Mk Neal

I find it helpful to start the day with natural light—start my morning in the dim dawn light coming through the windows rather than turning on the electric lights.

Of course, this might not work if you need to get up very early at high latitudes.

Pig ears and chicken feet are good chewables that also provide needed nutrients. Can be expensive in stores, though.

The only time any of my dogs have had problems with rawhide is if the wrong size or shape for them. The rolled shapes can be a problem that way. My big dog got a piece of pencil-width rawhide roll wedged across the roof of his mouth once, and it was distressing to him and hard to pry out. Then when he had a larger baton-sized roll he swallowed the last inch-long nub whole and it made him throw up. Never had any problems with the flat squares, though. Particularly now they make them with perforations.

I think I speak for many women when I say this poll is missing my most accurate answer “with my hips.”

Other than in that early millennium dark age of “ultra low rise” jeans, but those were just such a mistake.

Skirts are an easier fit though, especially for store-bought clothes.

I have two, but I wish I had just one! When we moved in, there was one tangly, thorny, rambly rose bush with tiny white rose that have no scent and no rose hips. They are pretty enough when in bloom, and bees like them. But it is an aggressive, spiny plant that I do believe could survive any apocalypse. This may be the very rose that engulfed all of Sleeping Beauty’s palace. Second year we lived here, I had the great idea to divide the rose bush and placed one half a few feet from property line, where it promptly clambered to the neighbors’ fence and reached its claws across their walkway. No matter how I dig and hack at it, I cannot get it all out, and it come back every year and sneak-attacks the neighbors.

May Lotito wrote:I use tightly woven fabric for filling down/feather: sewing three sides and stitch down the channels; fill in equal amount of materials in each channel; stitch the side shut and even out the fillings; stitch a perpendicular line in the middle; then do the same at 1/4 line etc until fillings are secured in the grids. I make a duvet cover that is 30% smaller in both dimensions and put the insert in. There is no need to use ties or anything to hold the two together because of the pressure and friction. And the resulting duvet has a lot of loft and is smaller than the flat cover. This is a hindsight though because I intended to made a full size and it turned out to be a short twin.

I also think that the duvet cover is the key to avoiding cold seams. Stuff the duvet in a cover and you have pockets of trapped air over the seams which stay warm. Besides, you need a good duvet cover to avoid the hassle of laundering the feather duvet.

What about pawpaws? Native, no real pests, smallish tree. It does put up suckers though.

Flax gel for egg replacement; witch hazel decoration.

The ostrich ferns in my yard spread further into the lawn every year. I think they actually do great in sun; it’s just that ther plants do well also so they have more competition.  They do not seem to compete well against plants with surface roots, we tried transplanting under a Norway maple and they really never thrived there.

I suspect that a patch functions as a single organism like aspens. Seems like it is rather difficult to get the first one to thrive, but once there’s a bunch of crowns they really set out runners and pop up all over.

I just tuck the edges of a flat sheet under the mattress on the bottom and sides. It stays in place (we have wool mattress cover under the sheet).

Breakfast was Stollen and Hutzelbrot plus sliced apples and Terry’s chocolate orange.  For Christmas dinner we are hosting 14. I am making fresh cranberry salad, whole baked pumpkin stuffed with wild rice, mushrooms, chestnuts and dried berries (it’s a Choctaw pumpkin grown by Blake Lenoir). Daughter is making deviled eggs and an orange-honey trifle. Hubby is making prime rib and Yorkshire pudding.