Remembering, Doing, and Looking Forward, All in a Saturday's Work

How's the Hothouse and Market Shed project going?

Well this is where I left you last, the big trees were down,

the little brushy trees got cut out, and I kept looking at what it was going to be.

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Last Sunday, the last day of February, Mr. Leonard, Leonard and Sons Excavating, came for dinner and a survey of what we needed his operator to do. This was how it looked then. And he promised to send us an operator and an excavator on Saturday morning.

Well sure nuff, early (early for us lazy bones) on Saturday morning, Greg the Operator showed up with the excavator to dig out all the stumps so that the site could be leveled, graveled and the building started.

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One of my favorite children's books is Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton, (a girl, in case you didn't catch the Virginia part) this was pretty much like living in that book for a few hours.

The excavator began making quick work of the big stumps in the ground. I was in making coffee and so I missed a lot of the beginning work but Anna caught much of it on video and in pictures.

Greg would lift the stumps way up in the air and then open the grip and drop them from up high. All that crazy action to get as much soil as possible off of the stumps before tossing them over the fence.

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The excavator is on tracks not tires, the potential for a lot of underground water to be pumped up to the surface with the back and forth motion made it necessary for the stumps to be shook and dumped in a pile on this side, then the

crazy prehistoric robotic alien jaws would toss them over the fence to be moved one more time after that to the rot pile. No stump burning piles are allowed any more.

Mr. Leonard, holding the coffee cup, has even gone to testify to the legislature that not burning is actually harder on the environment and creates more pollution than just burning them.

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But no, the greeners are narrow minded and insist that if they see a big burn that it is more damaging that all the less conspicuous but much larger carbon footprinting that it takes to have stumps ground instead.

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Oh well, ranting about the current "green" movement is for another day. Or more like days, 'cause if I said it all at once it would be a long post even for me.

Gregg chatting with Bruce, telling us that the thumb broke on the second stump pulling. The thumb is what grips and holds things in the bucket, or "scoopy thing" just in case it isn't called a bucket. Gregg is my new hero!

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We were all in love with Gregg on Saturday, okay some of us still are, Dirt sent him home with a bottle of plum wine (sorry Kimberly, but we had to give away one from your special cache) but I still want to bake him a cake every day, every time I look at my beautiful building site!

In the middle of the excavating lambs began to drop. We ended up with five lambs from three ewes on Saturday. We went out to check on the first batch that dropped just to make sure everything was going well.

But then came back for the final touches that Gregg put on the site. He exchanged the small bucket for a larger one and because the thumb was broke it would not stay back so it got chained up to the "wrist" so that the "fingers" could fill in holes and smooth out the dirt.

Mr. Leonard, with Dirt's help, predicted that the area would be pretty wet and a big mess, needing a lot of special help and $ if we were going to have it ready to build before August let alone by the end of this month. Well, that may have been true on any other year but this one...

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This one is all about me, so if you live in the PNW and are not enjoying our mild and dry winter and spring, blame me.

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Everything is going so well that if I don't make my schedule, I am nothin' but a looser. A blessing and a test all rolled into one!

Justin from up north, joined us just in time to see the leveling of the site and help get the truck unstuck from the driveway, it pays to have an extra truck driver on hand.

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Now for checking on the lambs...

and look more lambs have dropped in close proximity to the first batch! This is a problem! We run to jump in to the escalating issue.

You see, some moms are not satisfied with just their lambs, they want every one's lambs and will attempt to adopt all of them. Sometimes if we are not out there right away it can be a confusing mess to try and get the right moms with the right babies.

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Even though the moms think that they want more lambs, once they get them all rounded up and huddle away from the other mother, they realize their mistake and reject the ones that aren't theirs. It is easy for them to know which ones were really theirs to begin with, one sniff tells it all.

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But after all the ruckus and mixing of lambs it is often too late to get the right lambs back with the right mom.

This is why we take the ewe's and lambs into the barn once they have dried off and nursed. We try to wait at least that long so that the mom's aren't quite so nervous on the trip into the barn. But they need to be in the barn eventually not just to protect them from Bald Eagles and Coyotes, but to protect the new lambs and new moms from the bossy older sister and auntie ewes.

Anna catches the lamb so that Dirt can catch the ewe. Justin is the newest inductee into the world of lamb rustling and ewe driving.

