so do you have any hobbies
well right at the present time nothing real special i kind of like gardening and i'm kind of into camping and you know vacationing that sort of thing i don't have any real serious
yeah uh
i'm an avid gardener um
oh okay i think you're
um i consider that a hobby i don't know they were like suggesting like handcraft things which i guess that's a really true true hobby
um-hum
yeah
i i i think anything that you enjoy
um it doesn't really have to matter i mean it could be working on cars could be your hobby really
yeah
well yeah i kind of enjoy doing that a little bit too
well did i
no i i guess if you make money at it it becomes a vocation then
yeah well i don't know i told my husband i said you go out some to work on the car it's not worth getting all mad and fighting and hollering at each other when it goes wrong i says you go pay to have someone do it
yeah
because it always seems it goes wrong when you try to do something
i guess as far north as you are if you like gardening you've still got a couple months to go haven't you
oh yeah um well right now we um start our seeds inside
uh-huh oh yeah that's right you would yeah
we'll start them inside and uh
in cold frames or whatever the
yeah well we usually start them right in the house my sister tries to set up a greenhouse on her back deck and
um-hum
and the wind a wind storm come and knock it down but she's had really good luck i mean it next month well actually it if you if you start it in a couple weeks
huh
and you can get your plants outside pretty much the end of May you can leave them outside you might put them in the ground just the first week of June
uh-huh
yeah
but we can put potatoes in the ground in the middle of May
yeah
i've i've lived in in Texas and New Mexico most of my life but i did once i spent one winter in North Dakota
oh
and i i remember that it was on into May before it really started warming up
yeah well well we live we live really close to Lake Champlain which is in the Champlain Valley so we're a little we're about two weeks ahead of everyone else out on the outskirts so
and uh
oh yeah
okay because that kind of moderates the weather a little bit yeah
yeah we are a little lucky well my brother lives ten miles from here and he gets frost and his crop gets killed
you're at
yeah
you're right across the uh lake from what Plattsburgh
yep from Plattsburgh Air Force Base
oh
yeah yeah
yeah i had i had a cousin that was stationed there
but um
Plattsburgh for a while he he remembers lots of snow
yeah Plattsburgh's kind of a it's uh it's uh depressed economically
oh really oh
when you go across the lake um i don't know why we have so much going for us
i really don't i'm just wrote my resume up because told we might be facing layoff over at Digital and they've never had well they've had layoffs recently but when we got hired here no no never any layoffs never never
yeah
and now we're looking at serious i i mean i'm a technician when they start getting rid of technicians
yeah
yeah well i'm i'm working for TI Texas Instruments down here
well i interviewed with them but i didn't want to go to Texas
oh yeah
oh
even though my um mother's people are from Georgia
oh yeah
yeah
well i guess we have to get back to hobbies since
yeah we're getting to where straying i guess yeah
stick on the subject
well interesting thing that i do is with gardening uh my sister grows flowers that you can dry
um-hum
and you can make flower uh dried flower arrangements and you can get real handy with the hot glue gun and we made some really nice Christmas wreaths with uh dried red flowers and dried white flowers and uh eucalyptus
hum yeah
you you know what eucalyptus is it's
yeah yeah the they sell uh it's sold in the
hobby stores and nurseries it's got a kind of a peculiar smell to it but
yeah it's got a smell yeah at first i'm like oh how why do people like this but it it is kind of a nice smell after a while people put them in
yeah i didn't realize what it was for a while i'd walk into a room where some of that and i'd wonder what is that you know and then one day i i realized that it was eucalyptus
yeah it's it's it's like a fad thing i i don't know it's i've never heard of it in the last five years i've used so much of it that
yes
yeah
i hate to
that's the stuff that koala bears eat in Australia or something
yeah it is
maybe that's why they're
so slow i guess they're stoned on the stuff or something
yeah it it looks really potent potent stuff
yeah
but uh it's yeah i think it's the greatest stuff in the world though it's jeez they i make all kinds of things with it we make all kinds of things just with dried flowers
i i almost want to start a business doing it but i don't i i'm so uh timid when it comes to starting a business
yeah that's that's a big step yeah
yeah it is especially with the being in on the creative aspect aspect on the crafty end
yeah uh
you know after a while you make some stuff then you start looking at it go boy this this is kind of ugly
but i know someone who does a lot of woodworking for a hobby um he does it believe it or not i wouldn't imagine why but to get out of the house away from his wife
