It’s a start. I’ve decorated the front porch of my house with a wreath and 6 cute Christmas Carolers. The last 2 years I didn’t decorate a bit. You see, my late husband absolutely LOVED Christmas and we decorated to the hilt, both inside and out. We had lights outlining the house, the driveway, draped on the bushes and wrapped around the trees. We used to say that the electric company knew precisely when our Christmas lights went up . . . they also knew that they’d make a profit that year because of them. The rule of thumb inside the house was “if it has a flat surface, it gets decorated”.  That first Christmas after Mike died, I couldn’t bring myself to get any of the decorations out, and then last year I was still in the throws of moving into my new house when Christmas rolled around, so again I didn’t decorate. But this year I’m going to decorate a little bit and see if that doesn’t help my holiday spirits.

Alice and I took in an Orchid Show at the garden center yesterday. She had been there earlier to help clean up the “Portland Garden” that our garden club is responsible for, and went to the show afterwards. Totally out of character for Alice, she had left her camera at home, so I retrieved the camera and took it down to her. I’m glad I did, because the orchids were just beautiful. Who would have ever known that there were soooooo many varieties of orchids?  So many colors . . . so many sizes . . . so many shapes.  I sure didn’t know that.  We met a fellow there who was trying to convert everyone he met to become orchid growers.  Alice bought one of the “babies” and is going to try her hand at it, but I resisted . . . mostly because the baby I liked was $35.

You can see a larger view of any of the blooms by clicking on it.

I sure would not have believed that I’d still have this many flowers in my yard in mid November . . . but I do. I’ve been collecting seed pods for weeks now and yesterday I spent a good part of the day extracting seeds from the pods. Some I’ll broadcast now and some I’ll wait until spring. 

Then yesterday afternoon and evening (and again this morning before church) I wrestled with cutting down the purple hyacinth bean vines. They had already begin to look pretty ratty and the vines grow so thick that it’s sometimes very difficult to crunch through them even with my pruners. I sure didn’t want to wait until it’s much colder or even until spring to hack them down. I can now see my picket fence in that corner of my yard again.

First you have to go out and find some suitable marshmallow roasting sticks.

Then you have to build a roaring fire . . . then wait for it to die down a bit to just hot coals so you can successfully roast the marshmallows without catching them on fire.

Ahhhhh, then you add graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate squares and ENJOY the S’Mores. YUM.

Well, we got a light freeze last night, but I can’t detect any damage to my garden yet. I’m sure it’s just a matter of days before things get zapped, so I’ll enjoy every minute I still have flowers blooming in my yard.

I’ve suspected for some weeks now that I had a leak in my sprinkler system, and since I had my builder put it in before I took possession of the house, AND since my 1 year anniversary in the house is quickly approaching and I won’t be able to have anything fixed on my builder’s nickel after November 30th, I had them come out last Friday and search for the leak. The sprinkler guy fixed a leaky connection at one of the sprinkler heads and thought that was the total problem. I purposely didn’t use the sprinkler system after that to see if the wet soggy section of my flower bed would dry up . . . it didn’t. So yesterday he came out again and this time he dug up a strip along the pipes about 5 foot long.  He said that the scars to my lawn would heal up fairly fast. As soon as he left I gave the whole yard a good long sprinkling because of the freeze possibilities predicted for last night. I think all the flowers were really thirsty.

One of the parks we went to on our recent sister trip was Lake Eufaula. We visited the nature center there and were quite surprised when a dove flew right up to Alice’s hand . . . and later to her head. It just sat there while I walked all around Alice taking pictures. I’m surprised that Alice didn’t get out her camera and take pictures of her own head. But I guess she was so wrapped up in the moment that she completely forgot about getting a once in a lifetime picture. But never fear . . . I was there to catch the moment.

On one of our hikes we came accross a thistle plant and this one bloom had both a bumble bee AND a butterfly on it. I took 5 different pics of it, but this is the best one. 

And we were “adopted” by this white lab puppy on another of our hikes. She had marks on her neck from a collar, but had no collar on, so we can only assume that she either got away or was ditched. I think the former must be true, because she had been spayed and I don’t think anyone would go to that expense and then ditch a dog.  The park ranger thought she was our dog and warned us that we needed to keep her on a lease while in the park. I explained that she was not actually our dog . . . that she had latched on to us while we were hiking. He put her in a pen and let the front office know about her. I think he intends to keep her if no one claims her. I sure hope so because I really felt rotten when the dog began whining when we left her there.

Probably the most thrilling thing about the most recent “sister trip” Alice and I took was that we both got to pet and feed deer . . . in the wild . . . up close and personal.  Every morning about 7:30 the deer would make their way down from the hills and walk right through the area surrounding our cabin.  Then again about 5:00 or 5:30 in the evening they’d be heading back up into the hills and would again walk right by our cabin.  We got brave on the third day and went out to see if they would let us get a good picture of them.  Boy, did they let us get pictures of them. The first time we did this, one of the deer walked right up to Alice as if to say, “What kind of food do you have for me?”. We were not at all prepared for that, but from then on we met them bearing apples, peanut butter cookies and finally peanuts. Unlike what the lady in the park office had told us, these deer did NOT like apples, so the rest of the bag of apples we’d purchased at the grocery store became part of our supper . . . fried apples . . . YUM.  Their loss was our gain.

I’m not sure whether or not our cabin has an internet connection, so Alice and I may or may not be posting while on vacation. But rest assured we will be having a great time and taking a myriad of pictures.  Just today and tomorrow and then we’re outta here.

Oh, I’m getting excited.  It’s Thursday evening and Alice and I leave on Vacation Sunday morning . . . just two more days and then we’re off.  I’ve already started packing and tomorrow I make a couple loaves of home made bread for our vacation food pantry. You see, we actually LIKE cooking, so we always try to cook on our “sister trips”. It’s kind of fun trying to cook using just the pots, pans and utinsels our room provides. Saturday, Alice and I will go over to mom’s and do her chores since we won’t be in town on Monday and Thursday when we usually do her chores.