I know its the hoildays and all, but I miss everyone, working these lates I look forward to coming home to get my Daves fix. But don't get to talk to my friends.
Been jumping in other forums but not the same.
Whats is everyone up to???
Tills is missing you all, see shes looking for you!!!
Hi Tills. I've been working f/t for a nursery til the end of the year so haven't had much time to write/reply & PF. I'll be back in the New Year but Season's Greetings.
Ohhh, tills, that was such a plaintive mewing - sorry, just rushing about trying to get things to a leaveable state before the christmas shut down. We've been having a new patio laid, and I really needed to 'shame' those landscape guys into getting a move on, so I have been putting in 6 hour days in -1C temps setting pebbles in all the pattern holes. Thank goodness for croc knee pads - I think, no I know that my knees would be ground away by now without them.
they have literally just left (we have been working in the dark!) for christmas - and I am hoping to get several more metres in before they come back! But right now - it is to the bath!!
Ahhhh, but I have been meaning to tell you - checked the greenhouse yesterday (i never even made it that far today!) - and I have 3 hellebore seedlings!! Hope your's start coming through soon.
To the bath - I'm frozen to the bone.
Still here....haven't drowned yet!
Mary, DH is still quite ill so I've not felt like just chatting, I'm afraid - I've missed everyone, though. He is having a procedure this afternoon that might get us started on a plan - whatever that may be.
Please know I do at least do some lurking - I'm just not a very cheery PNWer right now!!
Carole
Carole, sorry about your DHs issues. Are they sure it's pancreatic C yet?
No, not sure yet at all, but a strong possibility due to a "tumor marker" that came back with a high count, and "something" blocking his bile duct (it could be a gall stone, but there are no others in his gall bladder, so it is not as likely). There are still other possibilities, but hopefully no matter what, a plan of attack.
Thanks for your concern!
I'm hoping for the best!
Dear Carole, That's really tough news that your husband is so sick, be it cancer or something else. I hope you find that whatever it might be there is an effective treatment possible. No wonder your mind is not on gardening right now. The rest of us will need to come up with some good wintertime topics so you can lurk and read whenever you have a moment. Holly
Hi Murmur,
So sorry to hear your husband is so ill. I'm hoping that it's treatable and that he'll be on the mend soon.
Tilly, I know what you mean about that late-night thing, still all wired up and no one around to talk to. Sorry, I'm having my pre-christmas blues, I guess. I lost one of my best cats ever Dec 19th a few years back and it still gets me a little down. Plus, all the Xmas mayhem and shopping. I guess I'm just not feeling very chatty this week, either. :(
Hey there Tilly!
I think most people are in "scramble" mode due to Christmas.
The weather isn't all that cheery and some tend to get in a funk with the colder days & less light.
This is a great time to take a deep breath, pausing to reflect on what we do have - you know, the things that really matter. Thanks for the reminder!
It's so easy to get sidetracked with life...
Thanks for the ping, Mary. Sounds like we're all in hibernation, that's for sure.
Happy Holidays everybody.
Kathy
looking forward to January garden scheming and planning
scheming - that's the best description for the annual January muse....
(I will probably repeat this same news on several threads - sorry for those who have to read repeats!)
No real news - what we did find out isn't particularly encouraging (in fact, it's not at all encouraging). They were not able to perform the ERCP - well, they tried, but couldn't get through the "swelling" that surrounds this THING. So they couldn't put in the stent to relieve the jaundice or take a piece of anything for a biopsy, etc.
There will be another procedure - probably next week. Then probably another - and possibly surgery at some point, but often this type of thing is untreatable, the doc said - however, he hastened to add that there are still three possibilities on the table - gall stone, tumor, or scarring. The weight loss is indicative of tumor, unfortunately.
I had been accepted in the Master Gardeners' program here on the island, but it's looking like I may have to withdraw - people tell me I should do it anyway, but we could be going through all sorts of hospital stuff, etc., and he will definitely need me.
Murmur,
I'm so sorry to hear your news. What a thing to have hanging over you right at Christmas!
When are your MG classes supposed to start? Certainly not before January! Wait and see what happens after the next procedure before you do anything about dropping out! You give so much to everyone around you as it is, this class could be the break you need to be able to do what you may need to do for DH. No matter how much he will need you, some time apart would probably be good.
Plus, before you just quit, explain what is happening and inquire whether you could delay your starting the program until next year instead. (This is why I think you should wait and see how the next procedures go before making any moves. You will want to explain the circumstances when you ask for postponement, and specific info is good.)
Carole, may I second the thoughtful suggestions of Susybell. Being the always-there nurse is a real strain on anyone - few know that more than you!! Giving yourself some scheduled, boundaried time could keep you be refreshed enough to face what ever DH's procedures are going to take. Being part of the Masterclass might give you just that opportunity - it will help bring the outside world into the restricted confines of the recovery room. Do let MG know what is going on, and explain what you need from them. I am sure this won't be the first time they have had to deal with a situation like this, and they may have the flexibility to accomodate you. Ask, you just might receive.
