Merry Christmas to you! May your gardens be blessed with rain and good sunshine all the year.

I am sorry to hear about the melanoma, but I think you can beat this one, buddy. You will be in our thoughts and I hope you can stop by and let us know how you are doing.

We'll be praying for you, Shot. Keep us posted, and many blessings for a fruitful and healthy new year.

ESH and Pam, thank you very much for your well wishes.

This has been the best Christmas season I can remember. Maybe because I was determined to make it such.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the yard looking over what God has blessed me with and at my bare garden. The weather was warm and the urge to break out the tractor and do some plowing. Normally would not be long before I would start preparations by breaking it up and getting things ready. Though with the radiation treatments and at least they gave me the rest of the season off before the chemo treatments. I am a chrome dome now. :)

Gotta do the chemo for a month then take shots for a year. My darling wife is trying to get up her stamina for the shots.

Oh yeah.... experienced a birthday during the season (Dec 23) and it was also great.

Have met some really super people here and wanted to thank you all. ESH got me educated on posting pictures here. Just so many helpful people with knowledge and not minding to share such.

Thank you all very much.

Shot

Well Happy belated Birthday to you, shot! My son has the same birthday - always a challenge in this holiday season. We still have leftover chocolate cake ....

I was out walking through the yard today (unfortunately while the neighbors' leaf blowing flunkies were out there blowing half a dozen leaves around!), pulling up bits of honeysuckle (easily thanks to the rain) and enjoying the occasional bits of greenery. Just a couple more months and we'll be looking for swelling leaf buds to announce the coming of spring. You gotta like Georgia for our short winters.

Speaking of spring, tomorrow I'll get together with some friends to create a bunch of planters to raffle off at the February native plant symposium. We make artful combinations of plants that we have rescued over the past few months and then let them spend about six weeks in a greenhouse - by February 14th they will be vibrant as a spring day. Here is a picture of the raffle plants from last year's event:

Shot, my prayers go out to you. I'm sorry you are dealing with this and will be sick right through gardening season but I truly hope that you will be well for the next. You know, sometimes you get that "feeling" that someone is a really good person and I just got that feeling with your very first and friendly post.
Will be thinking of you frequently and hope you remain as strong as you can to fight this thing!

GGG

GGG, thanks so much. My mother was a jovial and friendly person and I try to be the same. I grow much more than we can eat as I enjoy seeing family and friends with their butts turned up out in the field... the best part is under the pecan tree talking and shelling. I do my own corn...

ESH, seems we have things in common besides the gardening. Makes your son about 17 (oops) now?

Birthdays have never been big to me because it falls so close to Christmas. My wife told me we were grilling hamburgers outside and having a bonfire. Was I ever surprized when family members started showing up. Also, had hot dogs and sausage.
All in all it was the best Christmas ever for me.

Happy New Year all and thanks.

Shot

Happy New Year to you, buddy. Keep us informed of your progress with the treatments.

ESH, thank you my friend. Finished with radiation for the brain tumors and go to see the surgeon on January 20 to insert the portacath(?) and then a week later to start the chemo. No biggy - just part of the routine.

Thank you for thinking of me so soon after 2009... (I see the time of your post :) )

Will keep in touch.

Shot

Glad you had a nice Christmas and birthday. Grilling out sounds wonderful! It's tough to have a birthday next to Christmas. Mine is coming up next week. My folks always kept birthdays and other holidays separate, so we'd feel special on our own "big day."

Keep us posted on your treatment. You'll be in a lot of people's thoughts and prayers.

Thank you Pam.
An early Happy Birthday to you. Hope your family and friends make it special for you.

As I have grown older it has become better to have a birthday so near Christmas as you can slide under the radar better....

Heard some complain that the weather was too warm for Christmas, but I enjoyed it. It allowed us (adults) to sit on the front porch and watch the grandkids play in the yard, which they don't do much anymore like when I was a kid. Son #2 enjoys taking the kids for a ride on the tractor. His wife discovered the joy of riding on the Zero Turn Mower (ZTR). At first it was just riding the kids, but I could see the fun she was having so I told her to just go alone. As she got more comfortable with it she was zooming around the property....

