Your Neck of the Woods part5 11/122013

It would be difficult to decide which ones to trade. They each have their own degree of ornery combined with a huge ability to tug on my heart.

Yes it certainly would. Guess you will both have to keep what you have. LOL

Haha, that's a hilarious typo!

Jill, I wish you lived closer. I would love to play dolls with Joyanna! :)

Oops!!! Hehehe. Hey, it made you all get a chuckle!!

Agreed, wouldn't switch any of the grandies. We do have some boys in the mix, too. They are just outnumbered by the girls.

Snce I wasn't home for December, I really didn't plan for Christmas. We STILL have not had it. For the grandy girls we are framing single panels from a quilt that my grandmother made. The pattern is Sunbonnet Sue. There are some stains n the quilt, but we were able to get enough unstained ones to use.. Jeff made the moulding and painted it white. I'm thinking it will be mean more when they get older. We'll use a red mat to set off the quilt square.

Hey, pimp, pump, whatever -- if it works, I'm sticking with it!

Jan, that's a great idea to take apart your grandmother's quilt and frame the squares for her great-great granddaughters!

swim class in the morning for Joyanna, so I'd better get to sleep! The pool is "open rec" before her class, so if we get there a little ahead of time, we can both splash around together... good warm-up for her and not bad for me either. :-)

Yay for 'open swim'!!!!

Just read the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy email on January events, and signed up for an owl lecture on Wednesday evening. I often hear owls in the woods around the house, but I've never actually seen one. Should be a cool lecture.

aspenhill,I am jealous of you and your owls!!

Gita- letting you know I will be writing about wintersweet for February. Just now doing a general article which mentions it. Don't panic when I don't say a lot about it in the January article!

Phooey: I just read that wintersweet is only hardy down to zone 7. I neglected to protect the wintersweet I just planted last spring. Oh well.

This cold snap isn't a long one, so I think a lot of plants will be able to come back from it. I hope so, anyway!

I sure hope so Critter!

I thought this article helpful in explaining what happens to plants as the weather drops: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1016.html

I think we're all used to tender perennials and annuals that blacken and die at the first touch of frost... but short stretches of too-cold weather aren't necessarily fatal, although a zone 7 plant couldn't take a month of single digit temps!

Good article, Happy. I'm thinking that the good soaking rain we had should help prevent some of the cold weather injury... ?

good point, Jill! And warmer temps should be on the way tomorrow. Fingers crossed for what spring will bring...

I have a question about the seed swap. Could someone remind me if we're meeting for lunch or dinner? I'm trying to schedule something else for that weekend, and I can't remember when we usually meet.

I'll have to start a thread soon, looks like!

Saturday, Feb. 15, noon to 4... eating first, then swapping, visiting & chatting the entire while!

Yipee! I'm marking our calendar.

Hi. Not sure about my schedule that day--depends on what's going on with my daughter and her dance classes. Hopefully I can make it for at least part of it! Critter, will you be hosting?

Sally--

An article om WS will be good!

Just FYI--there are some nice pics of it by me in Plant Files.
There are other looking blooms too--you can see that if you
look in PF.

Happy--

I fyour WS dies--I have a one year old seedling somewhere outside.
Also--loads of seeds-but you will have to wait 6-7 years for bloom.
G.

Catmint, it's usually held at a Chinese buffet in Frederick. We take over the back room. :)

thanks, SSG!

Heading to the Pa Farm Show today with Lily's classroom. Nothing like herding 15-20 kids through large crowds. LOL There should be plenty of parents to help, that's the nice thing about her school, lots of parent involvement. It's going to be an exhausting and very fun day.

Oh, I have fond memories of the farm show when I was growing up. Always went with my dad. Have fun!

That does sound fun, Holly. Have fun! :-)

In 2008, I was planning to have a groundhog's day tea party & seed swap at my house, but I got one of those bugs that just took months to clear up... postponed the party until later in the month, and then ended up changing the venue to a Chinese "tea party" at Chef Lin buffet. Well, that worked out so well that it's pretty much become an annual tradition -- lunch at the extensive buffet, then seed party time in their back room, then a little side trip to Dutch Plant Farm before heading home.

Terri (Aspenhill) and I are planning ot have dinner together tomorrow night at Chef Lin, so I'll make sure Feb. 15 is available before I post threads for this year's swap.

If anybody is interested in caladiums this year, Bill says he can ship a well-insulated box up to us in time for the party... which also lets us give them a head start inside, unlike last year when we distributed them at the spring plant swap. I believe he's offering his usual 10% DG discount, and if we buy as a group we can split larger (and cheaper) bags of them.