Anna makes sure mom knows where her lamb is. Then the slow dance begins. Around and around we go, closer and closer, less and less tense around Mr. Vick...

and snag! the ewe is caught so she can be taken in the barn. This first batch will go in now. Then we will do some other farm work and come back and get the other ewes and lambs.

Bet, Anna and Justin spread lime on the front pastures, Dirt and I ran into town for some lunch fixins' and seed potatoes. We ate a lovely lunch and then headed out back to spread more lime and minerals on the hay fields out there.

Dirt is really diggin' on having the PTO driven cyclone spreader on the back of the tractor. It sure beats having a hand driven-hand held spreader, makes a week-long job get done in an hour or two, one of a few reasons, excuses, as to why the pastures and fields were a bit on the neglected side lime wise.

Bet asked to be chief tractor driver for this job, we were all good with that, especially since the lime is virtually dust free!

The rest of us gave the dogs some well needed entertainment and exercise, and the some of us just lounged around thinking of how tired we were from all that stump pulling. Man, my back hurts.

It was a splendid day, the sky was clear and blue, the mountain was in all his glory, just a great day to accomplish a ton of work and visit with a friend from way up north.

Definite difference in flinging styles.

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After all this hard work and picking up more lambs and moving everyone around in the barn, it is rest time. A great simple supper, review of the day of excavating on video (thanks Peanut Butter) and a movie capped off the day.

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Hey, about that pen, the ink pen, you have all asked about, it is a Uniball 207, marketed for anti-check fraud, but really it is for me, remember it is all about me, and writing notes in the mist and rain that I am sure we will get back to as soon as I need some rain in my life. Remember, it is all about me right now.

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Oh, how does the site look? In all the excitement over lambs and spreading lime I forgot to take pictures of the finished site. Anna went out early this morning, a cold frosty morning and got a few pictures of it.

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Brrr, we got cold here, even snowed a bit yesterday, but not to worry, anything that was tender is protected and the apple blossoms haven't begun to swell, neither have my fruiting cherries, just the ornamentals, so I'm thinkin' were still okay.

The site? She is lookin' pretty stinkin' good!

And ready for the next phase, Building!!!

Here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens, we have all been bitten by one type of bug or another, just not this one!

Kai's Birthday Bash

Today is Kai's eighth birthday, that means Eric and Steph are about to celebrate their ninth anniversary! Wow how time does fly. Isn't this the absolute best winter birthday cake you ever did see? I would want one even in August! Patty Mor Mor, Kai's other grandmother, makes the absolute best cakes ever! Not only are they a work of art but they are simply the best tasting cakes, hands down, bar none!


All of these pictures are taken by my oldest daughter, Stephanie, Kai's mom, Aksel's mom too, but it is Kai's birthday. I had left my camera at home but oddly enough my computer was only four doors down from Steph's house, at Mike and Rebecca's all weekend, so I downloaded from her card before we headed back out to the farm.

The afternoon festivities began with a little bowling for everyone! We were running a little late but that was okay because we ended up with more folks than two lanes can handle. But sweetly Pattikins and Pop feigned soreness so that Earl Dirt Anthony and I could bowl the second round.

Does this man look like he can only bowl one game? I didn't think so. He probably could have gone all day if given half a chance. Concentrate, Rick, concentrate. The Pattikins, Rick's darling bride and cake baker extraordinaire, was the high score-er of the day. Way to go Pat!

Bettispaghetti wasn't too bad, she sure as heck wasn't last.

And Earl Dirt Anthony, after a twenty-eight year hiatus, comes back with vigor, even though he tried his best to first feign sore shoulder before arriving at the lanes, then his shoes were sticky and his wrist wouldn't do what it used to, oh brother just fling the ball already.

Here is Rick and Dirt's little protegee, what a stance eh? Watch out guys he is hot on your heels, he only threw it into the other lane once.

And if you're wondering, yes, Twinkle Toes Lanny bowled, not well, (she held the worst score of all even the children in the other lane) but I look at the bright side, the floor at the alley is still intact, no light fixtures are missing, no ones teeth had to be replaced nor was any one knocked unconscious by a ball that left my hand. A red letter day for sure.

Hey Missy, we know where that ball is headed, yes we do. Auntra Beccah played up her gutter balls but she scored pretty stinking well in spite of them.

