Hey everyone! Wow! So much going on here!! Sorry haven't checked in the last few days. Sorry I missed Bingo, been just crazy here. I'll start getting my seeds together to mail :) Here are a couple of recipes I love... RECIPE 1: Lazy Pigs ~1 small to med. cabbage ~1lb hamburger ~2 cans tomato soup ~2 med. onions ~2 cups brown rice Core cabbage, and cut into small pieces. Wash, set aside. Brown 1lb hamburger, reserving drippings to cook diced onions. Cook brown rice according to directions. In a large skillet (I use cast iron) combine cabbage, hamburger, onion, rice and 2 cans of tomato soup. Mix well. Add enough water to cover the top of your mixture. Cook 350, for about 1 1/2 hours. If you wanted to make this quicker, I cook the cabbage on top of the stove for about 20 minutes. Reserving the cabbage liquid to mix with some of my tomato soup. Mix everything together and cook 350degrees for 35minutes. Salt and pepper to taste :) RECIPE 2: Ham and Cheese Roll ~1 pound of ham; Sliced or cubed ~8 oz. of Havarti Cheese with dill, cubed small ~Your easiest dough recipe. Some times I've even used those flaky biscuit tubes (Grands, you need 2 tubes) ~ 1/2 cup peach jam ~ 2 Tbsp. mustard Roll your dough as normal. Like making a pizza. Or place your biscuits together in a 13x9 pan making sure their is no holes in the bottom. Place ham and cheese randomly over your dough bottom. In a bowl mix jam and mustard together using a small whisk. Pour over the ham and cheese, and spread evenly over the dough. Now you can either roll your dough like a stromboli, or if your using biscuits, open the second can and place over the ham and cheese mixture. Bake at 375. For actual rolled dough cook for about 30 minutes. For biscuits cook for about 20 minutes. They will both be golden brown on top. Yummy :) Have a great night!!

Vee, most of my neighborhood consists of people too old to compete in the Christmas decorating frenzy, but, yes, we do have areas that must spend the other eleven months of the year paying off their light bill. One area even used to have live reindeer. I haven't been on a driving expedition to see the elaborate displays since the grandchildren were small. There do seem to be a lot of houses already done. I'm sure the reason is that people are taking advantage of our temperatures which have been very mild up to now. We did have a heavy frost a couple of mornings last week, but yesterday was 68 F. Cooler today and supposed to be dropping to a high in the 40s the rest of this week. And I'm done! All I have to do now is vacuum sometime before next Tuesday and bake a couple of goodies. I'm going to wow the ladies this year with Sticky Toffee Pudding.

When my husband and I were dating, in the early '80s, we saw Stoppard's The Real Thing, with Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close. We loved it so much that we saw it twice, back when Broadway tickets were much more affordable. I've seen a lot of his plays, but it's still my favorite. Here's Henry's wonderful speech about love: It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek 'knowing' was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a pack of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain.

Picked up a second hand copy of Rosamunde Pilcher's Carousel and as soon as I started it I thought "Hang on. Haven't I read this before?" A girl with an arty job and a demanding mother "Why aren't you married, you're on the shelf at 23?" An escape to a beautiful Cornish house, staffed by lovable locals, an artist (although it could have been a hansom farmer or a fisherman) picnics on the beach, walks on the cliffs . . . But no, it was just very similar to a book I read a few months ago. Pilcher is a good descriptive writer. It is just a pity that her plot-lines are so similar. By contrast Us by David Nicholls is one of those books with then-and-now short chapters. Told by a husband who has arranged a once-in-a-lifetime trip with his rather bohemian wife and difficult teenage son to visit all the major art galleries of Western Europe. The premise of the book is oil and water don't mix. The free spirited artist and a tick-box bio chemist are poles apart in interests and in how to raise a child with rather too much emphasis on 'father-son-relationships' or lack of. Why should parents want to be best friends with their children? The answer wont be found in the book.