Happy Birthday PollyK!!!!

Hope you enjoy your day!!!!

Best birthday wishes!....in just a matter of weeks, the very first traces of Spring will be upon us, maybe a brave crocus will emerge in the lingering snow...

After this morning hope you have a super birthday weekend enjoy the daughter, and grandkids as I know you will.

D

Happy Birthday, Polly! Hope you have a great day.

Thank you everyone. Lovely pictures.

Hope you have a great birthday, Polly!

Happy birthday Polly! Hope your day is awesome! Eleanor
p.s. How's the weather in Hannibal? I haven't talked with any of my family out that way since before Christmas so i don't know how much snow they have.

Thank you, thank you!

We're up to about 160 inches, Eleanor, Syracuse is around 120.

That's all?!! ^_^

That's all for now. We normally get between 200 and 300 inches a year. And Syracuse almost always gets the golden shovel award, beating out Jo in Rochester.

Hey, we're used to it. Might as well have four feet of snow on the ground as one. Lots of banks for the kids to climb on, and snow for snow angels.

Happy Belated Birthday Polly! I'm sorry im late, I never got on yesterday to check DG...it was my brothers GF B-Day too! I hope you had a great day !!!!!!!

Best wishes for another year

Thank you Pixie! Don't worry about being late, it's my birthday weekend, I guess. Michelle and the kids are coming today and making me lunch.

Nice iris!

Thanks Jo Ann. I sooooo hope to see some of those poppies this year.

hope you had a happy b-day polly!!

oops, sorry I missed it...
Hope you had a great day!

Thanks Bill and Jen. I truly did.

Happy belated Birthday, Polly! Sorry I missed it until tonight. Glad you had a nice one and hope you enjoyed your special lunch today!

Thank you so much!

I did enjoy my special lunch today. Here's my boy Jamie with the cake he made for Grammy. Jamie is 11. He made it all himself, even made the frosting from scratch.

CUTE!

Thanks Jen. Jamie and I have always been very close. He's always been very kind and caring to me. I'm very proud he's turning into such a fine young man. And he gets his second degree black belt in two weeks!

In 10 years, Jamie will have the girls lined up around the block !!!

A nice person, who can make a chocolate cake ???

HE MUST BE CLONED !!!

(The planet needs about 3 million more males like that.)

Aww, thank you so much. I will tell Jamie that. It will make him feel really good. He loves praise like all men. LOL. But, no interest in girls yet. Although one girl in his class has a crush on him. Such fun to watch. So ten more years before girls is good.

aaaaaaaaaawwwwww that is so nice Polly!!!... I think it will be sooner than 10 years... and are girls ever really good

:)

ACK, I missed it. Glad you had a super-special chocolate cake from your super-special grandyson for your super-special day!
He definitely will have them lined up.

I don't think they are, Allison, LOL.

Thanks Jan!

PollyK, I went away for a few days and missed an important shout out. Sorry, but so glad you got a great cake from a budding chef and DGS. You are so lucky and him too. So Happy Un-Birthday from one of your many fans. And I am hoping you have a most bloomful and healthy rest of the year with No Weeds or Pests. Patti

Jamie may be a future pastry chef....what a great cake, & his smile says it all!

Thank Patti, you are such a great friend. I so appreciate you. And thank you for the lilacs. I can smell them!!!!!!!!

Marilyn, he did look pretty pleased with himself, didn't he?

He is a great boy, straight As. Does his homework immediately without being told. He stars in karate. He is a very kind child, very polite.

Now, this is kind of funny. Jamie and another boy, whose father runs the dojo where Jamie does karate, are both into baking. The other boy actually does cakes for sale. He and Jamie sit and talk about cakes everyday while they are waiting for karate to start. I'm sure in a couple of years it will be girls they talk about, but for now it's cakes.

But he's determined to be a vet, and I hope he continues his passion for cooking on the side.

