Dear Customers,              When my mom died, my Dad rambled around that empty house for two years with none of the basic skills usually provided by a wife of that generation.  He couldn’t cook, he didn’t clean, nor perform any of the other myriads of domestic tasks previously taken care of by Mom.  My…

Dear Customers,             While still a week away by the calendar it’s time to begin talking about St. Patrick’s Day, a day celebrating the heritage and culture of the Irish.  Like many other popular holidays, its true meaning gets overshadowed by food and drink – and the occasional parade!            Well over a million…

Dear Customers,            Two down – one to go!  I’m speaking of course about the three first months of the year, those with the worst weather.  Then comes March which is an enigma.  We can get snow, sunshine, ice, balmy breezes – the whole megillah-all over a period of the 4 short weeks of the…

Dear Customers,           As February slips away into the past, we get daily closer to the season of spring.  By the end of this week, we will usher in March and with it – be it lion or lamb, the welcome appearance of bulbs poking their heads timidly out of the snow.  The days are…

Dear Customers,              This is the time of year when winter really begins to weigh on me.  Sure, we’ve made it through January and most of February, but Spring is still just a distant dot on the horizon.  My mailbox is jammed full of seed catalogs nearly every day, but it’s way too early to…

Dear Customers,             At the end of this week is THE day that commemorates “love”.  It’s a celebration of love and romance often accompanied by the exchange of gifts, greeting cards and other expressions of affection.  When we were in grade school, back in the 1960’s it wasn’t uncommon to decorate an old shoe box…

Dear Customers,            February is notable for a couple of things.  The first “notable” happened yesterday in Punxsutawney, just down the road a bit.  While it’s sometimes fun to imagine Winter ending sooner rather than later, that woodchuck is about as accurate as anyone else who makes their living trying to predict the weather.  Read…

Dear Customers,             This week marks the end of the first month of winter.  That only leaves two more until spring!  When I was younger and spent the winters skiing (both downhill and cross country), I loved winter and truly, enjoyed every snowfall.  Now, it doesn’t fill me with the same enthusiasm.            One obvious…

Dear Customers,            January is a cold, gray month.  So are the next two!  But we have to survive January, February and March before we get into spring weather, the sound of lawn mowers and the hopeful sight of crocuses poking out of the still moist but gradually warming earth.           Back in December, from…

Dear Customers, By now, the glitz and glamour of the past holiday season has faded into a monotonous reality. Two weeks into the New Year and most of our resolutions have gone the way of resolutions from years past! For every good intention there’s an equal and opposite loss of enthe determined is just how…