Where's Balisha?...and a Peek at Christmas

 This is what my window side of the work room will look like soon. I bring the houseplants in from outdoors. I keep plants that bloom occasionally, here until they decide to bloom again. Then they move back upstairs. 

 This year, I have red geraniums in my stack and grow garden on the deck. I'm thinking that I might just disassemble the planter, and bring them all downstairs to keep until next year. This table changes all the time. I'm sort of ruthless with my plants...if they don't bloom or start to die out...I toss them. If I like the plant, I might take a cutting and start a new one, if they start to look shabby. I plan to bring my dipladenias inside for the winter and also my rosemary. I left the rosemary out last winter and then lost it due to freezing temps.

Lately, I've been painting in the dining room. It has worked out so well, but I need to set these things up downstairs again. Joe loses me in the house. He says he never knows where I am. 

I don't have any pictures of the other half of my workroom downstairs, but here's one of the table that I paint on...all set up to do a window. 

Well you get the gist of it. I have a nice setup and the thing about working in the basement...I can be as messy as the job calls for and just leave it and go upstairs at the end of the day.

While I was downstairs yesterday, vacuuming, I looked over at my bins against the wall. I could see the red and green colors of Christmas through the clear plastic. Guess what I did? I pulled out all the things that I want to decorate with this year and got everything organized in bins (lightweight), to be brought up when we want to decorate. There are five medium sized bins this year. Just enough Christmas for our house. I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. I've been reading about vintage Christmas at Still Woods Farmhouse http://stillwoodsfarmhouse.blogspot.com... and Judy http://judeself.blogspot.com/ has been making her Christmas cards already, so I guess that I can start getting things handy ....you know Christmas in July?

I'm not trying to rush the season, but at  my age...I need a little more time to prepare.

It's a dreary day again today. I do love days like this....because I can take a little needed break from gardening. I just looked over to my garden window here in the computer room. I have a vine that is telling me that it has no place to grow. It needs a trellis. I bought some things from a nursery and they sent a free passion flower vine along with my order. I planted it outside...where it had a trellis...but it wasn't happy there and didn't grow a leaf. So, after going to google, I found that I can use it as a house plant. Put it in a pot and it took off. It must like being inside. So now...I need to fashion some kind of trellis. Any suggestions? Has anyone grown this in the house?

Guess I'll get going and start my day. Will I be up or down? No matter where I go....I'll have to leave a note for Joe...so he can find me :)

Balisha