I am sure no one would mind me saying this for the group - but my feeling is that we are all here and thinking of you with our warmest thoughts.
Thank you all so much.
Orientation isn't until the 11th of January so I definitely won't be doing anything about it until then. The actual classes start on the 15th and are Tuesdays & Thursdays (all day) for six weeks. If they can be worked around his treatments or whatever, I will stay with it, but it will be awfully hard to concentrate - and then the time to give back to the community will be hard to fit in. But I haven't given up on anything!!
Again, my thanks to you for your support, etc.
Carole
I agree with Susy and Laurie, and have you talk with your DH ( I know he is ill and I pray for the best for you both) about what he would like you to do? I know when my DH was ill, he told me do what I need to do, just in case. I know that sounds bad, but I don't mean it that way, I have always thought of everyone else and never thought about what I need. But there are times you have to think about yourself.
I'm glad I started this, just to know what my friends are doing, cause I care and I know others do to.
And yes Laurie I am Mewing want to know, keep in touch and all that other stuff.....
are you going to share some pics of you work, like to see you in knee pads, oh fun
Haven't been out to the greenhouse in a week or more, been working the swing shift and 6 days a week, with the comute time been putting in 12 to 14 hour days will be glad when the Holiday's are over, have had no time for home stuff.
And the weather here is as Beth said, we're still afloat, haven't had to get the dingy out yet. as far as scheming and planning go's ????
Happy Holidays
Tills
I wanted to send a pic of my new Santa sense I can't fine my old one, but didnt have the time to take it, JOY JOY I get this weekend off O'MY
what will I do ????
I think Tills, you will do everything. the question should read 'what won't I do'. Enjoy it all.
Hi PNW gardeners, I'm glad you checked in Tilly. I hope all goes well with Carole and DH. I got a huge load of heavy BB trees in and have been trying to heal them into sawdust. They are grown in heavy wet Willamette valley clay. I got such great trees I can't wait to untie the strings holding them together. I have been on another threads and this one is great. Yeah I think today is the shortest day of the year so the days are getting longer and spring is coming.
We have been having problems with our neighbor and her culvert plugging in the rain and she is trying to have us replace it and do all this extra work. She has sewed another neighbor and called the firedeptment on us twice and now the county all since the big rain. She sucks with al the things that have happened she is so petty. Hopefully we can get this solved.
I have been sewing seeds. Lots of cool ones from England and Tasmania. It has been a few years since I have done seeds so it is kind of fun. I hope everyone has a Merry Chritsmas and a great new year Heidi and Dragonfly
BB trees? I know it refers to something I should know about. I have a hazelnut from Corvallis that I have heeled in to plant in the spring. With that and the hazelnut trees I got from Rachie, I hope to have some fruit this year!! I'm so looking forward to getting to Dragonfly in spring. When do you usually open, Heidi? Or do you play it by ear?
I'm so looking forward to longer days - we've almost reached the winter "hump" and are on our way back to the warmth.
Bummer about your neighbor. Sounds like she wants everybody else to be responsible for that which only Mother Nature can control. Good luck with that.
It is about time to start winter sowing. FireVicar wanted to have a winter sowing event in January. Anybody interested?
Heidi, do you have a cattle dog or dogs? A close friend of mine has a cattle dog mix . . .
Happy Winter Solstice everyone! and, of course, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year too!
I will be counting the minutes until the days are longer....oh, so hard! But I did see that my earliest crocus has sprouted!
(Isn't BB balled & burlapped?)
Susy - How's your weather been as of late?
My Dafs & Tulips are confused....and yes, re: B&B.
Hi Katye,
How're you? Yes, the gloom is getting to me a bit. Time for a sun escape, I think.
Weather here has been typical. Not bad today, dry and a little cooler. Gotten down into the high 20's a few nights but generally warmer. Pretty similar to Seattle, just on different days.
I'll have to look for my other bulbs. It's going to be a weird spring. I may have months of crocuses! I just planted the last of my crocuses (sale order from Brent & Becky) the beginning of the month and now the established ones are sprouting...I do think that the squirrels found a bunch of the new ones, though. A couple spots are pretty mangled. I hope they just ate the Fred Meyer clearance ones, lol!
Makes sense. I thought that one of the B's probably had to do with balled . . . LOL
LOVE to see that crocus. It reminds me of a favorite poem from childhood. I used to memorize poems for fun. Hmmm.
THE YEAR'S ROUND
The crocus, while the days are dark,
Unfolds its saffron sheen;
At April's touch the crudest bark
Discovers gems of green.