I'd probably order a few, but not enough that I want to organize a caladium order this year... somebody else needs to take the lead, please. If a couple of people come early to Chef Lin, we can get the bulbs sorted out pretty quickly. This won't be a huge undertaking like the fall bulb buy or even last spring's lilies, so it's a good opportunity to get experience with a group purchase without a lot of stress. :-)

We really had a great time. There were plenty of parents and we followed a basic route thru the farm show but didn't quite stay in a big group. That gave everyone time to linger longer at certain things but we would keep seeing each other since we were all following the same route. We saw and petted alpacas, horses, sheep, goats, cows and rabbits. She loved the peacocks and we watched a baby chick pop out of it's egg. We went into the butterfly tent and spent a bit of time watching the bees they were in glass sided hives. Played on the tractors and ate milkshakes, french fries, pizza and the very special Maple Sugar cotton candy. We watched a presentation from a wildlife group that had a great horned owl.

wow that sounds like a really nice farm field trip! Much better than the ones I did with my daughter when she was little! Peacocks are always a special treat, and the maple sugar cotton candy sounds very special.

The Pa Farm Show is a huge event. It runs for a week. There are all kinds of events, contests, displays. They judge everything from animals to trees, to produce and bake goods. There is a Sheep to Shawl which runs for an entire day several teams compete. They bring in a sheep and shear it, then card the wool, spin it, weave it and end up with a shawl at the end of the day. They hold it in the Small arena and people drift in and out during the day to view the progress and root for their team. They have horse pulls and hitching teams and 8 horse driving contests. All the 4H kids bring in their projects to be judged weather they are animals or crafts. There is a large incubator with eggs in it and the kids can watch the chicks hatch and they have a water slide for baby ducks, surprising how much fun it is to watch baby ducks side down and into the water. Lily's class room made Fudge and entered it in the Fudge Judging. They were judging the fudge when we had to leave so I don't know how they did. The first one gives you a schedule and the second link has a video.
http://www.farmshow.state.pa.us/
http://www.pahomepage.com/story/a-day-at-the-pa-farm-show/d/story/mpKqk69p2ESkNfy-4VDj-Q

Ooh, I'd be interested in getting some caladiums!

The Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy Owl lecture that I went to last night was a hoot. I was hoping that I would run in to David greenthumb and Pat ecnalg there, and I did. It was great to see them. I've been to several of the LWC sponsored lectures, and I really enjoy them. They have a new venue at the Morven Park Carriage House. Morven Park is a historical mansion in Leesburg - right up my alley. The Carriage House contains a wonderful collection of carriages, so it was a triple pleasure last night - lecture, carriages, and DG friends!

Caladiums sound good to me too! Happy to help Jill!

I've already ordered mine (won't be at the swap, anyway). This year I splurged and ordered less bulbs but THE REALLY large ones.

I would be interested in the caladiums as well.

Jill has asked someone ELSE to take the lead on caladiums…

Awesome Terri!

I would be happy to help with the caladium order.

Catmint, thanks for stepping up! Bill's website is caladiumbulbs4less.com Start a thread when you're ready, and I'll put a link to it in the party thread. I'd be glad to help you set things up if you want advice or have any questions. The discount should about cover shipping, although we may end adding a few cents per bulb with the extra cost of shipping the bigger insulated box. You'll like dealing with Bill; he's a sweetheart.

Terri (Aspenhill) and I went to Chef Lin tonight, had a great time, and I confirmed the 15th with Donna. So we're good to go! I'm typnig slowly tonight so will put the party thread up in the am.

Cat, thank you for taking this job upon yourself, it is MUCHLY appreciated. I have never done the group-ordering thing before, but after looking at the link (THANK YOU Judy for providing the link to Bill's beautiful website!), I have decided to go nuts a little. I see what I want, and DARNIT, I'm gonna do it. =) (Cat, be on the lookout for a D-Mail from me, please).

So, being new to all this, I have questions. (when do I ever not have questions?) Will Cat be the one to "apply the DG discount code" when she places the order? Our job is to tell her what we're wanting and send her our moneys? Will there be a new "Caladiums Order" thread for us to watch, or will we just be monitoring this thread for all the info?

Thank you Guys and Dolls! =)

This message was edited Jan 10, 2014 6:12 AM

thanks, Critter and Coleup!

Speedie, you beat me to it--I was just going to ask when would be a good time to start a thread on caladium orders, and it sounds like the answer is right away! :-)

I'm a newbie here, so I appreciate your guidance, Critter and Coleup!