Enjoy sitting around a bonfire with family and friends and talking. Just the crackling of the fire and talking without a boom box or tv going.

Hope all the best of health and wealth in the coming year.

Thanks.

Shot

Shot -- Was not on GW much at all during the holidays, so missed your post. I am more of a newbie than the rest of the talented gardeners on this forum, but I've gotten lots of great advice (careful not to give TOO much of it myself though, lest mine be not very good! LOL) and I've enjoyed lots of great pix...a lot of them yours! :) They inspire me as I sit around in the cold winter and think about what I want to do in the spring.

I'll be thinking good thoughts for you that you will get over the chemo-sick quickly and get back out in the garden!

P.S. We grill for Christmas dinner every year, in our family. We like it so much! (This is SO off-topic, but maybe it will make you laugh.) The first year we did it, Christmas fell on a Sunday and I was probably about...5 or 6 I guess. We always grilled on Sundays after church, 'cause...well, we live in the South and thats what we do! LOL Anyway, my Mom knew that it would be a LITTLE bit of a bummer for me, at that young age, to open all my gifts, then have to go get dressed up for church without any "play" time. So, she thought she would let ME choose what we would have for Christmas dinner as sort of a consolation prize. LOL The way she tells it now, when she asked me what I wanted, she says my lower lip started to tremble and I teared up real quick-like and stammered, "Y-y-y-you mean we can't have HAMBURGERS this Sunday EITHER?" LOL As in, you mean to tell me that now I have to dress up and go to church and not get to play with my presents and then I don't even get my usual Sunday burger? LOLOLOL

So, now, even though I'm married and all grown up...me and hubby (and whoever else is there for Christmas) still grill every year! It's great 'cause nobody has to spend all day in the kitchen and we can all hang out and enjoy each other (and play with our toys)! ;-)

Glad you had a great b-day!

MK87, thanks for the great post with the funny part thrown in for good measure.
Grilling is a big part of our life here in the south. Just think of the people up north up to their shoulders in snow.
We have four (4) grills ranging from small to pretty good size. Here is a pic someone took at my party of the big (homemade) grill loaded with hamburgers, hot dogs and sausage. Included another one of the Brinkmann's Smoker/Grill that I use most of the time. Have a daugher in Atlanta that doesn't eat pork so the chicken is for her.

I start the chemo next month and want to get over the sickness before starting my preparing and planting garden.
Thank you very much.
Shot

When my hubby decided he wanted to grill the turkey for Christmas a year ago, I thought he was cuckoo. I didn't think the interior would ever get done. But that was the best tasting bird I ever had! I think we may have started a grilling for Christmas tradition now!

Enjoying the stories everyone.

I'm planning a veggie garden, Shot. I don't have a huge piece of property like you, so I won't have your incredible yields. Just a little kitchen garden in the backyard. My birthday is tomorrow (eek!), and my family has decided to get me stuff related to the garden, so I'll have a good head start.

I'll be thinking about you!
Pam

Happy birthday Pam! I can tell you're excited about getting garden related gifts, I would be too.

Serious grilling, shot! That chicken looks like he's trying to ask those ribs out on a date!!

Happy birthday, Pam.

I look at that chicken picture and think, "Shall we dance?"

hee hee! (Thanks for the birthday wishes!)

H A P P Y - B I R T H D A Y, P A M

Shot

Pam & ESH two minds of a kind... wish I could dance

Pam -- Would love to get your hubby's instructions for grilling a turkey. I haven't done that.

I've grilled a whole chicken before (same as in pic above...btw...it's so funny...that's the first thing I thought when I saw that pic too..."Is the chicken propositioning the ribs?" LOL Either that, or somehow holding the ribs at gunpoint or something. LOL

Thanks for the pix Shot! :)