngest of my oldest. If you read about ice skating on the pasture pond here at Vicktory Farm and Garden he was the one who had issues and just laid down on the ice. He may look like our Nordic Boy but he sure likes to be warm and dry.

Since it is Three Kings Day and we will be singing We Three Kings From Orient Are, we will be eating oriental food, or at least the best facsimile the Vick Chicks can come up with. So, what did you bring with you?

Oh, the Chow Mien looks tasty. I think we can work with that,

Look what I made, Orange Chicken. I worked so hard, cutting the chicken, breading it, frying it making the orange sau..... Oh wait, I already told you CK and I napped all day. Your right Costco and Dirt made this.

There is still more to do. But what is this pow wow over?

The third batch of white rice? You must be joking? And you girls think I'm the perfectionist!? Poor Bet, she just cannot get the knack of cooking white rice. It is a mind boggler you know, boil water, put in the rice, cook it... Better get with it girl, you can't eat pie and beautiful breads forever, or can you?

Now the kitchen is really crowded. Eric? What are you doing in here? Why aren't you out with Dirt and me watching the Longhorns gore the whatevers? Hey, at least I know they are playing Ohio!
Dinner was great, no fancy table setting just grab a plate grab some food and find a chair, preferably not my end of the couch thanks.

Ah the Red Velvet cake has arrived, and is getting preped. It sure looks red this year!

You know I do have larger cake plates girls. But yes the colors are pretty together so I will say no more. Except, yum, hurry up!

Now that is nice. Hey that non-nut eating Eric isn't getting that whole other half is he?

Oooh, very pretty and very tasty, lets just leave it in here and not tell that living room crew, they won't notice.

They are being entertained by Aksel being entertained. He has found Lanny's lamp and how it turns on.

and off on one side. Or both sides and it does it fast or slow or together...

or separate.

Hey, I think Aksel hears cake being served. Now that might distract him from Lanny's lamp!

"Hey dad, you got some cake and ice cream!"

"I'm thinking I need some!" Well the game was good, even though Dirt is grumpy that Colt McCoy received some award after the game and not his receiver. Dirt is picky, he likes credit to go to the very right place and not just the typical "oh we won, give the Quarterback the award!"

The girls and Aksel sure had a lot of fun in the dining room. It was very loud. But that is all I am going to say, Anna will tell you all about it when she gets done doing all the dishes today!

My goodness my girls can use a lot of dishes. We all enjoyed the food but there were several votes to marry someone off to a nice Asian Chef, okay he doesn't have to be a chef but cooking skills in his native dishes will be a must because no matter how we NE's (N-northern E- European) try we cannot achieve an above adequate Three Kings Feast. I'm think the interview process will just be a lovely meal cooked by the applicant. (After cleaning up this morning I am sure that this is God's will for the girls. How many pots can you use? Oh yah, that's right, three just for the rice! )

It was a very good night after all even though it got off on a bad foot when Dirt got home. Minus most all of the things I needed for my Ol' Befana lay out!

Oh well, there is always next year and many more holidays and feast days before that. Christmas Kitty says it is time to wash up and go to bed. How 'bout we skip the dishes tonight CK? Sounds good!

Holidays and Football; Even Holidays Mosta Ya Ain't Hearda.

Way to go Longhorns!
Although Ohio did have a great catch in there. Not a freak about football but if it is destined to invade every holiday ever imagined then you learn at an early age to go with the flow! I understand very little but the rudimentaries of the game. Just enough to get me by. Or get me yelled at cause they expect more from me.

But ohhh doggy I can shore git fired up over a game I barely know. A well known fact that drives my son in law, Eric insane. I think, while he appreciates my enthusiasm for the game, he would like it if I knew exactly what I was cheering for. Heck sometimes I'm just cheering for more PopEye muscles.

Used to be I really liked the pants. I especially liked the teams that dressed their big strapping muscle bound men in lame'. Until I watched Joe Thiesman's leg snap in half. I don't look at the legs no more, uh uh. I am so thankful that tivo was not around then, the replay was bad enough. We wouldn't have watched anything else for a month. Do you know how many slow speeds there are on tivo and how many times Dirt can watch one simple non-game-making play?

