Reflecting on the Garden and the Holiday

I was talking to our garden guru, Wendy (as a Flatlander, you need a guru in every field), and we got into discussing the merits of fertilizer and I learned that it doesn't take much. I had this notion of spreading 2-3 yards on our garden, and now I learn that you really don't need much. It kind of makes sense, and makes me feel better about where we stand. I put about a yard and a half on our garden, about 1/3 of which was home grown compost, which is a pretty cool thing when you get down to it, because composting can be a messy business. When I first started throwing things in the bin, I pretty much wrote it off as an exercise in futility. Sure, it reduced our garbage significantly, but the idea that this horrible smelling mess was actually going to come to any good was the furthest thing from my mind.

And lo and behold! Rich, dark, beauiful compost. It was pretty exciting, and the amount that I had in the bin, about a half yard, was just what I need to make up the difference. It was a pretty huge moment, though I was only able to turn about half of it.

Now we can focusing on the upcoming holidays. It has been really cold, and though I'm no expert, it seems unusually cold. We might be in for an interesting Winter, and I hope we get lots of snow. We only have one car right now, Gary took back his Explorer and Caddie, though he did leave his balloon truck in our barn and said we could use it. I don't want to take advantage of the guy, but the truck is sitting there, and he did say...

Good to have a real man guru like Gary, he not only loves to solve problems, but he's always looking out for us.

We have to set our sights on getting a tree, and since we live in Vermont, there are no shortages of them. It becomes a question of where to go, and deep in the back of our minds, we sort of want to stop using Christmas trees since it seems so wasteful, but man do Audrey and Nicholas love them, and I have to confess, it really makes the holidays special. So we'll probably get one, and do the whole holiday thing, which we have a love/hate relationship with.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.