In Which I Will Be Making A Whole Lot Of Jam In A Few Years

Connor had a quiet day today, which was nice. We still haven't heard back from the neurologist; if I haven't heard from him by noon tomorrow I'll contact them again-- otherwise I probably won't hear from him until Tuesday since it's a four day holiday on post. I'm happy that we haven't seen any more seizure activity!

After I dropped Connor off at school today I headed for the new house; the drywall went up on the kitchen ceiling, which is really exciting as the room is starting to take shape. The ceiling was raised to the level of the dining room (it was a drop ceiling previously) and so it looks much more spacious; it's amazing what a few inches can do. I tried to take some pictures, but of course my camera died on me. I'll put some new batteries in it and stop by again tomorrow to snap some shots so you all can see the progress!

I now have the entire backyard cleared of ivy and about a nine foot long and seven foot wide section of the area between the fence and retaining wall clear in the front yard. It's just enough to see that I've been doing some work on it. I just filled my last trash bag in the box, which means that forty bags have been filled up with ivy so far. I have at least 300 more square feet of ivy to go. Whoo hoo.

I decided to pull all of the ivy up along the fence line rather than just trimming it back since the slope isn't bad there and it's pretty sheltered by the rain, and have discovered that this is much, much easier than trying to just cut it back, as weird as that sounds. You kind of get a rhythm going and it's much more satisfying because the results are much more dramatic. I also sat down today and ordered some of the plants I'm planning to put in that area, for a spring delivery. I don't want to order any plants with very showy flowers yet, as I don't know what color the multiple flowering shrubs currently established in the yard will bloom, but I did order some of my ground cover and the shrubs I want to put in to replace the ivy.

Along the back fence under the giant pine tree where it is very shady I'll be putting in three evergreen huckleberries. They'll get to 8-10 feet long and as wide across eventually. For sunnier parts of the front yard I've ordered lingonberries, alpine strawberries, musk strawberries, and four different types of blueberry bushes. I also ordered a Black Lace Elderberry, which totally breaks my rule for waiting to order plants with showy flowers until I see what else is in the yard, but I really don't care. Have you seen those things? Gorgeous! The nursery was running a crazy special where they included bonus plants with your order, so we'll also be receiving a highbush cranberry, which will probably go in the backyard, three golden raspberry plants, a white rugosa rose (hooray for rose hip tea!) and 75 strawberry plants for free! We like our fruit, okay? This way they'll be more than enough for us to eat without begrudging any to the birds.

But enough about gardening-- you get me started and I'll never shut up about it. We also picked up our Thanksgiving ham today. Yes, Jer won our annual epic Turkey vs Ham battle. Every year we debate over which we'll have at Thanksgiving. I believe we've had ham three years in a row now; I need to rethink my battle strategy. We're having stuffing anyway, though, so it was a good compromise. In my opinion mostly the turkey serves as a medium for keeping the stuffing from falling off your fork.

Anyway, we'll be having Thanksgiving with some close friends this year, as all of our relatives are in Texas and Jer can't really travel until he can use a public restroom again. I'll spend most of tomorrow cooking, which I don't mind at all as it leads to one of my favorite pastimes: eating.

We have so much to say thank you for this year that I'd better start saying Grace now or we won't eat until Saturday!

~Jess