Then sleep the season, full of night,
While slowly swells the pod,
And round the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.
The winter falls, the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;
The snowdrift heaps against the hut,
And night is pierced with stars!
katie that is lovely - I can just about hear it in a piping girls voice!
that is nice, but sounding like a chilly poem.
LOL - the Fred Meyer bulbs vs the Brent & Becky premiums!
Susy - all is well here - just chilly. I've got a fire going; the boys are away fro the next few days; the dogs have melted into their beds & I will mosey on to follow suit. What a long week this has been, for some reason - perhaps because of the impending Solstice? Too dark too early & too cold: too much!
The commute has been from dark to dark.
I was wondering how your weather was Susy, if you've had anything "white" yet, well - other than frost. Just trying to get a pulse on the weather situation this year.
Farmer's Almanac predicted wetter but warmer weather. Wish they would predict unusually warm (does the mid 60's sound good?), and then actually have that happen.
Dreaming is all I can do these days...
It echoes in my head for awhile when I recite it. The sound of it is lovely. I think it's much like some of Elton John's songs . . . I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but they run together beautifully, like music.
Ahhhhhhh . . . . a fire does sound nice. I have some wood to chop this weekend - maybe I can have a fire tomorrow night. Mmmmm. Dreaming about that.
Hi Katye (and Katie...)
Yes, we did have snow a week or two ago. Was gone by the time it hit the ground, so I couldn't ask for a more perfect snowstorm around here. The West Hills in Portland have had more, but they're higher and always get more. There's also been a little snow up above in the foothills east of me, and of course way east in Hood River, etc. Mostly it's been hysterical news reports, though.
Sounds very peaceful-good reading time...I've got Christmas music playing on the satellite receiver and I'm supposed to be downstairs baking cookies but I've escaped for a bit.
Kathy, do you remember who the poet was?
I do - My mother actually found the book "Poems for a Red Letter Day" (compiled by ElizabethHough Sechrist) - an old school copy - at a used book store and gave it to me a few years back. Coventry Patmore is the author's name.
Here's a short one for the new year - guess I should commit this to memory and see if I still can.
The New Year (Noratio Nelson Powers)
A Flower unblown: a Book unread:
A Tree with fruit unharvested:
A Path untrod: a House whose rooms
Lack yet the heart's divine perfumes:
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond Tomorrow's mystic gates.
Yawn. Off to bed. Sweet dreams, all.
Katie
Happy Winter solstice to all!! Now to celebrate the return of the sun (son?)!
I've been crazy busy lately and wish I could say it's all been about getting ready for holidays. Alas, I have yet to begin decorating! But I have done much baking and giving of treats, so at least there is that. And I have done most of the shopping, which, I am proud to say, did not get the least bit out of hand this year. I am positively giddy from the thought! The Christmas Cave is not up yet, but hopefully this weekend. Here's a link to the cave from past years:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/564348/
I admit that this year I would have liked a tree. I guess the cave is the new tradition in our house for awhile. Next year maybe we will have both. But, hey, I have beautiful amaryllis in bloom, so not much else matters to me.
I've been spending much energy helping my daughter find a new place to live down in Salem, Oregon. She is working at Nordstrom in Salem and wants to stay living there for awhile. She is finished with her college degree!! Hurray!!! (One kid down, one to go.) Did a whirlwind trip down there on Tuesday/WEdnesday and thought we had a place found, but it fell through. Then found out that it was a good thing because although the apartment was excellent, evidently it's in a very high crime neighborhood. There are plenty of those in Salem. So back to square one. Wish I had been able to stop and say hello, Susybell. Maybe next time. I was crunched for time in a bad way this trip, but I thought of you as I zoomed through Vancouver.
Murmur, I am sorry about your DH. I do hope you will consider staying in the master gardener program to give yourself an outlet for your own interests. It sounds like whatever the diagnosis, you will be taking care of your dh through the process and if you can manage it, having some time to do something that is just for you will go a long way toward protecting your own health, both mental and physical.
So, glad to check in with everyone. The only time I've spent on the computer lately is searching craigslist for apartments in Salem and checking in on all the lily coops I'm participating in. How many lilies does one girl need, anyway?
Don't answer that question. It was rhetorical.
Laurie, you have peaked my curiosity about this patio you are putting in. Are you getting close to breaking down and buying a digital camera?
Tillysrat, don't work too hard!
I got home and had to assemble 2 bikes for my little niece and her step brother for Christmas have had no time until now trying to do ketch up for the next 2 days.
Going out in AM to see ( in the day light) if I have some little suprises. I hope so!!!
And Laurie not sure what I "wont do" I just do what needs to be done.
Pix going to check out the cave.
Heidi got a present for cattle dog ( the 4 legged one) see you in spring.
