I know very little about my husband’s cameras — especially the newest digital — and he knows even less about my sewing machines — one digital, the other built before the era of digital. But having lived with me for 32 years, he recognizes my need for a sewing challenge.

So…he recently asked if I could create some fabric pouches for two of his filters. He has several filters for his camera lenses. Some aren’t used very often. For example, the purple one is used when shooting indoors in a room with florescent lights. It eliminates the “yellow” look of the photo. The other one is an outdoor cloud filter. It enhances clouds on summer days.

No hurry, he said. Naturally, the filters sat untouched on my sewing desk for about a week. Every time I sat down at my machine, there they sat, staring up at me as if they were two different colored eyes — one purple, the other gray.

Eventually, those eyes got to me and I realized it was time to tackle the project. Like most seamstresses, I have a lot of fabric sitting around just waiting to be used.  This required something soft, like fleece. Fortunately, I had saved an odd remnant of black fleece. It was perfect.

When I do this kind of sewing, I have to play around with the fabric until I come up with something that makes sense. I set one filter on the fabric and measured a rectangle so that I could create a sort of pocket with a flap. I measured about 1 1/2 inches from the top and made a horizontal line, then folded the rectangle, bringing the bottom edge up to the line. I sewed double seams on each side of the rectangle — close to the edge, then folded the top 1 1/2 inches over the opening.

The nice thing about fleece is that it doesn’t ravel so you can leave the edges unfinished. I used small squares of Velcro as closures — sewing the soft side to the pocket flap and the coarse side to the upper side of the pocket.

In the end, the pouches turned out perfectly, and the hubs was happy with the product. Now I just need to find a market for these things — I have LOTS of fleece remnants just waiting for the next set of lenses.

But a quick search through my husband’s box of family “heirlooms”, I located an old green Girl Scout dress that belonged either to his sister or mom. The label reads “Girl Scouts Trademark Official Uniform”.

Last night I mentioned to my husband that no Girl Scout had been by to take my annual cookie order. He just laughed. Somehow I’d missed the change in cookie selling — apparently Scouts can no longer go door to door. Okay, the sensible mom part of my brain realizes that this is a good move toward safer selling.

The nostalgic Girl Scout child in me finds this incredibly sad. My best friend, Karen Kreider, and I spent years happily competing with each other to see who could sell the most. We had our routine down. As daughters of college professors, we had direct access to the womens’ dorms on campus.

The day we got our order forms, we headed to the dorms, where we’d walk up and down the halls. The students were happy to help fill our forms. In fact, often they’d check with boyfriends to get their orders, too. One of us usually had a cousin on campus who helped spread the word that we were on the rampage.

I forget how many boxes we sold, but probably not much more than 150 each in a good year. That might be an exaggeration. Of course, our relatives would help to pad the order. I was lucky. As the only girl with four older brothers, I had no competition within my family and my older brothers were always eager to order. Karen, on the other hand, was one of four girls in a family of five children so had to deal with two older sisters who were also Scouts.

Although my mom always ordered a lot of cookies, I had to order a few boxes of my own so I wouldn’t always have to share with my brothers. To this day, my favorite is the Trefoil — odd since I have a chocolate fetish.

Ordering back then was a lot easier, with only three or four versions to choose from. Even that was a big change from the original options. Back in the 192os and 30s, Scouts baked their own cookies. In the latter 30s, the Scouting organization licensed commercial bakers to produce the cookies.

By the time our girls were in Scouts (my husband and I were both leaders)  cookie ordering and selling had become a family affair. The girls wouldn’t let us off easy, so we found that it helped to have a big freezer.

Early in my newspaper career, I was the food editor, which meant that the local Girl Scout council would deliver a large box of cookies to my “office.” If you’ve haven’t been in a newsroom when Girl Scout cookies are delivered, just imagine vultures preying on some poor fallen animal. It isn’t pretty.

So now…here we are…no more Scouts in the family and no more freebies thanks to media connections. Luckily, I just remembered that the niece of daughter number one’s significant other is a Scout and she’s just around the corner. Proof again that living in a small town is not without its perks.

Running in snow and chilly temps requires some adjustments in gear. Hats don’t always cover my ears so I wear a Brooks Nightlife fleece-lined earwarmer with a New Balance fleece-lined hat on top of it. It was below 20, so I added my 15-year-old Neofleece Extreme Masque — it covers the nose and mouth, but there are little holes that let you breathe.

Fleece-lined tights over capri length compression tights, Smartwool socks with baggies over my toes (this works!), and a 20-year-old Gore-Tex jacket. The coup de grace (since my middle name is Klutz) — Get-A-Grip Ice Joggers.

Today, though, I added one more item — my phone. Not because I expected to make any calls but because I wanted to take some photos and videos of what and who else I’d see out there on the roads. So…here you have it… the first is a video (obviously not top quality) of the geese and/or ducks who band together at the quarry.

Ducks and geese huddled on the National Quarry

My husband and neighbor clearing her driveway for her husband's return from medical mission trip

The Weaver sisters

The Riley Creek behind my house

What I discovered is that just before and during World War II, one of the most popular programs on BBC radio in Britain was called “In Your Garden,” the host of which was a Mr. C.H. Middleton. A well-known etymologist, Eric Partridge, suggested that this program might have popularized both phrases, and that “green thumb” was actually a reference to the very old English proverb “An honest miller has a golden thumb.” Millers, merchants who grind corn for farmers, used to judge the quality of their product, corn flour, by rubbing a bit between the palm and thumb. But millers were often suspected of cheating their customers, and “golden thumb” was often used sarcastically, including by Chaucer, to mean a talent for duplicity. In any case, the proverb was sufficiently well known in Britain in the mid-20th century to make the “golden thumb” and “green thumb” connection plausible, and would explain why the thumb in particular is found in the most common form of the phrase.

