Do you give holiday gifts from your garden?

Well I have my jams and jellies and water melon pickles, along with several loaves of banana bread and fudge all packaged up but we won't be going anywhere, for a few days. We are socked in and there won't be any let up until late Saturday. I may get dug out by Monday but I'm not counting on it.
Last time it snowed like this I had an 8' high drift over half of my 168' drive way. I was much younger then an I had to shovel it by hand, I run out of places to pile it.
Now I don't have to go anywhere. Maybe I'll get lucky and the wind will clear it for me. Ha Ha

I saved hyacinth vine seeds and made seed packs with instructions on the computer and took them to work in a basket for anyone who wanted to grow them :)

randbponder,i'll never complain about our 5 months of non stop rain, again,,how do you stay warm?

I have two Orange trees and I give my neighbors each two oranges. The harvest is never large but they are delicious. This year someone, probably the landscapers, are helping them selves. I am getting a sign in Spanish for next year. The were still on the tree because they do not get old until you take them off the tree I could not believe it but about 5 years ago I sampled the first orange off he tree right after Thanksgiving and it was magnificent. Merry Christmas.

Sharon, Wish I were a neighbor of yours, too bad people don't respect another's property.

Russ, Sorry about your storm. We had ours earlier, Now snow gone, but very cold.

MERRY CHIRISTMAS. Donna

I know how you feel Sharon, I have a star fruit tree that was loaded with fruit, I was picking abouty 5 a day just for me to eat, then last week I went out to fine that in the dark of night some one took every single star fruit, even ones only an inch big, I figure it was too dark for them to see what was ripe so they just stripped the whole tree. Not a one on the fround, and none half eaten so it wasn't birds or iguanas. Jim

Donna; yes this storm is covering all the Midwest from the Gulf on up, and it just isn't moving out.
The East coast has had record breaking snows too.
From the way it sounds we have another one building up for this next week too. All this snow kind of reminds me of the winters of 1948 through 51. Guess its just time for another cycle, Of course we had a lot of snow the winter of 70 & 71 too.
Don't have to worry about skeeters though, lol
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours.
Russ

You have got to watch that global warming. Next thing you guys will have is the polar bears.

No Sharon, don't need any Polar Bears, Al Gore is enough of a Bear !!!
LOL

We harvested from our garden a fat deer, who enjoyed eating our tomatoes every chance she got. Then I made her into mesquite smoked jerkey, and gave it to our four sons families for Christmas. It is a family tradition, and they would definitely pout if I neglected to make jerkey for them. We still have stamps on the licence, so will start another deer processing tomorrow. I see 12 deer in the pasture this morning. Eeeny, meeney, miney, moe!

Sounds yummy-- we turn ours into summer sausage^_^

mmmm

I had Elk jerky at a Christmas Eve party and it was magnificent. They also had elk chili, and except for being a little spicy, it was also delicious. In our family, it was deer hunting season when the freezer was empty. That was back in the 50s and 60s. I was raised on venison and mother could cook it to taste marvelous.

Ahhh, poor Bambi! ^_^

Jimsned2 ...Nope...poor Faline ....Bambi is next, if he doesn't quit getting into my baled hay!

LOL^_^ Jim

Without Bambi, we would have been very hungry. If it wasn't Bambi, it was Thumper.

My garden is so dead this time of year. I would never give anything from it, maybe seeds but I have not done that. So no choice was an option for me. Though I have cleaned it up and spruced up the bones a bit, there is nothing nice to give except the yard looking spruced up for the neighbors.

Sharon, bet you didn't get hungry enough to go after Pepe Le Pew (spelling) ^_^, Jim

You are right there. Did have cougar one time. The person that lived behind us was a trapper for the government and he accidentally killed one of the cougars. They had a BBQ and invited all to come over for a taste. Tasted like chicken. Just kidding. It was sweeter. They had ground it up so you could not tell if it would have been tough. He was always sounding an alarm, loud honking horn, when one of the cougars got loose. He looked like the Marlboro man but he did not smoke. He was accidentally killed when his horse was startled by a snake, assumed, and bucked him off and he hit the back of his head on a large rock. I can still see him to this day on the top of that horse. I really wonder if he was as tall and big as my mind has him.

Everything in my garden is wet or muddy lately...so I've avoided it since I don't like gardening in wet, cold, yucky situations. I want Spring already!!!