PIX!!!! What a marvelous christmas cave! That is thrilling! And I do have a digital, its just that it is a compact - which is good, but not great. Its a bit frustrating when I want it to capture what I am looking at.
And tills, hope you do more than what needs to be done, do something that you want to do!!
Gotta dash, friends arriving for drinks, AND I can see from up here they are carrying packages - ohhhh, Christmas is coming.........
That is an inspiration! I haven't yet done anything about a tree and the family is arriving soon from parts far flung. I did manage to clean the refrigerator before stuffing it with the massive grocery shopping. Yeah. And I managed to plant the bulbs I had left to put in on this lovely non-rainy afternoon. The floor is not clean though, as yesterday I got a call from a friend who just had hip replacement surgery. Hang the floor anyway, it just gets walked on again and rapidly muddied up. His brother who has been caring for him had an accident and was headed for the hospital, and help was needed with those things you can't do when recuperating. I probably won't manage a cave, but I can do something artful (hopefully) with some fir and cedar branches. That family has just taken a huge hit from Murphy's law. The two brothers are both down, and their mom, who was born in Africa (of English descent) broke her femur when on a trip to Kenya and England. 3 major surgeries in 2 weeks.
Pixy -
I have family in Corvallis, Philomath, Eugene, so if your daughter has an emergency, let me know. I'm sure we can find someone to help her out. My brother is a doctor in Philomath (right outside Corvallis, which is about 40 minutes south of Salem), so if she needs a good doc, she should check out Dave Grube, or Dave Cutsforth, his clinic partner of 30 years . . . the Willamette Valley is a great place to live, I think.
I'm working in Seattle as a business analyst at Nordstrom. It really is a pretty good company. There are lots of people who have been there a long time and have had quite a bit of success. The sales people make quite a good living and Nordstrom really values them.
The cave's a great idea - it's nice to go with the flow once in awhile. My neighbor gave me a little metal ornamental tree because she didn't like the idea that I wasn't going to have a tree this year. So now I have a place to put the stockings for all 12 of my little feline critters . . . guess I need to get the dogs' stockings up now, too. Sahara says Merry Christmas!!
Hi to all. To answer the question about cattledogs I have 5 blue heelers or cattledogs. I tried to get a picture of all 5 and failed. They are all rescue Oscar and Butter are the shy ones and have the most issues and are brother and sisiter. I guess growing up by the prision in shelton might have had some childhood imprinting. Boo I knocked on a door on the local Indian reservation and asked them if they wanted their dog any more and they said no. He was on this little chain and miss treated and is epileptic so he is very thankful to be here. Jessie the humane society called me and said we have this really cool cattle dog mix that need a home terribly or something bad might happen to her. I think she is a 4 legged killer. Cats little dogs mice I don't want to find out but she is the greatest dog just a serious hunter. And the newest is Turtle. I think he is our last for now. I think he is part lab which gives him his goofy floppy ears. His brain is not conected to his body, everybody else can run down the isles at the nursery with out knocking over plants but turtle. Then we have the biting at the hose issue. He is great but we know why he was brought back 5 times. We love them dearly but don't usually let them out when people are here because their nickname is shadow dogs and they all want to be in your space and show off or they will get in your car so usually they sit in their pen and watch everyone till closing.
BB is for balled and burlapped. I healed in 16 pines today and gave up and went and sowed some seed. I'll do a few more tomorrow.
Pix that is better than a tree. just fabulous.
Heres my new Santa (cant find the old one) I know its not santa, but way to cute. LOL
Wow, We've got cool Christmas caves, Dogs guarding stocking trees (or waiting for Santa to bring the treats?) and snowmobiling Polar bears! What a creative group!
Pixy, no problem that you didn't stop by on your way through... I'm afraid this just makes us even. I was up and back to Seattle last weekend to spend time with my mom and help her decorate her tree. I "waved" at you as I went by, too. One of these days....
Maury, I "officially" give you permission to not wash your floor! (Not like I've got any authority, but hey, if it helps.... ;> ) Helping a friend trumps drudgery every time! Have a cookie instead! If anyone has the nerve to say anything, hand 'em the mop and tell them "Thanks for helping , I really appreciate your volunteering".....Sorry your friends are having a hard time of things right now.
Maury - it sounds like your friends are going through a rough time. You have your priorities right - they need some support, that's for sure.
And I'm sure that your family will understand. As a matter of fact, sometimes when you're at somebody else's house and unsure how to have a good time, making yourself useful (like getting the tree or cleaning the floor) is just the thing to do. I hope they'll be happy to help.
Heidi - you are an angel to your cattle dog clan. I'll have to tell my friend about your guys. She has a handful with her girl, who is very complicated and has learned a lot about the difference between cattle dogs and labs, the last kind of dog she had. Are you familiar with Skidboot?
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/pets/stories/032807dnmetskidboot.3347adb.html
