With the advent of the Christmas Season, each year, I put out our usual ornaments and decorations. The red balls on the green palo verde tree, the poinsettias around the mailbox, the wreath on the courtyard gate and the Nutcracker Guards on either side of the walkway.
Inside, we have a little Christmas tree, some Christmas troll dolls and a chili pepper wreath, among other various and sundry Christmas items. We are ready for our fifth Christmas in our wonderful retirement palace.
It has been quite cool here for the past several nights. We actually found some ice topping one of the rain barrels this morning. It was then that we decided to harvest the lemons from our little lemon tree. The tree will be covered afterward to prevent any frost damage.
This harvest was a bit smaller than last year, but there are plenty of lemons to provide for our needs as well as for giving away to one of the senior care centers. One of the ladies on the staff makes lemon pies from scratch, so they appreciate them.
As for us, we will be skinning a bunch of lemons for Limoncello, and freezing “juice cubes” to be used as needed for cooking this coming year. Click on the image to enlarge.
With the current political climate in Sanctuary Kalifornistan, I cannot disagree with the line drawn on this map that I found on the FecesBook™ thing.
We have so much to be thankful for this year. We’re in good health, blessed by God’s bounty and have a wonderful extended family.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and to yours!
CB&D
For several years, I have had a collection of cacti in pots in and behind the patio. This week, I moved several of them into the courtyard where we will be able to enjoy them more than out back.
The potted cacti include some recently acquired ones courtesy of Crotalus, our friend in the California desert. Thanks to him for those. Several of these will await next spring to display their flowers, while others will continue to grow to the point where We will need to re-pot them or put them in the rock and cactus garden.
We took an after-dinner walk down the road this afternoon as we usually do when we finish eating. I noticed the moon rising over the desert mountains in the distance and our local hills in the foreground. Having left the camera in the house, we finished walking the dogs and went back down the road for me to get this nice shot of the moonrise.
Later in the evening when we walked the dogs just before total darkness outside, the waxing gibbous moon was so bright, we could see our moonshadows on the driveway. Click on the image to enlarge.
Gas prices have been coming down all over the country since the summer season ended. The lowest prices here in our town are still over two per gallon, but when we were going down to the Northwest Valley today, we saw gas advertised for under $2.
Having recently made a commitment to a new gas consumption entity, we have been tracking gas prices. When we take delivery of the new beast after Thanksgiving weekend, we will need to top off the 80 gallon tank. Searching on Gas Buddy reveals a lot of prices near the delivery location to be just a shade over two bucks; hopefully, those will go down by the time we get there.
One of the business magazines (I don’t link to any Bloomberg sites because they are rabidly anti-second-amendment) speculates that gas prices could fall to $1.70 or below by Christmas. That will be good for us since we will be going to Palm Desert California one more time before then and gas will probably keep coming down in price.