And goodness gracious those uniform designers knew that I stopped looking cause they got into designing for the whole arm thing. Yeah the boys explained that it gave greater range of motion and wasn''t all flappy lots of material to grab. Uh huh you go on believing that's why it changed.

I'm thinking that if they are so worried about the excess material being grabbed then what are some of those fellas doing letting their corn rows out? They got four miles of loose material floating behind them and that material is attached to their head.

Funny how basketball went to the more material thing as they got more contacty

Big BTW (so then if it is "big" is it a "by the way", which is meant to convey nonchalantness?) the whole mysterious G commercial in the Rose Bowl and tonight's Fiesta Bowl?, a Gatorade commercial. No biggy. No life saving, sports saving movement afoot. Just more nasty Gatorade.

See you all tomorrow with some cute pics of the baby boy and the big boy and some yummy food. Just keeping it a little sumpin for everyone!

In Bed

On the eleventh day of Christmas
my True Love gave to me
A good reason to stay in bed.

A Cold

No, worse, the Romantic_Influenza take II.

If God doesn't give colds then he at least gives good health and that is the reason I am staying in bed. Not because I have good health but because I want mine back.

Yesterday, my Nettie Pot and I became reacquainted on a regular basis, I think I used it four times and I still hold the record for consecutive sneezes. And if you have heard me sneeze, that is a frightening thought, some people would rather go to a punk rock concert.

I told Kathy that I have been holding off what I thought was the making of a cold for nearly a month now with large doses of vitamin c, good amounts of d, e, and beta carotene but that I had let it slip this last week. I should have not let it slip and I should have been using my nettie pot as preventative.

So no pictures to day for sure. Unless you want to see how the nettie pot works? No big outside projects, just me and the pile of seed catalogs and a case of tissues.

Fasting, Moderation and Balance

Dirt served me breakfast in bed and I'm ready to just fast now. No, his breakfast wasn't bad even though the potatoes were touching the syrup, ick, but it mattered little because I quite honestly could taste nothing. So what really is the point of eating? To stay alive you say?

But what?, I have been eating all along, quite a bit actually, and I'm not so well off now am I? Oh don't pull that "everything in moderation" baloney on me. Some of us were never intended for moderation, self control perhaps but never moderation! And it is not the same thing! Nor is self control balance. There is nothing "balanced" about a life lived completely for one thing. Not that I am there yet but I am aiming and that aim does not include balance or moderation. Two things have done untold damage, the words, "balance" and "focus on the family".

Okay, I'm done. Either you get it or you don't, more of my words will not convince you otherwise. Besides it is difficult to uphold a rant when I can barely uphold my head. But to put it down, (my head) means certain pounding and flooding feelings so upright it is. Upright with a slant.


Typos and Punctuation

Wow, I just corrected about fifteen typos. And I think my left side is paralysed. All of my typos were reversed letter orders and the letter orders reversed were the difference between letters under the control of my left hand and my right hand. Right hand won every time. Left is a little slow today. Funny, it is always the other way around.

I think that there should be a punctuation mark for puzzlement. It is not a matter of a question mark, I am not asking you a question. If I'm excited and I want you to know it, I use an exclamation mark but nothing available to the puzzled. Words? If words were all I needed, then why an exclamation mark, couldn't I just use my words to convey my excitement? (That was a real question, I'm not puzzled.)

And personally I think that you should be able to use an exclamation or question mark mid-sentence, (you may have noticed I do, even though it is not accepted by the Society for Correct Writing).

And why not an exclamation mark and a question mark at the same time?! Am I not allowed to ask a question excitedly!?

And commas should be everywhere, I breath a lot, you should too, but I never really rest, so why should you, if when I was so busy writing, I just kept going, why can't you just keep up. But if we are always stopping, I may loose you. See you could have left me there but you wouldn't have if I had just used a comma.

Periods make you sit down and rest. Commas keep you going, urge you on. If you were running a marathon which would you rather have in your pit crew, a bunch of periods or some fine commas, giving you an energetic pause?


Birding and Criminals

My little unidentified brown sparrow has found my bedroom window. He is usually seen only at the feeders, (he is looking quite plump) and not on this side of the house. I usually only see my little kinglet friend here at this window. How nice of him to come and visit.

