Apropos of Nothing v.4

We came from here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1048941/

This thread can't be derailed because there's no topic. HA!

Tracy cut down one of the big shipping crates for me- now I have no excuse not to go get more soil and fill it up. I wonder if my raspberry plants are dead yet...

Surely not! Why am I still up? Why?????

Um... maybe one of your other dimensional selves is a night owl and it's leaking through into this dimension, potentially causing a massive rift in the space time continuum?

*cue "Doctor Who" theme music*

I knew there was a good explanation!

*beams* I'm SMRT. :D

I accidentally stayed up till 8 a.m., trying to finish Book 5 of that stupid Harry Potter stuff. Made it past page 600 ... 16 straight hours of lounging on the couch, 3 armloads of firewood and, um, 7 Obsidian Stouts (yum) should be PLENTY to finish one book, in my opinion, they are way too long.

Thank goodness my home sellers don't have books 6 & 7 boxed up in the garage too, the first five have eaten up a whole week of my life. I need that week back.

I stayed up till 7 AM. But I was mostly just dinkin' around online. Yikes.

Safeway has pomegranates on sale for $1 each. I bought two. I think I'm going to go open one up now... yum.

I am full of pomegranate. :D

First frost of the year here at our house tonight. My poor callas. They were so pretty, still had two big blooms and a bud coming up, now they're drooping. *sigh*

I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving already. Where did this year go? I'm going to have at least 10 people to cook for this year, possibly 14. I love cooking a big turkey dinner, even though it's a lot of work. It's one of my favorite things about the holiday season. :)

Last year I cooked for 20, but this year my daughter and I are driving down to my parents' house near Lake Tahoe. My kids are all gathering there so it will be fun. We'll all cook! I like driving through Oregon and the Tahoe mountains this time of year. So beautiful! We'll put hot cider in our car coffee mugs. A little music, a few snacks, and an In-and-Out burger when we get to Cal.

20 people! Whooo!

We did an "everyone cooks" Thanksgiving last year out at my SIL's parents beach house on Fox Island. They cooked the turkey on the barbecue grill! It was a lot of fun, but I'm glad we're going back to our usual tradition this year. (me cooking)

Gotta love In-and-out burgers. It's so rare that I go to CA, I always forget the "special" way to order them though... LOL

My aunt and uncle lived in So. Cal. and had a pomegranate tree in their front yard (also a guava and a tangerine tree in the side yard). When my family visited at Christmastime one year, we went wild eating the most delicious tree-ripened pomegranates and took home a bag of them when we left. There were so many they were all over the place. Another time my sister and I visited in March, rode our bicycles all over the place, and ate tangerines straight from the branch. It was Heaven.

I'll have at least 10 people too, very pleased, feeling blessed that my very first Thanksgiving here, the house will be full.

It doesn't feel like work to me -- I've hosted a very traditional Thanksgiving nearly every year since hitting college. What's worse is accepting an invite to someone else's party & hearing them say, "Oh, we decided to try something new this year -- roast duck, raisin stuffing & liver pate rather than mashed potatoes!"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO .............

I also have cooked the traditional holiday dinners since 1970. All through the children and grandkids. Now we have 14 greatgrand ones and for the last few years we have gone to my daughters. It's different but she does a good job. Then we drop by my DH's daughters for seconds or presents and go home to a clean, neat house. I still want to cook, I just don't put myself through that anymore. Good memories.

One of the guests is my best friend Lisa, who is coming from Portland the night before with her husband. She has trouble relaxing, so I probably could just sit at the kitchen bar, flipping through magazines, saying, "Sure, that sounds fine" as she insists on doing all the work.

I do all of the prep 2 or 3 days ahead -- and the turkey brines overnight -- so on T-Day there really is very little to do but open a bottle of wine & make biscuits.

Do you guys get your Christmas trees up beforehand? I hadn't thought of doing that but maybe that would be fun.

I usually do my tree around December 5th or so.