Why is it that two year olds get to do the things we all wish we were brave enough to do? Dontcha just wish you could get up close and personal to the Brunswick and see how it does that ball spitting back thing it does?

The ball is coming, yes it is!

It wouldn't be normal to do a post about the Manley family and not have more pictures of Aksel than anyone, say for instance even the birthday boy. Remember, these are the pictures his mommy took and there were still more of him than anyone else.

Thanks for joining us at fashion central today Dear Reader.

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Now that we have had our fun (until we go to get out of bed in the morning and realize parts don't move anymore) and all insist that we are going to do it again, beware, the lane monster has been unleashed in the Lanny. I will not remain on the bottom for long! I will not be the asbestos tile beneath your feet forever!

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God has blessed us with life again today Dear Reader, He is good. He has gotten me peacefully through another winter day with a smile on my face.

Getting Around to Stuff, Some, Twenty Years in the Making

Check it out, I finally changed up my banner picture, made it a little more seasonal. I usually get that changed more regularly but I haven't been doing much "regularly", I still have tulips on my lap top screen.


I like change, I feed on change, but this last year was so chalk a block full of change that I am thoroughly drenched in change and so my lap top and blog suffer. There you have it excuse five-forty-four from Procrastination Alley. - Oh wait, not changing it seasonally is change. There, that's better, I like rational better than excuses. Which one gets your forgiveness juices flowing Dear Reader? Or better yet, bag mere forgiveness, I'd like to know what trips your sympathy trigger, a good cry in the beer excuse or a straight forward justification that shows really deep down that a person is eternally a mess?

Sorry for that little pause in my writing but I started chuckling to myself and then ended up guffawing. My blatant search for sympathy reminded me of what my father used to say when, as an older child, I or someone else appeared to be looking to pull the sympathy card. He would tell us that we could find sympathy in the dictionary, located between two distinct words, not very nice words and we would get the definite idea that he was not pleased with whiners.

So never mind, don't give me any sympathy, I don't want it, not looking for it, because I'm afraid someone might direct me to the dictionary.

Well I'm still workin' at keeping to the whole moon and star signs thingy and I think today is a root day. Why? What makes it a root day? Days that follow the full moon and up to the new moon, the waning or decreasing of the moon, are days more root oriented. Why? I have no idea, it is just what the almanac says. Today is a definite root oriented day because of the zodiac sign. Did you freak out 'cause I said zodiac?

Zodiac - Astronomy A band of the celestial sphere extending about 8° to either side of the ecliptic that represents the path of the principal planets, the moon, and the sun.

Genesis 1:4 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years,

"We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." The magi at Jesus' birth.

So any who, I was thinking that I head out to the beach to dig clams because the tide is low, but I know the tide will be low according to the phase of the moon and a bunch of other factors I am sure because the tide isn't always the same lowness (word?). So the whole planetary, star, moon thing, while I would never go by a horoscope to figure out who I was going to marry or how I should dress (there are other signs in the sky for that) I do get that maybe just maybe the whole moon and stuff has an effect on my beet seeds.

But if you think I've gone whack a doo and need a visit from the church authorities, you got their number, ring 'em up. but what I know so far is that it has actually kept me on a schedule of sorts since Christmas, when I received the evil almanac.

That was morning and now it is night

So I know I started writing this this morning and then decided I really needed to get the heck outa bed, and now I am getting ready to go back to same said bed, might as well stare at that dark ceiling awhile, and so I can tell you what I did today. Oh, rats, I have pics but they're in the cam still and if I load them, edit them and put them here not only will it mess with my paragraphing but it will keep me from at least appearing like I am trying to get a good night sleep. So maybe I'll do the picture thing later.

Any ways, I decided that it must be a good transplant day because it is a similar sign and all that, from the day they say it is, and I can't really plant root stuff 'cause it doesn't transplant well and I needed to be outside.

Sooooo...... I dug up the two lavendar plants that I had mounded soil around to cause them to root on the branches making a bunch of little lavendars. One, I needed them out of the bed they were in because I want to throw a poly hoop over it and get some spinach going but I didn't want to freak the lavendar out. Two, I needed something to do besides weed, I did end up doing some weeding today, merely incidental and not intentional so I don't think it counts.

We, Bet and I, ended up with a lot of new lavendar plants, that is if they survive the indignancy of being dug up, cut up, trimmed and slammed back down in the dirt. Most of them had put on a good clump of roots and that is what I have pic of. So I will stop talking about that now and wait until I have pics for you to see.

