santa?

[flea]

Out of the blue yesterday afternoon Casper asked me if Santa Claus is really real. I took evasive manoeuvres and asked her what she thought. She had a very logical approach - she talked about how there were so many people ('even in one house!') and it didn't seem possible that Santa could give them all presents.

I don't know if she thought this up by herself or some kid at school or afterschool has been talking about it. My family's Santa tradition is that everyone gets stockings, and those are from Santa, but in general we don't make a huge deal out of Santa. We've never done the mall photo op, and we left cookies last year, but it was all sort of low-key.

I do remember working out that Santa wasn't real for myself, probably at about Casper's age. So it's not outside the real of the possible. I also remember helping my mother fill the Easter baskets when I was 10, and being really sad about it. Even if you don't believe, it can be nice to see the fiction maintained. (Note: this may also explain some of my religious pretzelling.)

In gardening news, I had two cherry tomatoes off the plant last night, and need to dig up the basil for inside. I also weeded the bed on the E side of the house (with Casper and Dillo and little S. from next door's help!); my plan is to make it an herb garden (rosemary, lavendar, etc.), or native plant garden (um?), or butterfly garden (lantana, buddleia, etc.). Or something low-key and mostly not edible, at any rate (because of the risk of lead paint). My big bulb order is scheduled to come tomorrow, so I have to plan where to put everything and get them in the ground soon.

Comments

[fatoudust.livejournal.com]

Santa is always a tough one. I worked it out when my mom slipped up and put a bookmark in my sister's stocking that I'd seen her buy. Sad.

Gardening! I vote butterfly garden. We are wanting to do that, too, with the eventual goal of getting certified as a butterfly habitat.

We're about to get our big bulb order too, I think. We've got the beds prepped already, but we haven't settled on the exact bulb locations. It's our first time! Any bulb advice?

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Plant them closer together than the directions say. If you like the clump effect, dig one big hole and put a handful in 2-3" apart (depending on size). Whatever you do, don't plant them in straight lines. For layout, think about color and when they bloom - so you have a good mix in each bed at any given time in the season. You can make a little maps or charts to work this out. For bulbs in the lawn, I throw them and plant where they land. Plant them deep enough - most bulbs want to be 3x deep as the bulb is big, and that can be work, depending on your soil, but it makes all the difference in naturalizing. A little bone meal in the hole with the bulbs is a good (organic) booster.

[fatoudust.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Bookmarking this.

We lucked out with our soil. It's all rock all around here (thus White Mountains) but our particular lot has pretty workable soil. We'll need to get some organic materials in there over time, but I think we'll be able to do more gardening than most of our neighbors.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

It was wrapping paper that did it - usually our one "big" present each year was from Santa, but after I realized it came wrapped in the same paper as the one from my parents, the jig was up.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

or native plant garden (um?)

Kudzu!

Ignoring the disturbing mutant tomatoes in October talk. My plants have been mostly dead for a couple of weeks. There is also a teeny little nowhere near ripe canteloupe that probably froze to death last night.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

You might check with your local native plant society about what's good foodstuffs for your local fauna. Around here they don't like us to plant buddleia because it's hideously invasive (no, really -- my neighbor has a couple of big ones and they're lovely but their offspring are weeds in my yard, aargh.) And the local butterflies can't actually eat them at all. They are pretty, though.

We never told the kids that Santa was real, which has eliminated that whole issue -- we just said that it's a different story about Christmas, but that in our household Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. Santa has always creeped me right the fuck out (go to a mall and sit on the lap of some creepy bearded seasonally-employed drunk freak? No, thank you!), so I was not really into the idea of pushing the Santa ideology. But maybe I am a big spoilsport and No Fun At All. *shrug*