Sandra, I tend to pick up things like rubber bands and paper clips. They can go somewhere.

Mary, we lived in Everett for many years and would sometimes see the Snohomish River flood; it was standard that to the north the Skagit would flood in the valleys around Mt. Vernon; Sedro Woolley is upstream from there (and a town I spent a lot of time in as a kid.) In a news search of Western Washington I see evacuations in Chehalis and Puyallup, so keep your Go Bag handy. Stay safe. (The U-Haul folks in Snohomish County are offering 30 days free storage to people who have to evacuate. It might be a good choice to protect valuables when they need to go somewhere but can't be carried around.) I'll be checking in with family this evening.

patty, I feel your pain of avoiding too much of the holiday spirit. I turn off the local classical station quite often because they play way too much xmas music all month long. I can't stand that much of it, and agree with Charmion, it has its place at the end of the month. We also put up trees quite late, sometimes on Xmas eve, and they were often down by New Years. It's too much of a good thing otherwise. No snow or much holiday feeling here, we've had nice sunny weather and today I took advantage of it to clear the gardens.

That clearing went smoothly, with a bit of prying and spade fork work to pile it onto the wheelbarrow to tote to the back of the back yard. Then came the messy job. I rolled the compost wizard to the back and emptied it in several stages. Tip, roll, prod, tip, repeat. Shovel what fell out into the compost bin. Then I had to bite the bullet and reach the small shovel into the wizard and pry out stuff stuck inside. After that messy job I returned the wizard to its stand, the shovel to the garage, and took off all of my outer clothes and put them in the laundry basket because of the stinky sticky material in that bin.