Thanks Polly, I wish I had your collection of Syringa to smell and to see. Must be something to behold. I have added a few, but still haven't gone to Syringa Plus as you suggested, but I must, someday.

So nice to read about your grandson and his multidimensional passions. Before becoming a chef our son was totally into marine science and diving. He started out as a "lab rat" at age 8 collecting water samples from the harbor to test for the town. Then before going off to boarding school he worked for a couple of years after school at a research shell fishing farm on Nantucket that was propagating seed scallops. He got an internship for 3 summers during high school at the Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos. After graduating from HS he was given a paying position to continue working for them for a whole year. He then started college but that was interrupted after one term when he was asked to work as a diver for Ocean Alliance on their research vessel, The Odyssey, a 93-foot steel sailing/motor vessel. They were doing a round the world study of ocean contaminates by sampling sperm whale skin and blubber. So he spent 6 months in the Pacific in the waters around Kiribati and Papua New Guinea diving with whales. Too Cool. He finally got back to school and got his degree in environmental science and was planning on going to law school to focus on marine environmental law. While in college he worked part time teaching diving but also worked at a restaurant as a cook and bartender. It was then that he had an Epiphany and decided that he really wanted to go to CIA and continue to cook professionally. He ended up getting a duel degree in Culinary Arts as well as one in Baking and Pastry. He uses more of the Culinary at the moment in his job, but he still loves to bake. He excelled in math in school and I think he likes doing all the necessary conversions that are used in Baking. It is more like being back in the marine lab.

He does miss the diving, but he can do that someday again recreationally and he can always go back to grad school. He now will always be able to have a job that he loves and eat well at the same time. He use to study fish, now he cooks them. Strange, and who knew, but then I was planning on attending law school too and instead opened up a bookstore. My DH was a lit major at Harvard and ended up running a boat yard. Our son figured out what floated his boat and so will your sweet grandson, which is all that matters. We loved visiting our wandering son, especially in Ecuador and Papua New Guinea and then later in New Orleans where he was a chef for 2 years and now in NYC. He better pick a good spot to go next. I am hoping abroad. France would be nice.

Here is an old shot of him in one of his Pizza dough making moments when he was about 8. We should have known he would end up in a kitchen as he was always cooking at home, school, on the research vessels even though they always had a hired cook. He is taking a group of friends up to Vt to our house this weekend to ski and on the way up they are stopping in New Haven at one of the worlds best Pizza joints, Frank Pepe Pizzeria. It is funny that New Haven is world renown for Pizza. We go there often. Your grandson would love it. A true Pizza mecca as there are at least 3 great choices besides Pepe's. There is Sally's Apizza and one called Bar Pizza that serves an amazing salad too which is across the street from Louis' Lunch, birthplace of the burger. Tell him to think Yale. Of course we are fans of Boston's Santarpio's.

Kudos on Jamie's good school work and getting his 2nd degree Black Belt. That is very impressive at his age and it shows he is a very focused kid. My 11 year old goddaughter just got her brown belt in aikido and balances that out with singing with the Brooklyn Youth Choir and taking Hip Hop Dance (odd combo) and is, delightfully for me, a serious reader and interested in science and math. You never know where he might go with his life, but hopefully it is joyous trip and that you are continued to be included.

I hope you aren't slammed in the latest snow storm. We had snow this morning, but now it has turned to rain. Only a dusting on the ground now. Snowdrops out. Patti

This message was edited Feb 1, 2011 1:46 PM

I don't mind the snow, Patti, I am worried about ice, though.

So what you're telling me is not to plan on a vet in the house. That's OK. His parents and all grandparents will be happy with whatever he chooses to do. College is a requirement, but after that, anything goes, I guess.