Ahhh the mystery is solved, upon the arrival of a Rufous Sided Towee at my window I wondered if they were all coming looking for the Mistress of Seeds (uh, that's me) so I called out and Bet came to answer my inquiry about the fullness of the feeders. "Nope, they're all full, they just like to come visit you, mom. Well, that and there is a Steller's Jay back there."

Hah, they are not coming just to visit me, they are coming to escape the criminal element. There are two kinds of criminals, Stellar Jays and Starlings.

There is nothing redeeming about starlings. They were raised poorly, have no scruples or sense of community, they even look bad, easy to pick from a line-up because they look like they just killed someone and therefore are intolerable. Marla's vandals were of the starling type. Bad seed. No, not the kind they eat, the egg they come from, bad, bad to the egg white!

But movies are made of the Stellar Jays. The Ocean's Eleven gang, they are Stellar Jays, blurring the lines between good and bad. When I was a kid it sure seemed like there were a lot of movies about criminals, all of the western outlaws had a movie made about them, then there was The Longest Yard, and some movie with Sydney Poitier and somebody else running away from a chain gang. Paul Newman was a criminal once, I mean portrayed one or two. They were all Stellar Jays.

A Stellar Jay could either go wrong or go right, many law men were just Stellar Jays that were barely kept from wrong. Like the Erp brothers and a few others dimly in my mind as I watch the antics of the birds on this side of the house avoiding the rough and tumble but good hearted Steller Jays.

Yap At You Later

There really must be something productive I can do today although if you needed to be entertained for a little bit Dear Reader, then I guess I have been productive, although the entertainment value is only worth what you paid for it!

But I suppose I should be wrapping up my first seed order and getting that off so that it can hurry up and get back here. One of the web sites for a seed house said they wouldn't be getting to the orders for six weeks!

Guess who isn't going to be trying that seed house!? The seeds wouldn't get here for P. Day, that could stand for Presidents Day but when I have my garden hat on it stands for Pea Planting Day! Not to mention I am starting some new artichoke plants this year, and I want some more onions and a jump on the nightshade fam.

You know, some people think that the nightshade family, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers are poisonous and cause arthritis. Well that may be true, especially for us European types, as the nightshade fam are all native to this here land mass. Call it a slow revenge for that whole chicken pox on the blankets move we tried on the natives.

"Here have some potatoes and tomatoes. If getting hooked on them to the point of having a famine because you didn't grow anything else and they got blight doesn't get back at you, then maybe a couple of centuries of eating way to much spaghetti sauce or potatoes in various forms will get you some whopping food allergies."

Just saying that there might be some justice a foot here. I must not have had any culpable relatives (or at least it seems so so far) because taters and tamaters don't seem to bother me much. I find no point in eating eggplant. Only one food is more devoid of any nutritional merit and that is Iceberg lettuce, please, lets not call it a vegetable.

However, around here that doesn't keep others from wanting to grow eggplants, they're so cute. Why some might say their smoochie. So I better quite messing around and get my order off. Wow check it out, over five paragraphs ago I said I was leaving you! "Say good night Gracie." Good night.

Oh wait, one more thing. Eleven stands for the eleven faithful disciples.

Dear Reader I sure hope we are counted in the bunch that is faithful and not pretendy schmendy sellouts! I am Glad that God has given us their example of faithfulness among others! Celebrate, even if you have Vicks on your chest. I know I do!

Hanging In There

I was very thankful indeed for our fresh new snow that began coming down the night of New Year's Day. It makes everything so bright. Right now there is enough cloud cover that if it were not for the snow it would be very gloomy outside and in. But snow outside and shiny Christmas cheer inside and I am doing well!

I love that it has snowed during this Christmas is just really makes the season go so much easier for me, it greatly lessen expectations. One Christmas when it snowed after a week or more of major freezing we spent Christmas Day out at the pond, pushing snow off of the ice so that we could continue to skate. We completely skipped having dinner that Christmas and it was just fine by all of us including our guest. But secretly I think she and I wished that there had been a hidden "mother" somewhere who would have not stayed out to have fun but done the dutiful thing by cooking a proper Christmas dinner, but neither one of us were signing up to be that woman.

The memories of her and my husband being human snow plows and zambonies and then ice skating till our feet fell off, having a bonfire at the edge of the pond to see once it got dark, those memories are certainly burned in my brain and I'm thinking my two big girls who were there would echo that.