I like to put mine up after Thanksgiving and take it down the day after Christmas.

I'm feeling like a big humbug compared to you all. We're spending a nice quiet Thanksgiving at home with the kids and dogs. I'll probably cook, but who knows how much. Or maybe we'll go out on the boat if the weather is nice. A few years ago my daughter was in France for Thanksgiving and we were all depressed she wasnt' at home (even though she was having a fine Traditional american dinner in France). We decided we'd do something completely different so we sailed up to Blake Island and spent Thanksgiving eating turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches and trying to stay dry. As I recall, it poured rain the entire time. Somehow, seeing that in writing makes it sound less fun than it was.

The holidays should be what you need them to be, No. 1.

I once spent New Year's Eve by myself with a bottle of champagne on VERY cold sand up on the Long Beach peninsula.

AHHH, I completely agree. (well, I don't know about the cold sand, but the first part..definitely.)

I greatly prefer quiet New Year's Eves. Tracy and I do the same thing every year- we get a ton of movies and a bunch of deli food, and have a movie marathon and living room picnic.

After 15 years of working in a nightclub, and working every New Year's there, oh yeah... I like quiet. Quiet is good.

ai, 15 years working in a nightclub ... my insides are contracting at the thought.

Any wonder I so rarely drink alcohol? *shudder*

Wasn't there an alternative to that particular career path? *joining you in the shudder*

Shudder cubed.

It had its good points. I wouldn't go back to it now, but I don't regret it.

We have an alcohol free street party here in Kalispell on New years where all of the stores are open and they have all kinds of live music and the whole town shows up and dances and sings and meets and greets all night until about 1am. I love it. Large bands play at the old movie theater, small groups of comedians, folk guitarists, local bands play in the store areas where it is warm and everyone piles in. Fire works at the town park and group singing of favorite songs of Christmas, and new years. Big bonfire to warm up at at the center of the park.

That sounds like fun. :)

I can't seem to stop adding to my Summer Hill co-op order. They have too many wonderful seeds. Never mind that I have nowhere to put them... gaaahhh...

(You guys should check that one out in the co-op forum. OMG It's massive.)

Pony start building raised beds this winter and you will have a vast area to cover in your front yard. I have started mine this week and will work on it until the ground freezes. then I will finish it in the spring.

I've beeeeeeen building them! But I swear, the more beds I build, the less space I have because I get plants and seeds faster than I can build....*sob*

Haven't gotten any leads on rocks/concrete lately either. That makes it hard. :-/

That street fair for New Year's sounds great!

I find rocks with every weekend trip into the mountains. I load up to 1,000 lbs of rocks a weekend into my car. When I have the truck I will load over a ton of rocks. Here in Montana we have many opportunities to collect. Probably the same in the Cascades. I have been collecting many volcanic shale over in the Tonasket area every time I visit. you and Traci need to visit some mountain settings. The volcanic pieces along any road in E WA would give you wonderful stackable hardscape.

You could come get small boulders here. The river washes them clean.

*whine* I don't wanna drive to EWA or Oregon for rocks. :( It's too faaaarrrrrr.

Go up by Lynn and Julie's house. PLENTY of biggish river rocks to be found close to home, if that's what you are looking for.

Order extra seed from that coop. I'm planning a seed swap event for January. I'll be posting the date soon. Keep your eyes peeled and keep building those beds.

Another seed swap... Noooooooo! LOL!

YEESSSSS!! We'll all be chomping at the bit by then.

I had so much to do today, but I wimped out because of the rain. *sigh*

Steve, your town's New Years gathering sounds fantastic.

Pony, you are right, the Summerhill co-op is fantastic! They have so many unusual varieties of stuff...especially vines! I have fallen in love with my purple asarina scandens over the last several years, and never knew it came in other colors! I am VERY excited about those!

Pixy is right, there are lots of rocks in the foothills in our area. They are the round kind that I have used to build the majority of my beds, and if you aren't needing to make more than a single level bed (they don't stack so well!), they are perfect.