Holiday Rehab

Thanksgiving here is mingled with Birthdays so it is a busy time. It is a wonderful time. Since we have moved away from extended family it is just the three of us now. The sound and the fury of a large family gathering is often missed. Through the years we have developed our own traditions, celebrated with friends, and celebrated alone but mostly we just celebrate each other. Lives are always shifting in some way or other making time the enemy of familiarity. We are immersed in social networking, hectic schedules, cell phones and computers. We Blog, we Twitter and Facebook. We email, Instant Message and text. We are connected by satellite and cable, tracking devices, wireless remote and streaming live feed with up to the minute coverage. In this day and age of unbelievable technology, communication is at an absolute zenith. And yet we rarely just talk.

On our family holidays, our Nacho Night or Middle of the week day off holiday, we talk. We unplug, wire down and disconnect. We sit at the kitchen table or on the living room floor and we talk until the morning sun shames us into sleeping. We talk of the world, philosophy, religion, politics and history. We talk of physics and God. We talk about acting, writing and art. Rarely does the conversation have anything to do with what any of us are doing in our lives. We already know all that, we stay connected. Instead we talk about what we think about and what we question. Sometimes it gets heated along the fault lines of opinion, sometimes we just glide into deeper BS about why we think our opinion trumps all. Mostly we just share what makes us who we are, our thoughts.

Then just as any respectable family would do, we badger one another until someone fesses up about just what they plan to do with all those lofty thoughts and high-faluting opinions. No sense doing all that thinking and jawboning if there isn’t an action plan forthcoming. This is the part we all love—like eating a slice of Aunt Ethel’s five year old fruitcake. Basically we use these planned excuses to get together as a time to touch base with who we are and who we want to be; to find out what our loved ones want most how we can help them achieve it.

Sure we do all the traditional American Thanksgiving fare. Clean the house like the Queen is dropping by, slave in the kitchen pretending to be Julia Child and then eat like total swine all day long. When dinner is served we ooh and ah over the same dishes we have prepared for every Thanksgiving dinner and then by candlelight we toast our good fortune and give thanks for it all. Not so different from most other families around the world who come together for a special event to share in each other’s lives. It’s how we continue the bonding tradition of being truly connected.

Part of our tradition at this time is also birthdays so Thanksgiving around here ends up looking a little more like a pre-Christmas warm up. Over the years I have even taken to setting up the Christmas village in time for the big turkey roast. The village like most good intentioned impulses has grown completely out of control. It threatens all who come near. A new piece or two is bought ever year culminating in something that looks a little more like an alien invasion by a race of miniature Victorians. The whole production is a tad time consuming and soon we will need to knock out a wall or move to a coliseum to accommodate the whole affair. I’ll post a picture the little aliens a bit closer to Christmas...or at least decently in the month of December.

Since today was the first day that it wasn’t raining nor was I stuck inside prepping food, building alien villages, shampooing carpets or fluffing fake snow I decided I was finally going to clean out the annual pond plants. Those babies have been clinging to denial like a teenage girl watching the phone on prom night. I just had to break it to them. It’s November-- Everybody out of the pool!
In June we bought three water hyacinth and two water lettuce. When I pulled them out today I had four wheel barrels full of them. Holy cow. Washington state has mild summers and these plants are warm weather lovers. They are well behaved up here but in more Southern areas they are banned as aggressive…much like those little Christmas villages should be. I going to need rehab.

The water plants seasonal delusion infiltrating my brain convinced me that I would have time to do some cutting back in the garden. Maybe get some of that compost and mulch out of the hay bale pile and onto some flower beds where it belongs. Four wheel barrel loads and a blister later the light was beginning to fade as quickly as my will. I decided instead to take a quick cruise of the garden before heading in. I found that there was still a nice bit of color left out there. It was soggy as all daylights but it was color doggone it and at the end of November! This garden and I are still newlyweds so I don’t really know what to expect yet and like most innocent newlyweds I am surprised and delighted at everything it does. I suppose next year I may find some of those endearing habits like reseeding and spreading far too annoying to bear but for now I am just happy to see something—anything growing. I took photos of what I suspect will be the last of my garden’s colors for a few months, at least until spring. Last year in December we had a lot of snow, of course this is exactly when I plan to plant the seven hundred plus bulbs I bought. I'm sure it should work out just perfectly.

Will you take a look at this last picture? No, a good close look. Those are bulbs starting to come up! This garden is in serious denial.
Great. My garden is in denial and I need Christmas village rehab. Talk about dysfunctional.