Petalpants;
I want spring already too. But my garden is not wet however it is stone C-O-L-D, hard and covered with 20" of fresh snow and some drifts up to 4 feet.
Trade ya.
LOL

We are supposed to be having El Nino, but it is a bunch of lies, to give us false hope. We had 68 or 70 degrees weather today, had the doors open for a while. It is so odd yet, the nights are freezing and the early mornings too, which is normal. Where is our rain. I am losing hope. How will I even garden, they are probably mandating water rationing if we don't get a lot of rain.

I liked the Marlboro man story.

I have nightmares about water rationing. We are cut back but not that far. But did you see the Governor of California on 60 minutes. There is supposedly a small piece of dirt, maybe many miles, that stops the water flowing down into the Colorado River instead of the ocean. It is a big political thing. I guess we need to find out where this spot is and take our shovels and start digging. Hello anybody in Washington DC.....

Rand: B-r-r-r-r...I love Snow, but only for a few days, with no shoveling involved, Ha! It's still cold & rainy here today, but on Christmas 2004 we had a white winterland, a true miracle!
SharonK: We have a little sculpture of a startled horse & rider, with a snake nearby--- could be the same guy...!

Yeah, Petal; I don't really like the cold either. Jokingly I like to think of it as the season without skeeters. However I know this will stick around until March sometime, then we get rain and hope we can get the early plantings in while it's at least halfway dry.
Happy gardening to ya, and may it dry a little for you.

Probably not the same rider. I understand this kind of accident happened to a lot of riders. My horse bolted one day when he saw the barn. I was being lazy and had my feet backwards in the stirrups. Could not get foot loose and was drug all the way to the horse corral. Hamburger on the underside of left forearm but other than that I was fine. We had just got back from scattering the sheep from one end of the valley to the next. Something we thought was fun until the herders found out where we lived and visited our father. Nothing serious, We just had to apologize and not ride for three weeks. Have not been on a horse for many years. Now it would kill me. Youth was so amazing. No Fear...

Yes, I grow and give flowers. Food rarely escapes my mouth, or even make the trip inside. If it makes in my house is slim to none. I'll eat it before I can give it as a gift. Knowing this I do have friends who love me enough to give me their over stalked gift of veggies. Which do not last long. Thank you all my gardening friends. We all like to share seeds .

I try to take everything in stride, Winter I get to eat all the goodies I worked so hard to put up on the pantry shelves. Although I do get the feeling that this is extreme and is dragging out longer than necessary. We just get dug out and it blows right back in again. At least we had one weekend of no snow or blowing snow. It even warmed up into the 40s. We took advantage of that to celebrate our 50th anniversary. All our children and guests had safe travel an all had a good time.
Now today we are in blizzard condition again. Not a lot of snow this time but roads are blowing shut again and schools are closed. We canceled our short trip to town and I plan to take advantage of the time at home to bake a couple more loaves of bread. Then We can have fresh baked bread with butter and home made jelly.
Yummy, shear pleasure. I'm going to go get started right now, the thought is way too tempting. I hope every one can find some part of winter to enjoy too.
Russ

i'm not envious of you russ--AUSTRALIA DAY here today-every man and his dog will have a barbeque going and crack a coldie.stay warm,anthony

g_whizz; Oohhh a barbi & a cold one. Id bob right down but I'm afraid I'm frozen in place. lol
It is always easy to find something you don't like about the weather where ever.
Sometimes it's way too easy to forget all the good things.
We have been fortunate so far, we haven't lost power yet. Several communities have been without power for over a week now and it may be another week or two before the power company can repair all the down lines and poles. We had a lot of ice that weighed the wires down and the wind snapped a lot of poles, they went down like a domino effect. We didn't get as much ice as they did, that is probably the main reason we still have power. All those effected either have to go where there is a warm place or hopefully they have a wood heater to stay warm.
I am afraid though that there will be a lot of homes with frozen water pipes and when they thaw out, they will have water all over. Not good.!
Well enjoy the barbi and have a cold one on me. Send a picture of warm weather to warm us a little. ha ha ha
Russ

here it is mate!a snag,charred red onion and sauce.a can of 4xxxx in an aussie stubby holder-next to the barbie.shut your eyes,and pretend you're here for 2 seconds

Last time I had a sandwich close to that, the drink with it was a Samagile (spell) but it was warm. I was 28. Guess where that was.lol
BTW looks good. Wouldn't mind trying that.
Russ