Post Season: First Snow

On Christmas Eve, we were out and about without coats.  By yesterday morning (Christmas Day)....BRRRR!  We woke up today to a couple of inches of show on the ground, and it's still falling. 

There's always breakfast at Nanny's house on Christmas morning:  home-made biscuits, country ham and sausage, sawmill gravy, eggs, potatoes, pies, and cakes.  Between the feasting and the present-opening, I took a quick stroll out to the garden to see how the "fall garden" was faring.

You might recall that I planted sugar snap peas, broccoli, brussels sprouts, radishes, beets, and greens in October.  It appears that I planted them a little too late.  We've been eating greens and radishes for a few weeks now.  A couple of the broccoli plants have tennis ball heads on them, but they've been nipped by the few frosts that we've had and don't look very appetizing.  The brussels sprouts have formed promising-looking leaf cups in the center, but no stalks yet.  It will be interesting to see how they react to seriously cold weather.  I'm going to leave them in the ground and see if they'll kick into gear in the spring. 

I was hopeful that we would be eating snap peas this fall.  They grew and bloomed nicely, but I haven't seen a single pea pod.  Judging from the hoof prints up and down the row and the truncated vines, the deer apparently have seen them and have relieved me of the chore of picking and eating them. 

It looks like my outdoor gardening is officially over for 2012.  But, just think, it's only about 6 more weeks until it's time to break ground for the early spring crops, like potatoes and cabbages and broccoli.  I have seeds left over from the fall plants; it'll soon be time to start them indoors for the spring garden. 

Meanwhile, there's a quilt in the quilt frame that's demanding my attention, one in pieces on my work counter, and one more still in the fabric store sack that I haven't even cut out, yet.  I'd best get busy if they're to be finished by spring. 

Holiday decorating

This past weekend, The Husband and I went shopping for a birthday present for our grandson.  As we passed through the Christmas decorations section, he spotted a bin of plastic, lighted candy canes, the 2-ft. tall kind that people put along their driveways and sidewalks, and had to have some for our yard.

His vision was to line both sides of our driveway and front walk with them.

He intended to buy 8 of them, and to set them about 5 feet apart.

I said, "Eight is not going to do it.  If we're going to do both sides of the driveway and the front walk, we need at least 20."  We commenced picking through the bin, making sure that the ones we chose still had their plastic stakes attached, making sure that we had an equal number of red-striped canes and green-striped canes....

Since the birthday party wasn't until later in the afternoon, we came back home after our shopping trip and unloaded our purchases.  The Husband immediately started removing the plastic wrapping from the candy canes (a chore so onerous that it deserves its own blog entry).  Upon unwrapping the first cane, he discovered that its electrical cord was only about a foot long. 

Our 100 feet of lighting suddenly shrank to 20 feet.  Our options were to scale down our project, or buy 20 extension cords.

Ok, so maybe we'll do JUST the front walk, and just one side of it.

Since this was The Husband's idea, he assumed the task of setting up the canes.  Green/white, red/white, green/white, red/white...all perfectly upright in a perfectly straight row.  We lacked about 3 canes having enough to line one side of the front walk all the way to the porch.  I said I'd get more on Monday. 

While I was cleaning up the discarded plastic wrappings, The Husband dragged our other outdoor decorations from the attic:  5 light-and-ornament-laced pine garlands, and 5 pine wreaths with flattened red velvet bows.  Over the years, we've gotten the outdoor decorating business down pat.  We lay the garlands along the brick ledges on the front of our house and hang one across the porch.  The wreaths get suction-cupped to the front windows and front door, et voila!, decorating's done.  While I hung the wreaths, he rounded up the necessary extension cords.  We had just enough time to test the garland lights before it would be time to leave for the birthday party.  When the Husband plugged in the final strand, the entire first strand went out.  He checked the fuse; sure enough, it had blown.  He checked the other lights to see if any of them had a spare fuse in the compartment.  Nope.  He pocketed the blown fuse, and said we'd go in search of a replacement after the party. 

Neither the local hardware store nor the local dollar store had a replacement fuse, nor did they have a matching strand of lights that we could've used for spare parts.  We came home, vowing to continue our search in the coming week, and plugged in the all the lights - garlands and candy canes - to admire our handiwork in the darkness. 

It was then that we discovered that two of the red/white candy canes contained red lights, not white ones like all the rest.

This is the kind of occurrence that drives The Husband crazy.  He likes everything just so. We'd been careful, or so we'd thought, in choosing the canes, never noticing that some of them were stuffed with red lights.  Removing the two red-lit canes would've eliminated the offense, but it would also have upset the green/white-red/white order.  What's a person to do?  I said that I'd get 5 canes, instead of 3, when I went back to the store.  Meanwhile, we'd just have to live with the two anamolies.

Yesterday afternoon when I went to the grocery store, I ventured a little farther in search of a fuse for the garland lights, thinking I might also run across more of the same candy canes we'd bought from the other store.  I struck out at the local stores.  My 5-year-old grandson had accompanied me on this trip, and since he was whining that he was hungry and needed to pee, I gave up the search and came home. 

Not long after I got home, The Husband announced that the fuse problem was solved, as he had found a spare in the only strand of lights that he had not checked the previous day.  I went out to admire his work, and stood way back to take in the overall effect.

Four of the five wreaths had either slid all the way down the windows or had fallen to the ground....

(...likely to be continued....)