So these are the things I am in the market for Dear Reader, besides a little spiritual cpr:

1. a souwester hat, preferably a good color to go with my new Carhart raingear, so I'm thinking green 'cause my Carhart raingear is... you guessed it baby doo tan. 'Cause today was clear but I am hearing the rain dripping off the roof right now, and hoods are confining, like a straight jacket, which I should be in, but that is beside the point.

2. bulb crates, plastic totes approx 23"x15"x10" or there abouts, ventilated on all sides and bottom with built in slots for handles. No color preferred but basic black is so functional. Can't find a distributor, only a couple of manufacturers and I don't really need five hundred at the moment, not sure I ever would, I only desire about fifty.

3. a digital sportsman 1502 incubator with chicken, duck and quail racks. Within driving distance, 'cause shipping on these pups is right near a hundred. So if you live in the state and Crazy Uncle Mac bought one to populate the earth with quail so he could spend a weekend and shoot all of them, but Naggy Aunt Nancy shut him down after the first egg exploded in her living room and the incubator is sitting in your basement 'cause Crazy Uncle Mac begged you to take it, give me a call, I'll buy it off of Crazy Uncle Mac so Naggy Aunt Nancy can buy a new rug.

4. help for Dirt with his idea to take down a couple of trees that have shaded my north garden for years (not intended for being a shade garden) that would free up a spot for a green house and market shed not to mention dirt making station...

5. number four reminded me that I need some of those big huge concrete blocks, they're called ecology blocks and I want... opps, need some to form my soil, manure, shavings bins. Oh then I'll need...

6. a front loader for a tractor so I can toss my compost, scoop my dirt and shavings.

7. more help for Dirt, 7a. for him to catch and hold on to a vision of a solar green house, yes Dear Reader, most all greenhouses are solar but a solar green house does not need artificial heat. Well for the most part it doesn't, it can be primarily a passive system, hence less monetary input on a regular basis. (Which should make the vision getting and holding a sure bet for the Dirt-penny-pinch-man, but he keeps wandering back to those money sucking conventional types.) 7b. more help for Dirt to construct said green house.


Oh and I'd like to get this list cleared up by oh say... yesterday. But tomorrow will do. Okay, March.

All that talk of work and remembering the work I did and I think I could possibly be tired enough to sleep. Which would be a good thing 'cause the girls are dragging me into town tomorrow. But they still haven't found the missing cell phone, oh dear, driving around ala pre ninties, what will I do if I break down? Oh wait, we have feet, I forgot. Shhh don't tell the girls, the "find the phone first" gig has kept me from town all week! And we do have an emergency back up but they seem to have forgotten that. Keep weeden, just keep weeden. (sung to the tune of Dora singing "keep swimming, just keep swimming.")

Up In The Middle of the Night

This use to be typical of me but not for a long while now. So I don't really know what to do with myself. I could do all my Ol' Befana baking but since my girls aren't little any more no need to do that in the middle of the night. It would require me putting my contacts back in and committing to staying up. Not sure I want to do either. I'm really hoping that not unlike reading my Horticulture magazine at ten-thirty and then eleven-thirty that I will just get tired again and go back to sleep, but as you can see I'm not doing so hot on staying asleep.

Tomorrow the girls and I tackle the upstairs, my sewing room/office and contemplative perch and their room. It is crazy messy up there. Because I no longer use the dinosaur computer up there and haven't had a huge urge to sew it has become the dump and run room. Come on, you know what I am talking about, either you personally or because you know someone like me intimately you know we have rooms or some folks contain it to a closet where things that you do not desire to deal with at the moment they find themselves in your hand go until you are ready to deal with them. In this case stuff has been being exiled up there since July when I did a grand cleaning, sort of, and before that we could date some stash I hadn't gotten to in July back to oh just shy of a year ago. I am positive there are no lost children, dead pets or rotting fruit up there but beyond that don't push it.

But the whole Farm and Garden by the moon phases and the zodiac thing has today, oops that'd be yesterday(Monday) , and the real today (Tuesday) and Wednesday as great days for weeding, barren signs in the sky, and so I extrapolate to the household, a great few days to weed indoors too. Which I think is a good use of a weeding day as today, oops, Monday, it was impossible to go outside even in rain gear I fear. One of those visibility zero because of the precip streaming down your face and in your eyes sort of day. Can't imagine that tomorrow is going to prove any better.

