Sunday, December 17, 2017

DECEMBER CATCH-UP

BETTER THAN DECEMBER KETCH-UP! Or at least I hope so!
Anyway, Dec. is a month of chaos for most of us - and especially for the Train Station, with the Santa-NO-Train this year followed by the Ker Place event - an enjoyable yet exhausting day - and then there is doing all the stuff one seems to have to do this time of year - even if you are a Buddhist and "don't do Christmas." Right. Try living in this country and 'not do Christmas!'
Wake me when the presents get here, OK?
           Then, to complicate things this year, the weather decided to get weird on us. I have lived here for 50 years now. At first it took a lot of getting used to when it did not snow at all – back in the day, as they say around here, we used to put snow tires on our cars. Maybe they still do up north, I don’t know. But I did it faithfully around Thanksgiving. That is also when I put the covers on the air conditioners to help keep the cold winds from blowing thru and into the house. This year, the a/c covers were on earlier, and even tho I no longer use snow tires, we have had 2 little snows in early December! Unheard of!!!!! I was once told it never snows before Christmas! Well, we are setting a record (in MY book) for cold, nasty weather this year, probably to make up for not having any autumn to speak of. We were still using the a/c after my birthday in Sept.
 


            Anyway, the point of all this rambling is the camellias have taken a beating a couple times because of the cold. Yet the warmer fall seems to have changed the blooming pattern – many of the later bloomers are opening now and then getting ‘burned’ or frost bitten by the temps in the 20s. Most surprising of all in Yule Tide, normally a very understated bush even tho it is large… the blooms are small but a beautiful deep clear red, filled with bright yellow stamens, but somehow usually going unnoticed by passers-by. This year it was covered with bright blooms – and then the temps plummeted. I was afraid it was finished for the season. But, no, it came back with even more blooms than before. A local grower who drives past my place numerous times a day stopped by to comment on it, asking where I got that huge bush, it looked like Yule Tide, what was it, and how did I get such a large bush out there – he assumed it was newly planted in that spot because it had gone unnoticed for 25 years.


My favorite camellia is either Aunt Alice, a red variegated variety, or my first love, Pink Perfection, a spring bloomer. Both have bloomed tho Pink P has only opened a couple blooms and they have been tinged with frost bite.



I found the most beautiful poinsettia at Thomas’ Gardens yesterday. I had to bring it home. Some part of me feels it is not Christmas without a poinsettia.  I had hoped to find some winter pansies, but they were real beat. So I came home without any – sad to not have some but relieved that I would not have to go out in the cold to plant them. I did buy another birdfeeder – a tiny one for chickadees. It is so cute. I have 11 feeders in the redbud so far.  The restaurant is open!
This week is Solstice… may you have a Buddhaful winter season!

KER PLACE

Please visit the SPOTS Blog for pictures and info on our exhibit at Ker Place, Onancock, Dec 9th. http://onley-spots.blogspot.com/ 

Sunday, December 03, 2017

This Year's Santa-No-Train 2017

This year’s Santa-no-Train 2017

 

Well, like the title says, we did not have a train for Santa to come in on this year…mechanical problems... so we had a Santa-no-Train. Yeah, sounds dumb, but we just could not let the kids down. We expected a much larger crowd because the train did not run up the Shore this year, but we still had close to 200 people and 80 kids got to see our own Santa and Mrs Claus. We had to break in some new elves, and they were wonderful! Our staff and helpers all pulled together to make this a great success even if the only trains running were on our layouts.

            Here are a few shots of Santa arriving on a trailer pulled by one of our police vehicles driven by our police Chief. (as many of you know, we no longer have a fire department, a loooong sad story I will NOT get into here.) So we built a little building we were going to call the Elves Workshop – but a local kid pronounced it Elvis’s workshop and wondered if we were going to have Elvis at the Station (SIGH)… so we changed it to Santa’s workshop – elf entrance. That was put on a lawn tractor trailer with a bench and decorations and worked quite well bringing Santa, Mrs Claus and our brave new elves to the station. It was fun.
 
 
 


            Here are some of the folks who came to visit and a few of the cherubs who promised Santa they had been good… LOL! I remember the year one kid produced a page long list, told Santa it was his copy so he didn’t forget anything this year! He seriously acknowledged Santa was getting a little long in the tooth, and like his grandpa, maybe Santa was having memory problems. It was all we could do to keep from rolling on the floor with laughter! Bless their little hearts. Anyway – here are a few of this year’s pix, if blogger will let me do anything like that. (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)
 
 
 
 
 
 


            I do hope you will have a happy and safe Holiday Season, whatever you celebrate!