A Few Updates

Feeling a bit guilty over the long holiday break in this blog, although after visiting a few others I see that I'm not the only one... Well, my "break" was spent getting our Jan/Feb 06 issue to the printer and sending out advertising solicitation letters. Then there is the whole finalizing of the upcoming Seed Exchange we are hosting at the U.S. National Arboretum on January 28. Those details had to be done in order to go into this issue. Finally, we had the last minute holiday gift subscription rush that is a bit time-consuming as we do custom gift cards.

Now I can start focusing on 2006 planning and goals. I'd like to take the luxury of sitting down for a day or two to go over our progress, accomplishments, and ways to improve from 2005. However, my guess is that the goal-planning will be squeezed in between other upcoming projects as we can.

I did get a day or two to spend Christmas with the family. My mom and I went up to Ellicot City, MD, to visit the home of Mary Ellen Shaeffer. She is an accomplished craftswoman, to say the least, and holds an annual holiday open house for friends and generously also includes a few area garden clubs. Here are a few photos I took there. Every room is filled with decorated trees and holiday vignettes. Aside from elaborate embroidery, holiday decor, stuffed animals, quilting, etc., she does dried flower arrangements and magnificent corn husk dolls. Which are not generally my taste, but hers are so impressive and so life-like, I may need to change my mind! These photos are posted at such low-res they really don't do her work justice. If you want to see them at high-res, just drop me an email and I'll send a few off to you.