My cheery, isn't the whole world wonderful and dreamy, daughter, stood at the window several times today saying how she just loved the rain like this. Her sister and I would have contemplated the dismemberment of her body if we were those type of people, which give us a few more days of this and we might be. The down spouts, every single one of them, look like someone is up at the top of them with a hose on full blast. The barn roof, no gutters on it, was delivering a solid sheet of water for the majority of the day. Consequently what doesn't know how to swim on the Farm right now is getting a quick lesson and even the ducks have gotten out their umbrellas and hip waders.

I toyed with the idea of weeding a few beds, this being the first day of the best days for that sort of thing according to the zodiac and moon, but I decided the signs pouring out of the sky this morning, as we all looked out my huge new window, certainly held other prospects as being more profitable. But I really wasn't up for much so nothing but a lot of general tidying got done. Which considering that my toss and go room has become a teetering wall of what-not it is a good thing that I dealt with all those random things on the main level of the house that found their way into my hand today. But man, that takes a long time.

By the way, I'm not feeling very tired yet. I take that back tired yes, very, sleepy on the other hand, not so much and not the type that I am certain will keep me asleep for more than an hour before my eyes fly open and I find myself twiddling my thumbs, at least I think they are my thumbs in the dark.

I'd like to swear. But I won't, it doesn't look pretty on the screen, not that my regular words do, it is just that random or purposeful even, swearing doesn't look very pretty, sures heck isn't very uplifting, okay again, not that this is but lets not have the Lanny P. in the gutter completely shall we. But I do feel a swearing hanging just below the surface, a big one, a flippant one followed by a truly cranky one. Unfortunately I have no idea who I would aim it at.

Well sort of I don't know who and sort of I do. Dumb pusillanimous people in this world who don't ascribe to my way of thinking, that would be a starting target. Then mean people, stupid mean people, next target. Then careless people, ridiculously careless, "do you know you have feet even" people, I could have a good go at them I suppose. And then the foolish people, destroy their own lives and souls while destroying and hurting others in the process, foolish, foolish people.

But if I start swearing at them, I think that wouldn't be good enough, I would have to start throwing things at them. And I don't have a lot of nice breakable things that I could just run out and replace tomorrow.

So they (all those crummy people I mentioned) would win this battle, they would have control of my mouth and they would have destroyed my few little pretties in my house and they would not really have suffered a whit. Most of them are in bed and wouldn't even hear it all. And those that aren't in bed and are still out at the bars wouldn't hear because the music is too loud anyway.

So I won't swear at them. What I ought to do is pray for them. But me and zillions others like me for thousands of years have been praying for those yo-yos and they still just keep a coming, some one still keeps reproducing them. And they still continue to mess with good folks.

Folks that just want to live a decent life and take care of others. Folks that don't need to morn their father at the ripe age of sixteen. Folks that just want to drive the car from work to the store to home, safely and quietly and non-excitedly. Folks that just want to produce something that someone else might need. Folks that want to teach others how to do something useful.

Ya know, a big part of me hopes that the 2012 folks are right, because no amount of any earthy goodies and fun stuff compares with being in the constant up close and personal eternal presence of my God, and sure as shoot it would be nice to be done with the stuff I sorta wanna swear at.

Tomorrow, well Tuesday really and my computer calendar says that that is today, will be a more productive day for Vicktory Farm & Gardens, not necessarily brighter, as this area will be holding another memorial, but hopefully more productive.

Not much more to say Dear Reader, finding it hard to do my usual uplifting God focused adieus, so maybe just a reminder that God is everywhere and holds everything including our bodies together, He is the glue whether we acknowledge Him or not. He is, no matter what we think of Him. But it certainly would behoove us, for our sake, not His or anyone else, if we began to give Him more credence in our lives. In the whole of our lives not just in our desperate panic prayers when things seem to be going terribly a wry, or on Sunday when we get up, get dressed and toddle off to church so we can mark it off our good for you to-do list. He is the glue and the glue is there all the time.

I'm going to take another whack at sleeping. Hope I didn't leave to many errors for you to slog through, but a sleep cycle hit while I started to go through and correct and I am going to take advantage of it. Good night - or really good morning - Dear Reader.

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.