LONG TIME GONE!

HELLO from your Garden Daddy and welcome back to the garden home! I apologize for my not being with you for many days. I have been very wrapped up with the now finished and very successful 2009 LANA Holiday Home Tour and the aftermath of that as well as hosting a few friends over on several occasions this past week. The house has never looked better and with much publicity before, during and after this tour I have not only been on the phone almost constantly but have been consulted for ideas, etc. from this garden home. I will share a photo from VIP Magazine that a professional photographer took one day here recently for the tour article on my home. This is looking down from the staircase over the living/dining area toward the front entry and porch, showing the table centerpiece of 3-dozen red roses.

But I am back and hopefully with only 12 days till Christmas Day and about 18 days till New Years I am counting on things rapidly returning to normal here and taking down the holiday madness here inside and out and getting on with my winter gardening and the preparation for the spring planting and revamping of my vegetable garden and some slight rehabs to the shade garden as well. I anxiously await the end of this holiday season more than usual I imagine due to the fact I have been dealing with it almost nonstop since about the 3rd week of August really and it is really time for it to be done and over with. I usually want it to last longer but not this year. I want to get my sun room undress with holiday fashions and get it in use for my much longed for reading & tea room this winter. And then just enjoy the fruits of my long, hard labor this past fall and just spend some time finally enjoying my home and doing it alone without all the rush, crowds and extensions of holiday fair that I have shared this year with so many people.

Okay, enough complaining about NOT having enough alone/down time right? So on with gardening for this time of year. For those of you who are avid gardeners you already know that one must mulch in this season, especially those tender perennials that need their "feet"kept warm. I cannot stress this enough. Pile it high-high-high on those tropicals you are trying to hold over and pray it works here in our unusual Zone 7 (really, Jackson, TN is in an unusual place here in Tennessee...we are almost at times Zone 8 during the summer and often end up a Zone 6 in winter).

Anyway, I will leave you today with this seasonal thought in mind: Remembering the "first gift of Christmas"...it was neither wrapped up with a bow nor trimmed with bright shiny tinsel nor decorated with candles and holly...it was dressed in rough, hand weaved cloth, laying on prickly hay and was crying for HIS Mother. A divine night, before the break of a new and glorious 'morn. Remembering the first gift of Christmas...(tmm)