jimsjournal
| Autumn gardening -- 11/23/03 |
jimsjournal |
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Sunday Brunch Thanksgiving Edition: 1. How do you usually spend your Thanksgiving Day? Drive over to Newport for the annual Newport Pie Run 5 mile race. (I've been running that since our first Thanksgiving in Rhode Island in 1995, think I missed it twice. My daughter runs it with me almost every year.) Come back home, quick shower, start cooking something for Thanksgiving dinner. Most years Thanksgiving dinner was at my mother-in-law's house (one year one of Nancy's sisters hosted it at her house in western Connecticut) but that's a huge burden on her to have so many people that last year we decided to rent the parish hall at Nancy's church. (There were 38 people last year.) That worked out so marvelously that we are going to do it again this year. I'm not sure what I will be fixing. Many years I would could a second turkey in my oven and bring it to my mother-in-laws along with a big pot of mashed potatoes or mashed sweet potatoes. The parish hall kitchen has two ovens so last year I brought what was the third turkey. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing this year. There will be huge amounts of food. Right now, as I am typing this on Sunday morning, Nancy is baking cookies for Thanksgiving. There will be a huge assortment of pies for dessert. 2. Do you have the traditional turkey dinner or something else? Tradition. Always tradition. (Anything else would be non-traditional and that would be missing the point, right?) 3. What is your favorite Thanksgiving Day food? All of it. Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Cranberry sauce. Buttered rolls. Peas. Corn. Pumpkin pie. Mince pie. 4. Do you stuff yourself or eat in moderation? Stuff myself. I always figure that if I start the day by running five miles, I'm entitled to a few extra calories. 5. The day after Thanksgiving is suppose to be "the biggest shopping day of the year," do you go shopping on that day? Are you crazy? That would be one day above all to avoid stores. In fact, I will do my best to avoid most shopping areas over the next month just to avoid those crowds, don't want to fight that traffic. (Yes, I will do a lot of my shopping on the Internet.) Autumn gardening: blackberries & blueberries: I never did go for a run yesterday... by the time I finished hacking away thorns and vines and weeds to prepare an area for planting our new berry bushes, it was getting to be too dark to go for a run (sunset coming before 4:20 this time of year) and I realized that I was too sore and tired to go downstairs for a workout. Today we're going to get the plants into the ground. They are going to go along the side of our yard. Years from now, when these tiny little things that we are planting will have grown into big fat productive berry bushes, I will take some pictures and put them here. *grin* Having planted blueberries in the past, I know that it takes them a couple of years to begin to amount to anything. It's a lovely day outside. Partly cloudy but mostly sunny. Seasonably mild, almost 50° (10° for those of you who prefer metric temperatures), very pleasant. I had just checked the temperture on the Internet and noticed that the record high for today was 72° (22°) in 1979, which was the year Nancy and I got married. I'm not sure, but I think we may have gone to her parent's house for Thanksgiving that year -- there used to be a gathering of everyone outside for a group picture and I recall one especially mild day. The record low was 14° (minus 10°) in 1972 and I definitely remember that Thanksgiving because a major snow storm that hit upstate New York left me home alone in Binghamton for Thanksgiving that year. Adam and his mother had gone to her parent's house in Monticello on Tuesday; I had stayed behind because I had to work on Wednesday and had planned to travel that evening -- the storm hit while I was at work. It would have been impossible to travel that night and although the storm had ended by noon on Thanksgving day, news reports said the highway I would have to have taken was still blocked by snow. Now I've got to get Jill and plant our berries... blackberries (three Triple Crown Thornless and three Chester Thornfree) and blueberries (two each of Ivanhoe, Atlantic and Herbert). Hope you are having a pleasant weekend. |
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