Ahhhhhh 2023,

 Dear 2023 good luck getting past Kirby; you better have treats, cookies, toys and many pets to make up for those last two years.  

My nightly view for the last 7 years.   

Well the year just kind of rolled in.  Butch was coming off the crud and I was neck deep in the crud and laying on the couch.  2022 came and went through the veil of closed eyelids and snot rockets.  I don't think I can suck down anymore soup for a good while.  All in all we lost about 6 weeks of festivities.  Somehow the house got decorated and un-decorated.  It's going to be fun opening those boxes next year; "Hey, why is there Kleenex and a dirty sock in the baby Jesus box?"  Not sure I've ever been that sick on Christmas and New Years before.  

Rachael was off to help a friend sail a boat somewhere on the Baja Peninsula to La Paz, Mexico, six days at sea and tales of hung over and puking into "bio-luminescent seas, it was so kewl" 

La-Pleeeze,  I had my own biosphere/biohazard going on right here at home.  The only thing glowing was my nose, I could have been the lead on Santa's sleigh. 

This year just feels different and it's only January 12th.  One word keeps floating to surface; Nimble.  Stay nimble.  So far I've raked leaves, walked around the yard and found bulbs breaking the surface and buds swollen.  The chickens have started laying again and they look down right impressive!  Feathers have grown back in full formal egg laying attire, crowns and waddles are bright red and just like that eggs started appearing.  The days are getting longer and they noticed or it could be the guy on the next street that got a rooster!  Judging by the price of eggs at the grocery store every little bundle of goodness helps!  Time to double the flock! 

Things that have happened in the first 12 days of January.  

Fooling around with planting radishes and onions, outside! 

Normally I cannot get to the back yard without a team of huskies and snowshoes but climate change has turned snow into rain and mud.  Just hip boots and knee pads.  I will be floored if these sprout but stay nimble and stay tuned!

Yes, that is green grass! 

and the Teucrium is still bright green, it should be lovely bronze.

Does this look bronze?

the garlic has sprouted...... and was immediately covered with a thick blanket of leaves! 

Raking leaves in January is just wrong in my humble opinion.

After last summer's drought I am happy to report the water table should be replenished, the Grand is running high and fast.  Steelhead fishing is at peak! 

In other news, I have reached the pinnacle of my time on social media.  

I have been banned from Twitter!  No four letter words were involved and I thought I had posted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek sarcastic tweet on a post by Jerry Saltz; senior art critic for New York Magazine, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Author NYT best seller "How To Be an Artist" and on and on.  

He tweeted that he wished MBA students would stop asking their parents for advice and yadda, yadda, yadda.  He tweets a lot, sometimes 17 times in one day!  He has a lot to say!  Me, not so much.  He has no children, I do.  I wasn't going to comment and then I started reading the comments and I was shocked!  So many tweets were from a parent or parents or the other way around; kids tweeting on parents and all tethered tightly but the thing that I was reading (between the lines of course). Don't let your kid fail; on any level.  Not all the comments were like that but an overwhelming majority were.  And the purse strings were hanging out there too!  So I posted.  I am a mother of two women who have made their way through the world, around the world, back home, they touch base when they want to.  They were allowed to fail on so many levels.  I still have fond memories of the oldest being dangled on a climbing rope upside down begging to be let down from a dizzying height and someone yelled; "FIGURE IT OUT, IT BUILDS CHARACTER!" and she did and we all cheered!  I remember putting the cereal on the shelf of the bottom cupboard and saying; LOOK BREAKFAST!  Yes, milk was spilled and we all lived and the dog cleaned up the mess with gusto and sometimes you did stick to the floor when we dance!  When they were on the fence for making life decisions I remember saying; "Go play in traffic, if you don't you'll never get hit." (tongue in cheek people!! my kids got it) But we were there for every graduation, every parent teacher meeting and other milestones.   I tweeted! and just like that I got an email.....(yes my twitter account was Votingfordogs..... can you not agree that a Poodle would have more power as speaker of the House 💁)

I might frame this email because is just sums up so much about where are right now in this fragile, teetering country.  Buck up people, take a chance, live your best life and pet all the dogs and if somebody is jerk and liar say something!  Excuse me George Santos........ is he banned from Twitter?  Nope he is not.  I really wish my Mom was alive to comment on all this because I have stories!  She was a full time working Hungarian Mom in the early 60's;   Her book would have been penned "Raised By Wolves" by Lone She Wolf.  

Screw social media, body check back to reality...... I have more time to order seeds.  (do you have whiplash yet, stay nimble readers!)

I ordered so many seeds!!  I am so excited!  The mailman asked me last week how many more seed catalogs he'd be lugging to my door.   None, I've ordered and now there will be packages of seeds showing up any day now!  The onions should have been planted last week!  When you're sick, laying on the couch for days on end, in a hooded sweatshirt over your head, piles of Kleenex on your chest, Kleenex stuffed up your schnoz, a dog languishing on the floor, giving up all hope of ever going on a walk again....

Looking at page after page of beautiful pictures of vegetables and fruits and dreaming about the summer that is going to be the best ever ...... because your head is swimming and your brain has been replaced with sinuses the size of a walrus, you fellow gardener are delusional!  There was no one home to rip that catalog out of my hand and take away my credit card.  And then I ordered this!  (hear the trumpets on high?)

Shelves and lights and I put it together while going through a box of Kleenex and gasping for breath every time I bent over!  And I tucked all my sun loving plants under the brilliant, daylight balanced bulbs, brighter than the sun and BEHOLD!  oh shit!  

Yes! I killed a desert loving succulent in 12 hours flat!  

It's gonna be a year this 2023!  Stay nimble!