um
hum
because he's a seasonal worker he works in the construction and up here it's almost a pattern i mean you see your fathers do it then their sons do it what they do is they work construction then they get laid off for like twelve weeks in the winter
yeah
and uh this guy was going nuts and his uh son built him a garage and got him some uh oh i don't know what the equipment's called but planes and thi ngs
um-hum shapes and planes and
and set set him up and he he makes all kinds of furniture for um his kids and he makes uh uh like little kids' furniture
routers
he gets right into it and uh
there was a program on TV down here on the educational channel here a while back about a lot of little
little companies of one and two guys you know up there especially this particular one i think was in Maine and New Hampshire
where out in the just kind of out in these little towns they'd be i n they may be the same kind of people you're talking about you know they've they've got twelve weeks to do something
and they they're making furniture and just you know things like that during the winter and then they go off and do other things during the summer
yeah it's a it's a really good thing
so yeah
yeah yeah
yeah because it's keeping him sane and plus it's keeping his marriage so and and plus he's getting on in his years now he's he's not that old but he's getting
yeah
yeah
to the point where he needed an extra boost to to do something like that and uh it's really it's it's uh hard work i couldn't imagine taking lumber raw lumber and trying to make something out of it he dowels
yeah
that would be really tough you know like say the
he dowels everything and it's all got to line up and uh i don't think he goofs too much i don't to see too much scrap around
oh man yeah
yeah yeah that's that's something now our temperatures down here we're starting to get pretty consistently in the seventies and eighties
and uh so and uh so as far as you know planting outdoor stuff matter of fact tonight i just got through i was planting some some trees out back tonight and uh
God i'm envious
this is uh it's really nice out tonight almost hated to come in
is it going to be
is it going to be really dry it are you plant are no i always plant trees in the fall i don't know why so the the cold weather can kill them
yeah these were uh trees that that wintered
but i guess
i don't don't know where they came from they come out of nurseries mostly in Missouri and places like that
and they come down here and they'll sit in the nurseries here and they'll go ahead and and uh leaf out
so what i'm planting or actually transplanting is a tree that's or trees that are already leafed out
oh that's good i guess they they say you can plant them in the spring or the fall um
yeah mostly i think in a place where it's really cold they do it in the fall let them winter
yeah
yeah through the fall but uh down here well it's done both ways it it just kind of depends on what you're
what you're planting but uh all the shrubs and
yeah and uh when you have time to do it
yeah
my sister does uh flower gardens she gets right into it
uh-huh
she spends lots of money on them and i guess a lot of people do do do that they landscape their whole house with flower gardens she's got like
yeah
just a small patch of lawn and just flowers and bulch bark uh tree bark all over her lawn
yeah flowers during the summer down here the the normal kind of flowers there's very few of them that'll really do well
everything does real well here in the spring until about oh first part of June and then the real the heat sets in
it gets it
and June July August are you know most of the those kind of plants just are just barely staying alive let alone make flowers
do you have a lot of shade trees around your house or is it
uh we're in a relatively new area we're kind of out of uh the natural tree area we're kind of up on a on a higher on a slope
so you don't have a lot of tree coverage
so we don't have where we are right now there are very few trees this was this was this was pasture land but down the down the hill here a little ways there are parks that are look like jungles you know they're really
because going going to make
yeah see um where uh where my uh well my grandmother passed away but where aunts are they have these huge pecan trees and they just shade everything
um-hum
now where is this
uh it's in Georgia it's yeah it's right outside of Macon and and it's just a i like the way that i like the way that idea of the south is
in Georgia yeah yeah
but when i think of Texas i think of nothing but no trees and just grass
well i tell you what now see East Texas there's two parts of Texas East Texas and North Texas Atlanta and Dallas are almost identical in every way weather and everything
yeah
the two cities are very very identical so if you were familiar with Atlanta
so it's that dry heat
uh
uh well no it's it's uh not dry at all it it's humid
well where is it is it Houston wasn't it Houston's humid
Houston Houston is awful
yeah
Houston is really humid now
it's humid