November 2023

A few close friends and I were having coffee the other morning when the conversation drifted off to holiday gift-giving and how difficult it can  be to find that exactly “right” gift for the “right” person. We started reminiscing about some of the gifts we have received through the years, usually from our husbands. Some were sweet, some were strange and some were absolutely hilarious.

Several weeks ago, on an impulse,  I bought what I thought was a Christmas cactus at a local grocery store. It was a beautiful little plant – very green, healthy, a perfect shape and not terribly expensive. I was excited about having something in full bloom to add to my Christmas decor. Well, I should have paid just a bit more attention to what I was buying. My Perfect for Christmas cactus has turned out to be a perfect Thanksgiving cactus. (Too bad we won’t be home for Thanksgiving.)

Wishing you and your family a safe, peaceful and happy Thanksgiving.

I was absentmindedly browsing through some internet articles last night when a rather bizarre fact caught my attention. According to. BirdCast which is published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 443,900 birds crossed over Missouri the night of November 6, 2023 and a total of 5,788,600 birds were in flight. The random fact immediately sparked so many questions:  How do they know the number of birds flying across an entire state on any given day?  What kind of birds were they?  Where were they from?  Where were they going? How far does a migrating bird travel in a day? Being an avid armchair birdwatcher, I couldn’t resist digging just a little deeper to find some answers to my questions . What I found both saddened and encouraged me. 

It never ceases to amaze me how much work there is left to do in my gardens in November. Even though the blooms are long gone and the foliage is a squishy shade of greenish-gray, I need to motivate myself to bundle up, get outside and get to work. There are 10 chores that, if done now, will make my spring garden thrive.