For those that are Irish, Happy St. Patty's Day!

Myself, I don't really get into all the commercialized holidays, their purpose is to get the consumer to spend $$. We celebrate Passover, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas and not in the commercialized sense, but rather a traditional celebration of what the holiday really represents.

Yesterday was a personal holiday, we observe right along with Birthdays, it was our 26th Anniversary! Now we don't get carried away but feel this is an important day to celebrate. Mike and I don't exchange gifts or even cards but we did receive a funny card from my parents and a really nice one and some chocolates from Cortney. A friend of ours, gave us a truly special gift and very thoughtful too, a music CD of selected love songs, from country western artist she knows we like. We listened to our gift CD on the way into the city and sang along with each and every song, Thank you Ashle'. :o)

Mike took me out for supper, it was a surprise as to where. We returned to an old haunt, well we ate there a couple of times early in our relationship, but they opened in a new second location. It was a wonderful evening, Mike had a nice steak, garden salad and a potato side. I had coconut shrimp and halibut with garlic mashed potato and I chose french onion soup instead of salad. The soup was delicious, but so hot it was almost boiling, so didn't get much eaten before our supper arrived. The shrimp was a real treat and cooked to perfection, Mmmm, Mmmm., as was the halibut, coated with a herb crust, it had the best flavor.
Mike wanted a dessert but by this point I was stuffed, so we decided we'd share a root beer float( in a HUGE mug with I bet 1/2 pt of vanilla ice cream), sure glad we decided to share.

After supper we decided to do some shopping around, just for the heck of it. We ended up buying........ you know we're so practical *wink*............. new bed pillows for each of us, Extra Firm, can't stand soft pillows! LOL! Actually I think our anniversary gift, if you want to call it that, is our new 16x24 hoop house we'll be building in a few weeks! When we do gifts, 99% of the time are something practical, and those gifts mean the most to us both. Our evening was wonderful and we both pray we see another 26 blessed years together.

Seedling update;
Everything is growing well, in fact almost in need of transplanting into the 4" pots. The ONLY thing that didn't come up was our peppers and I think it was because they needed to closer to the heat and less water, so.... I'm replanting them today*wink* With exception of the peppers and the Silentz tomato, we had an average germination rate of 95%, and some of the seed was 2-3 seasons old, so I'm very pleased.
Looking forward to the hoop house and getting the tomatoes, peppers, melons and okra off to an early start. Our plan is to use this from early Spring( growing cold weather crops) through end of Nov. or until it gets to cold to mess with. We don't want to heat the hoop house, other than for a few weeks here and there and we'll do so with a wood stove( barrel style , most likely) We'll have doors at each end( solid ends) and 3' roll up sides. Our objective is to start our season earlier, for ripe tomatoes, peppers and melons earlier, as well as extend our season. I'm excited! We still have our little starter greenhouse, which is more practical to heat, if needed, so will continue to use this as well. *wink*
Well, today is forecasted to be 67-69F and I have three loads of laundry to wash, and hand out to dry. Then my plan is to be outside enjoying the sunshine, we need to clean up branches and sucklers trimmed from our fruit trees. It's also forecasted to cool down for a couple of days, so will attack our dirty house, and have plans to get cabbage buns made. We have three heads of cabbage that need to be used up quickly and we're working on using up carrots and potatoes too. We're still digging parsnip, some we'll let go to seed.

Tonight's supper will be ham, cheesy potato bake, and steamed carrots and parsnips with a dab of butter and lemon juice drizzled over them.

Blessings for the rest of your week :o)