Catching Our Pre-Holiday Breath

The world around my house is pretty well slicked clean of leaves. Sure, there are the oak leaf hangers-on, but ‘most everything else (maples, Dawn Redwood, shrubs like hydrangeas) has fallen and blown away … or been gathered. Interestingly, the lilac still holds foliage. As a matter of fact, my white lilac bloomed on its’ top-most branches about two weeks ago … oh well!

The first 2009 seed catalogue arrived yesterday. I’ll create a special place now for all the catalogues that will arrive, and I look forward to many hours of dreaming, scheming, and plotting after Christmas. This year, I’ve designated a 50-doublepage photo album as a place to store seeds for the spring sowing … that way, I won’t lose any packets to the kitchen-drawer-devil!

Some of the grandchildren will be coming next week for Thanksgiving. They’re mostly in grade school, so I went out and bought those five buck boxes of amaryllis pots that the box stores have right now … one for each kid. I always try to have at least one garden-related activity for them, and this family hasn’t done the amaryllis one yet. One will expand the coir and plant the bulb while here at the house. The two younger ones will create a calendar and plot when theirs will start … one two weeks later and one four weeks later. At some point we can get a photo of states and stages of development of all three.

With one of the other family units, we poured plaster of paris into the base pots to keep them from tipping over while in bloom. This time, we’ll talk about other stabilization strategies that might work. And I’ll give their mom the paperwhite that’s started.

Another thing I may do in relation to the amaryllis caper, is to stop into the local nursery and buy a pricy-er A. bulb - to compare size and quality of the stock. (I always have to get a plug in for the independent nurseries, so everyone understands the important place they hold in a community too!)

The birds are fairly knocking on the window to tell me to go buy more birdseed. There’s the National Debt …and then there’s my Birdseed Debt! …sigh. My tombstone may read, “she died a pauper because of her love of birds.”