Cookies

I've forsworn gardening this week for holiday madness, including baking cookies for a handful of darling souls that I love. This is More than one would suspect since I actually can't bake worth a damn and only attempt it this one time each year. I have the entire kitchen and porch full of cookies in progress, cookies baking, cookies cooling.... lots of different kinds of cookies. None are as delicious as I always hope they will be. They are only a bit a love from someone who really can't think of anything else creative to share.

Gifting is more difficult each year. I've pretty much worn out giving my dear ones plants. Most of my age group are eliminating, rather than expanding, their gardens and I no longer have all our greenhouses to draw from. I've tried giving charitable donations in their names but it seems self-serving somehow to make my own predetermined donations to charities I've selected and then say, "Oh, this was for you" as if I was perfectly sure that they would share my determination to share goats and chickens with the entire Third World. Even with the nifty accordian-fold gift cards (thank you Heifer Project). After all, I get the tax benefit.

Heaven knows my group doesn't need any more tshatshkes to crowd their lives. Knick-knacks are out, holiday knick-knacks are out of the question. Perhaps the economic slowdown has come just in time to resonate with all of us who are so fortunate that we do not need one single thing more than we have. Not from doing-with-a-little-with-gratitude (there's a word for all that, I know there is, I just can't pull it out) but from simple overabundance. We're full. Our houses are full, our garages are full, our minds are over-loaded.... we need less and lots of it.