I am thankful for the snow because it reinforces for me that it is still Christmas. I need to hang on to the seasons, yes, plan ahead and prepare, but I cannot rush to be done with this season too soon. I have been known to push the spring thing a bit much and on a warm February day I am doing activities that are done in April or June. Now if it were only as harmful as the eager child who puts on her swimsuit I could understand, but I have had some very cold goats and some very dead plants because I was convinced that spring was here to stay.

Jumping the gun and thinking that spring should be here and that spring is always warm and sunny and bright also makes my winter blues intensify. I actually don't get too blue in the "dead" of winter it is when things begin to look promising that I get into trouble. Mud, clouds, more mud and then all of a sudden there isn't enough chocolate and coffee in the world to pick me up.

It did make it a little more difficult to prune yesterday and I am taking a vacation from being outside this morning to tidy up the inside but I have two complete trees done and a good start on some others. I had big plans to do one a day, an easy plan to make when the first one I choose to do is such an easy tree and Dirt is occupied far away on the other side of the farm.

But then I ran into the perennial snag of pruning a tree with a garage in the way, not to mention a truck someone refused to move cause the "game" was on. Frustrating to be sure and though I got the tree done I was too far gone to get back up on the ladder the next day.

When I did get back up on the ladder yesterday to tackle a tree that looks like it ought to cover the entire farm, along comes Dirt, chain saw and ladder in hand. So I had to jump out of the tree I was doing to save the tree Dirt was going to do in.

Elisabet is the only one I trust to prune our trees. Yes, they are old. Yes, the rot may cause them to fall down. But no, hacking off all the limbs on one side with the chain saw will not make the tree last another hundred years.

I intended to stay inside today and I keep running to the window to make sure Dirt isn't out "pruning" the trees to get the rest of them done before he goes back to work on Monday.

I am glad for the snow, it slows me down and makes me enjoy the full length and depth of the season. Now if it would just stick around through to February and then miraculously melt on the sixteenth (President's Day) so I can plant my peas, life would be perfect.

Oh wait, life is perfect!

Ten?!?! Then There is Only Two More After This!

On the tenth day of Christmas
my True Love gave to me
Ten Pipers piping...

Ah Dear Reader this one is easy, the ten commandments.

1) You shall have no other gods before me;
2) Do not make an idol;
3) Do not take God's name in vain;
4) Remember the Sabbath Day;
5) Honor your father and mother;
6) Do not murder;
7) Do not commit adultery;
8) Do not steal;
9) Do not bear false witness;
10) Do not covet.
(based on Exodus 20:1-17)

Well by easy I meant that it is easy to see what might be given on the tenth day.

Did you have a hard time coming up with a New Year's resolution? We can call them "goals" for those who find resolutions defeating (I'm an old soccer player, goalie, so I am against making goals!) If you had a hard time coming up with some resolutions, (man, I would like to just narrow my potential list to one that fits on a page) check out this list above.

"No problem with these," you say? Then look at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and how he takes some of these commandments farther than we see them here. For instance, I'm sure that you haven't murdered anyone recently but check out Jesus' words in Matthew chapter five, starting at about verse twenty:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire."

Still okay? No need to change of rearrange? Okay how about...

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Oh wait, never mind, I know some of you are girls so this doesn't apply right? We sure couldn't swap the genders here and besides girls' lusts aren't triggered by looks they are just triggered by words. They don't wish some other hunky man was theirs just a man who says sweet understanding things to them. But that okay that's not what Jesus was talking about, lets move on.

Here's one how about:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Well if you still can't think of anything to put on a list of resolutions or goals, you could just resolve to help others get to where you are. Some of us need to change, like me, and some of us need more help than others, like me.

Yes, I know it is Christ who changes me and works his good in my life but he does it through the people He puts in our lives. You're here, at my blog, then you are in my life. So there you go, a new project for the year, help me.

I am glad for such a gift as this from my True Love, I am thankful for Him calling me to something even beyond what was written in the Law. Please don't feel crushed by the Law Dear Reader because it is not in our effort that we get there. It is through His strength, the same strength that He prayed in the Garden with, the same strength that he stood in front of Pilate with, the same strength that He could come to earth as a man with.

I have that strength when I am in Him. In him I can do all things because He gives me strength, His strength.