Halloween, Hand Turkeys and Gardening in the Valley of the Sun

The girls with a friend on Halloween

This Halloween was a milestone for us.  My oldest daughter took her younger sisters out trick or treating and we sat at home watching a movie!  It was most excellent.

©Carolyn Watson Dubisch

Last year at this time I began posting hand turkeys on my art blog.  I put up a new one each day till Thanksgiving.  I also entered some hand turkey contests and won a t-shirt in one contest and a $25 itunes gift card in another.  So, of course I'm doing it again....

©Carolyn Watson Dubisch

If you enjoy hand turkeys, be sure to take a daily look on my art blog, and check out my "Hand Turkey" store over at Zazzle.com for some great prints and products!

 

This is a picture of our garden out back from when we moved in. As you can see we had a lot of work we had to do.  It's much improved but we have more to get done.  Gardening here is very... painful. Everything that grows here seems to have very sharp needles (not just the cacti).  Also after talking to some locals I picked up one of these....

And I thought black lights were just good for lighting up glow in the dark stars in your college dorm room!  Turns out they're pretty good at spotting scorpions.  Which is awesome as there are 40 species of scorpions in this state.  So far I haven't met any personally.  I'm kind of hoping it stays that way.

This week the elephant in the room is the utter devastation incurred by Hurricane Sandy in the New York and New Jersey area.  I grew up on Long Island and have many family and friends that were in the path of destruction.  It's strange to think life has stopped moving in New York City.... How can that even be possible?! Our hearts are with all of those suffering from this disaster.