10/9/16: The garden season is pretty much over for us, time to clean out the garden and get the garlic planted. Most of the tomato plants outside have been severely affected by disease, but the ones in the hoop house, while showing some disease, are still growing and ripening tomatoes. That was a huge success of an experiment! Still have tons of peppers on the plants, and no idea what I'm going to do with them; some I will freeze, but there are just so many that I can use. Definitely will grow fewer peppers AND tomato plants next year. I've been hoping to put up a big (16x20) hoop house to replace the greenhouse for seedlings AND for growing more of the tomatoes plus other things. I have a pretty good plan put together for it, but not sure whether it's going to happen.
Dick and Toni are leaving today to go back to Florida for the winter; it sounds like they're planning to try to sell their house and buy something here as their permanent residence. It was quite a summer with them here... lots of family get-togethers and partying!
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12/13/15: Mid December and we have no snow on the ground, high temps have been in the 30s to 40s, lows in the 20s to 30s, and we're supposed to be getting about 3 inches of rain over the course of today and tomorrow! The mild weather is enjoyable, although somewhat disturbing; I'm wondering how this will affect the fruit trees and such, as well as things like garlic and daffodils.
The beta seed swap here at ATP has been wrapped up, should have my seeds before Christmas! I was disappointed that the Piggy Swap was cancelled this year, due to Ella's health issues, but this one was fun and I'm glad I joined it.
6/13/15: Watching a TV show (recorded from a few days ago) called "The Seventies." Whew, lots of memories surfacing... not only about the television shows of the time, but that time period was my intro to grown-up-ism. Married in 1971 to my college sweetheart (after he served in the Army for 2 years), only to divorce 15 years later 
Still makes me sad, despite having a great husband now; just a really deep sense of failure attached to it.
6/11/15: I love my horoscope for today, from our local newspaper: "Your joy is in the creative process. If it doesn't turn out perfectly, that in no way robs you of the excitement that comes with making the effort. You may not have all the skills you need yet, but with each try, you're getting them."
6/3/15: Vet appt for the collies for their routine heartworm test and heartworm meds; found out they are both positive for Lyme disease! Now have antibiotics for the next 21 days... which hopefully will knock it out of them. Seriously can't remember why we opted to not vaccinate them for Lyme last year (??)
5/31/15: Jim Klein's dad, Bob, died today, from pancreatic cancer. We hadn't seem him in quite a long time, but I have a fond memory of him asking me what my favorite medical term was (he was an opthalmologist, I was a medical transcriptionist), and I answered "homonymous hemianopsia." LOL, who else could I have said that to and have them explain to me exactly what it meant! RIP, Bob.
4/10/15: Back from Vegas -- had 2 kind of iffy plane landings, coming into Vegas it was really windy and the landing was pretty shaky; then on the way back there were huge storms all across the country and our plane, which was heading for Detroit, was actually routed to just about over Green Bay, where our car was, and then back down to Detroit. Pretty darn bumpy landing that time, too... the girls sitting a couple rows back of us had their oxygen masks deploy! In between landings, we discovered that Vegas is no longer the land of cheap buffets, or anything else cheap, for that matter... we aren't all that big into gambling, but were able to get a good return on our money by playing the video poker machines in the bars while drinking free drinks... and went to see the play "Jersey Boys" at Paris, which was excellent and the highlight of the trip. Also discovered that we can't seem to walk as far as we once could... there was a day when we literally walked from one end of the Strip to the other, this time walking from one end of a hotel/casino was a challenge! We learned how to buy tickets for the bus that runs up and down the strip, using the machines that are at every bus stop -- not exactly intuitive, once we figured it out we were then helping other people that were having trouble with it! Took the bus down to Mandalay Bay to go see the "Shark Reef" aquarium, which was really fun and worth waiting in line for about 45 minutes.
4/5/15: Easter Sunday, and leaving for a Las Vegas getaway for a few days... didn't realize that it was Easter when we made the reservations, LOL (but not like that made any actual difference to us).
3/24/15: Celebrated our 25th anniversary today -- it's a wonderful thing to be married to a great guy and I try to remind myself of that every day!
1/23/15: My seeds from the Piggy Swap on Ella's Garden (at Cubits.org) have arrived !! OMG, I really went overboard with my seed requests!
