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Aunt Toby, as readers know, is definitely big on being organized, planned to the hilt, forward thinking and full of ‘the vision thing’. I am also absolutely not fond of doing things like making New Year’s resolutions, long lists of ‘to do’, or keeping score.

There’s a whole lot of keeping score going on out there in Blogistan because it IS the end of 2009 and as creatures of habit, we seem duty bound to look behind us and try to get a grasp on ‘oh, what a good boy am I”. If Aunt Toby turns around like that, she gets a major spasm in her neck that no amount of hot showering, massage and drink will assuage. I’m reading great reams of lists of accomplishments – I am amazed that people had time for regular bathing and going to the toilet. Honestly.
Life ain’t a contest.

In my case, though, I will admit to a little bit of ‘what worked and what did not.”

Gardening:
Worked: Anything from the cabbage and beet families and potatoes
Disaster: Tomatoes and peppers (from the same family as potatoes but the blight carried everything off

Chickens:
Worked: Light Brahmas are still chugging along, though they do seem pretty sensitive to temperatures under 30 degrees in terms of laying eggs.
Disaster: Zip ties on the moveable pens. I think the plastic degrades in the sun.

Sewing:
Worked: Doing one thing at a time and finishing that.
Disaster: Can’t think of a thing at the moment.

So far, so good. Looking forward to 2010:
Chickens: We’re going to get more chicks in the spring, probably earlier than we did this year. The basement thing worked well until it got nice enough to put them out under the lights in the barn. I don’t know if we will get more Light Brahmas or go with something else like Delawares.

Gardening: I’m going to pay a LOT more attention to ‘blight resistent’ in the descriptions for seeds this time. It was very upsetting to not be able to get any tomatoes this summer when I wanted to can. We had no sources for local tomatoes at all, even up in the Syracuse area. Total washout.

Sewing: Well, the DH has already put in a request for several short sleeved dress shirts, so that is ‘on the spike’ as they would say, along with a gor-gee-ous piece of light weight tan wool shirting (with black reindeer!!), which I’m going to make a long sleeved shirt for him out of. I might even try making him a pair of dressy slacks that would go with the shirt so that he has a pair of slacks that he can wear that are not part of a suit. For me, I’ve got forest green wool jersey knit to make a dress and brown and forest green plaid flannel to make a jacket and a skirt for myself. Those three things will keep me going through to the spring.

But see..no resolutions…