From Thanksgiving To Gift-giving After Halloween passes, we turn the calendar page and suddenly it’s November and the holiday season has begun. Every year it seems to arrive sooner than the year before, so before I get too involved in all the holiday activity, let’s take a moment to reflect and give thanks for being able to meet some of our most basic needs. 5II>M;H> %;L>?HM with Phyllis Shemchuk During this past year’s storm season, much of the northeast was thankfully spared the harsh weather experienced by other parts of the country. While others were experiencing floods, drought, and major fires, we were blessed with a longer than usual growing season which allowed more time for produce to be used directly from the gardens or to be put away for the coming winter. According to the Old Farmers’ Almanac (which is traditionally 80 percent accurate in its weather forecasts), “Winter will bring a frosty bite and next summer will be its mirror opposite, so get ready for a one-two punch. Be prepared.” That sounds pretty scary for next year, but for the present we are thankful to have plenty of food in a world where starvation also exists. During the winter months when many suffer from the cold, let’s be thankful we have warm clothing to wear and sufficient fuel to heat our homes. We not only have enough resources to meet our own basic needs, we have enough to share. With this in mind, perhaps we should start off the holiday season by finding ways to help those less fortunate than ourselves. One way to do this is by making a donation in the name of a friend or relative (or yourself) to a project that helps fight hunger at home or abroad. The help is given by providing farm animals and teaching sustainable agricultural practices that help those who receive these gifts become more self-reliant. The trickle of holiday gift catalogs that began to arrive at our house a short time ago has now turned into a daily avalanche at the mailbox. We use the catalogues, along with the Internet, to help us come up with gift ideas without having to fight the shopping mall crowds. For instance, one catalog offers mushroom lovers a very interesting selection of all things related to identifying, growing, harvesting, and cooking mushrooms. In one of several catalogs focused on gifts for children, I spotted a book that included posters and games to help identify different animals. This gift and a fresh snowfall could help young trackers discover which nighttime creatures are visiting their neighborhood. Speaking of those wintry nights and days soon to come, everyone will need warm jackets, hats, mittens, etc. There are plenty of choices of cold weather clothing that will keep the whole family warm on an outdoor adventure. Looking for an indoor way to pass the dreary hours of winter? Do you or someone you know have a small or large apple orchard? From a file he started in 1983, Dan Bussey has compiled a manuscript for a seven-volume (that’s almost 3000 pages) encyclopedia called, The Illustrated History of Apples in North America. The project includes all 17,000 apple varieties known to have been grown between the years 1623 and 2000. The first book is due out in January. Another way to come up with some unique gifts and avoid the malls is to make them yourself. Some of the dried herbs and flowers from last summer’s gardens could be used to make cooking oils, sachets, or herbal teas. For home knitters, there’s still time to knit a hat, a scarf, or a couple of pairs of warm mittens for someone you love. Homemade gifts are the best! If you’d rather put winter thoughts aside and think ahead to next spring, check out a locally owned bookshop for butterfly or bird guidebooks. A nature guidebook can be used by all ages to help identify next spring’s garden visitors. If you still need help, one interesting Web site boasts “40 great gifts for gardeners.” It includes a wide range of suggestions from Monticello’s Favorite Flowers Sampler (seeds) to brightly colored garden hoses or instructions for building sheds. If you were wondering what to do after the big Thanksgiving meal, when you are stuffed full of grandma’s turkey and pies, maybe my hints can help you get started in the right direction for this year’s gift-giving. Phyllis Shemchuk has gardened in Athol, MA for more than 30 years. This Holiday Season, Don’t Forget Your ELF Confused? That’s “Elderly, Local, Free Trade” Let’s start off this week’s column with a little scenario I have cooked up. You are you. Today is today. Everything is going along normally until you inexplicably lose consciousness. You wake up completely disoriented, unsure where you are and what the date is. As you look around you realize you are in the middle of a department store, and it soon becomes obvious what the date is. It must be Christmas Eve or maybe a few days earlier at the most, because %L??H +IH;>HI=E with Richard Popovic you are surrounded by decorations and hear familiar holiday tunes playing incessantly through a tinny speaker in the ceiling. Sure, it’s a bit warm, but you are smart enough to believe that climate change is not a huge hoax cooked up by thousands of scientists in order to push a rational agenda of conservation and common sense, so you chalk it up to an unseasonably warm December. It all makes sense. Or does it? Could it be that in actuality, all that happened was you took a little nap and somehow managed to sleepwalk your way to the store? That it is indeed the same day you last remember it being, and that you have not spent the last six weeks on a magical island somewhere with a bunch of lost airline passengers only to be inexplicably deposited in a greeting card aisle, confused and with a case of amnesia? That makes more sense. Or does it? There is always the chance that you have traveled back in time through some tear in the space-time continuum, and that it is actually the day after Halloween. Unlikely, but who knows? It is hard to tell, because these days the holiday season starts before the candles in the jack-o-lanterns have been blown out. Yeah, I could waste time complaining about it, but instead I have opted to embrace the early season and give the gift of a few guidelines for smarter shopping. In my last column I talked about Guilt over Autumn CHorEs (GAUCHE) Syndrome. This week I will hit you with another acronym, one slightly less awkward but certainly of more importance. 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