He'll definitely have to continue karate or some other form of strenuous exercise, as the boy likes to eat as well as cook. When he was younger he tended toward chubby, but now he's actually on the slender side, although it doesn't look it in the picture. He's tall at 5'6" for his age and goes around 120. But he is surprisingly muscular for a pre teen. And he does love pizza, so I'll tell him all about what you said about New Haven. Although where his mother went to medical school in Buffalo is the home of the Buffalo chicken wings, and those are a definite favorite of his. She has taken him to the Anchor Bar to sample some.

Your son really looks like he was having fun making that pizza. It sounds like he's had quite the life's experience already. A very exciting life. So glad he found what he really wanted to do and is doing it. And your granddaughter sounds like a great kid. Aren't we lucky!

Both my grandchildren are very serious readers. We go to the public library every three weeks for a bag full of books, plus they borrow at school and we buy favorites. Jamie and I read the Twilight series together last year, and had so much fun discussing it. He read each book first as he has a better memory than I.

Talk about an exciting life, Patti! My stepson Mike graduated with a degree in marine biology, was hired by Museum of Natural History, worked for a few years there, & decided he hated the city....moved to Maine, became a commercial fisherman & lobsterman, and now he works in the fishing dept. of Cabellas......my own son started out as a bio major, he switched to landscape architecture, & that's what he is now, but in the future, who knows? Polly, your grandson will have loads of fun deciding what he wants to do......my 5year old GD wants to be a fashion designer, the 4 year old wants to be a mother......

What a special grandson, Polly! That cake is awesome!

Very cool - both Polly and Patti! P & P!

Your kids sound like they turned out really well, Marilyn. Good job!

Thanks, Louise.

Thanks Victor. Sounds like a gardening firm, doesn't it. Patti is a very, very special gardening friend. I think we could do a great business together. Too bad we live so far from each other.

PollyK, I think we could too. But I am retired except for writing a few garden articles and throwing pots, but no money in the latter, yet. However, you never know as I a game for anything interesting. But that would be a long commute, even from Vt. Perhaps I should take up flying. Oops, no plane nor money to buy one.

Kids that are doing interesting things are so much fun to follow. Unfortunately, I have a couple in our extended family that need a rude boot to get them doing "anything" which is beyond sad.

Victor, watching your kids should be a real barn burner. Have fun. No doubt they will have interesting lives, but will they garden? I doubt mine will, though he does seem to be taking more interest in the veggie garden and what he can take out of it to cook. He also wants to grow herbs. That is a start, in fact it is where I started. He could be in big trouble.

Robindog, Your family has taken a similar path to so many people of my generation and younger that pursued the academics and then decided their choice instead was doing something like fishing. landscaping or carpentry or being a chef. When we had our house built, I discovered that we had an Oxford Scholar, an MIT engineer and a couple with grad degrees banging the nails as they had chosen to bail on living in the corporate or 9 to 5 world and moved to Nantucket to become a tradesman. Nantucket is littered with people who happily went to college and beyond to then settle down to a job that would be considered " labor " that they loved, and not what was expected of them. I guess my husband and I disappointed our families at first, but isn't it nice to be happy? They got to like us later on. But I must say that they kept wondering when I was going to "Get a real Life", meaning getting a traditional professional JOB. Never did. Patti

Well, having been a teacher most of my life, I can say I would rather have been a forest ranger, or a full time gardener.....I guess I was lucky that I chose teaching, because now that DH is gone, I am back subbing earning a few dollars to spend on plants......

That's funny, Marilyn. That's what I wanted to be, a forest ranger.

Yes, Patti, the commute would probably cut into any business profits.

Robindog, Good for you, we need more teachers. But subbing must be difficult, but anything for more for plants. Patti

I never wanted to be one, but I had a serious crush on a few as a teenager spending my summers up in Canada. I did help put out a forest fire that we came across while on a camp canoe trip. I got a letter from the Provincial government for my efforts but not a ranger. Patti

Wow....exciting trip! Yes, subbing is difficult especially since I've been retired 11 years....I always stressed listening skills.....sadly lacking in today's classrooms.....