Christmas shopping

I hope you all don't hate me for bringing it up. I've got to face it. I really should be Xmas shopping, not Viburnum shopping. I'm looking for a rosemary mini Xmas'tree' to send my brother and SIL. Found one from Rich farmgarden- going to check Watchdog on them. $20 incl S andH , it's in a 3 1/2 inch pot....I came across Mike McGrath's website. He was editor of Organic Gardening for a while. I liked his writing and humor. Website has lots of tidbits and links, fair amount organic but not strictly focused on it. He said he found nice rosemary trees at a big upscale supermarket once~ then I'd have to pack it myself. I wish I had thought ot look for it at our big upscale nursery(Homestead) yesterday. I should call there.
What to get for the dads? Any age men in my life are not into gifts (that I can afford or pick out). My 80 plus dad has so many shirts from all the adult kids it's ridiculous. I'm going to look for a sweater from his alma mater. Or maybe another rosemary tree. Lately I give food or restaurant gift certificates more.

Sally, I would suggest waiting until a little closer to Christmas to get those rosemary trees. Everyone will have them. I've gotten them (and much larger than what you're describing for a lot less) at Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, even at Giant.

They do dry out extremely fast inside and I've found it's better to get them closer to the holiday.

Here's some of the things I got for my father, who was 80 before he died earlier this year. He was also hard to buy for.

Suspenders, especially the ones that had something he liked imprinted on them. He was crazy about Nascar racing and I got him some Dale Earnhardt suspenders a couple of years ago.

Cracker Barrel restaurants have a lot of the old timey candybars from the 50s in their shop. I made him up a basket of retro candy one year. Don't know if they have the candy online, but here's their online store.
http://shop.crackerbarrel.com/online/shopping/default.asp

Is your dad a vet? I've gotten my father all kinds of things with Navy insignias on them and he just loved it. I've even seen Navy (Army, Marine etc) Christmas ornaments. I never got a chance to get it for him, but I even found a place earlier this year that made mugs, hats, etc. imprinted with the names of Navy ships and they had the ships he served on in WWII and Korea.

An antique calendar from the year he was born. He got a big kick out of this.

A copy of his 6-times great-grandfather's will from 1767. This was expensive from the state library but I don't think I ever gave him anything he enjoyed more.

Good advice- I went to Lowe's today and they had gotten them in. 6 inch pot, 12 inch tall plant, for 10 bucks. I'm thinking about how I would pack if I sent it myself. An undecorated tree from Gardenrs Supply, in a basket with trim on it, and maybe just a little larger, is 50 bucks. I think I'll for sure get one for my dad and step mom and decorateit, I think they'll get a kick out of it.
I'm sorry you'll miss Christmas shopping for your dad this year. You have some nice ideas.

I have been picking up a few things here and there for Christmas gifts. At the moment they are just sitting in the floor of the spare bedroom that is also housing about 30 houseplants. My window was put in and the trim finished yesterday. Now my hubby is going to stain and polyurethane the ledge and trim and then many of the plants will come back to my living room.

My husband has spent most of the afternoon on the roof replacing about a dozen shingles that the wind blew off this past weekend. I am not sure if it is where we are now living or if this year has been extremely windy, but I am tiring of it. It scares my poor pups.

Uh oh hart. I am in trouble now that you have posted the link to Cracker Barrel's General Store. I love that place. Oh and the candy displays are really cool too. I recently purchased at Cracker Barrell a couple of bags of Root Beer Barrels that I used to eat as a kid. They have all of these other neat things that I never see anywhere else either. Some of their items are high priced but all in all most things are pretty reasonable and unique.

Oh yeah, a Christmas shopping thread is gonna be fun to read. Ya'll take care now, ya hear?

Ruby

Sally, it's not hard to pack plants for shipping. Find a box as close to the size as you can. Make sure the roots are nice and moist and for a potted rosemary, I'd probably wrap the bottom tightly and the top loosely with plastic wrap to help keep it moist, or slip a plastic bag over the top and secure it with a rubber band.

Pack around it, top and bottom, with crumpled tissue paper or newspaper so it can't roll around or bounce around in the box. Send it the fastest shipping you can if it's going across country. Mark it fragile and you may want to also mark it as perishable items.

You can also put some damp newspaper around the top if it's not decorated with things that can't get wet. Newspaper works a lot better than the paper towels some recommend - but be sure you then put it in a plastic bag or plastic wrap so the box won't get damp.

I've also found it makes a big difference when I ship priority to pay the extra 40 cents or 50 cents for delivery confirmation. I've never been able to actually track an shipment with USPS. Most times the package will arrive before it shows up in their system. But boxes arrive faster with confirmation.

Ruby, I'm a Cracker Barrelaholic. You know they have some really cute garden decor items in the summer for reasonable prices.

I spent the day grocery and Christmas shopping in Winchester yesterday. I have to say I was really disappointed in the Ross and TJ Maxx. I'm going to Harrisonburg next week to try the Ross and TJs there and hit the Green Valley Book Fair.

BTW, Sally, yes, it's already sad to me not to be shopping for him for Christmas. I'm kind of dreading the family dinner at Thanksgiving. It's going to be hard to see that empty chair.

I'm so sorry. It will be rough I'm sure.
I'm in total denial that my parents will ever be gone. they are 85 and 86 yrs old. I try to think of when my neighbor talked about her parents, and expressed such joy that they had had such long healthy lives.

Thanks for all the packing description. When we visited them this summer, they put rosemary in some potatoes and said how much they love it, and I think it would be a neat gift this year for them. Now to start eyeballing boxes.

You know, I wonder if any of the flat rate priority boxes would fit? You can get those for free at the post office and can send anything that will fit in the box for $8.10. I use them all the time for sending plants for swaps.

Here I am rushing around with my brain bouncing off in three directions.

I think I'd be a lot better able to accept my father's death if I didn't feel it was brought on by lousy medical care by his cancer doc and then being shunted into a nursing home from hell. We knew when he got the cancer diagnosis he wouldn't be around forever, but the strokes that killed him were brought on by the treatment I'm certain. So was he. One of the last things he managed to say before completely losing the ability to talk was, "The chemo caused this."

This message was edited Nov 15, 2006 3:46 PM

That must have been an awful ordeal. I'm sure you did all you could under the circumstances. How many of us is prepared to deal with these health crises? We must put our trust in doctors for modern medicine, but they can't all be saints. There must naturally be some better than others, and they are fallible. My dad is doing much better this year, but for awhile(two years?) he was on big dose of anti seizure med, which prettty much zombied him. Finally somebody re-evaluated it, decreaseddit, and we keep saying to each other- he sounds so great, that's DAD again. but what can you say? we couldn't really know this, until the pros decided to try it. Step mom, poor thing, was sure he was early alzheimer's.
But I didin't mean to' top your woe' at all. I understand how hard it is to try to help the parents with health issues. Only if you're an oncologist yourself or had been a patient with the same cancer, could you be familiar with the options, and have any idea what the chemo might do. I hear that quite a few older patients deny treatment for fear of the side effects, so I give credit to the brave souls who will try.
Tomorrow I will go to the post office. That box sounds like a good deal.

I felt all along this doc was doing nothing to monitor the effects of the treatments. I think now he probably had a stroke after the first chemo and the doctor didn't bother to catch that. The second chemo is what caused the catastrophic strokes.

I don't think you're trying to top my woe. I understand what you're saying. It's pretty frustrating but thank goodness someone caught what was going on with your dad.