What prompted this interest in green thumbs? My 89-year-old mother — a shining example of green fingers. When she moved from her condo to an apartment in an independent living facility, she gave up a lot — her piano, many antiques, family heirlooms, furniture, etc.

But she insisted on taking along many of her indoor plants (and some outdoor ones). After all, she’d nurtured many of these potted bulbs for years, letting them lie dormant until it was time for them to bloom. In fact, she has so many I worried that she would trip over them. She solved that problem by acquiring a second storage space in her building — this one just for her plants.

This is the scene in her living room right now — most of the plants are placed in front of her large patio doors where they get what little winter light is available.

Every winter, she babies her amaryllis bulbs (she has three pots) watering and staking them carefully to be sure they are productive. And they are, indeed, productive. So much so that my husband is green with envy. He’s attempted this several years, with limited success.

Last week, one of Mother’s amaryllis plants had produced seven (yep) blooms. By the time I took this photo, it was reduced to four. But no matter. Trust me. On a gloomy day, just take a look at this beauty and you’ll find your spirits quickly lifted.

Related articles

• Bloom Thyme: Growing Amaryllis (thegardendiary.com)
• How To Pretend Like Spring Is Already Here (proflowers.com)

I met Helen about five or six years ago when she and her husband, Richard Minck, invited us to join them for dinner at the Shawnee Country Club in Lima. My husband and I had known Dick, a  Bluffton native, for many years. In fact, he’d been my landlord when I’d lived in a tiny garage apartment at the back of his property.

On that first meeting, we met at their condo that bordered the golf course. Having never met Helen, I was nervous. In the first few minutes, she put me at ease. My first impression of Helen was that she was a lovely, sweet woman who dearly loved to listen to her husband’s stories of their extensive art collection. It wasn’t until later when we were sitting in the club dining room, which overlooks the golf course, that I began to understand just how accomplished this woman was.

Dick and Helen Minck

We happened to be seated at a window from which we could see some young high school golfers teeing off. I knew little about golf, but it was clear that Helen was an old pro. Until back problems prevented her from participating in one of her favorite sports, she’d been a champion golfer at Lakewood Golf Course in St. Petersburg, Fla., where she’d lived when not summering in Lima. Without a hint of snobbery, she began telling stories about golfing with so and so. But it was her mention of “Chi Chi” that caught my attention.

Chi Chi? Rodriguez? Yep, that’s the one. She grinned and recounted a story he’d told. I’ve forgotten it, probably because my brain stuck on the name. She really did know her golf.

The old feature writer in me surfaced and I began asking questions. Pretty soon she’d told me about growing up first in Toledo, then Lima, before heading to Wellesley College, a women-only school in Massachusetts. Then she really surprised me — she had majored in physics — one of only two physics majors in the class of 1941. I remember her saying she loved the sciences and math.

By that point, I was pretty much awestruck, although not by any fault of Helen’s. Her stories were just that. Stories of a life lived fully.

On the wall in my office/sewing room, is a mounted photo that Dick Minck took while he and Helen were traveling. It’s a scene of a fishing village in Alaska, I think. Dick will probably tell me I’m wrong. No matter. If I look at the photo just right, I can imagine Helen standing on the old pier, ready to tackle yet another of her favorite sports — fishing.

And that folks, is exactly what I have done this week. If I have done nothing else of importance this week, I have indeed traced a leaky pipe to its source and wonder of wonders, I have conquered the leaky pipe…at least temporarily.

I really can’t take all the credit for this. After all, I wasn’t even aware that we had a leaking pipe until “Little-Miss-I’m-Trying-to-Avoid-Course-Planning” went on a reorganization/cleaning spree of our kitchen and laundry room during her Christmas break. It was she who discovered the leak.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Daughter number 1: “Mom, did you know that there is a leak in the laundry room?
Me: “Of course, I knew it. Cold air has been sneaking through the window seals since we bought the house.”
Daughter number 1: (Eye roll) “No, mom, not an air leak. There’s water on the floor.”

Oh. That. Well. Yes, I guess that would indicate a leak. Naturally, I did what any other homeowner would do: called in the big guns. As in THE PLUMBER. Unfortunately, since I couldn’t honestly classify it as an emergency, I had to settle for an appointment sometime in the next millenium. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. But a week away might as well be in the next millenium.

So as daughter number 1 headed off to her real world of researching her dissertation, she reminded me that we should probably find a temporary fix for the dreaded leaky pipe.

I tried to forget the problem but when my husband made the comment that “At least we know why the water bill is so high”, I realized it was time to do something. My Dick-Pannabecker-do-it-yourself genes kicked into full gear. Peering behind the washing machine, I found one hose dripping at the point where it connects to the washer. That was the easy part.

Armed with duct tape, a heavy strength two-gallon freezer bag, I went to work. The hubs cut strips of duct tape as I fit the freezer bag under and around the hoses and then taped them into place. (I may have to buy stock in duct tape after this week.)

Then I folded the  bag into a cone shape and added more duct tape. I placed a large wastebasket underneath the tip of the bag. Finally, I snipped a small hole at the point of the bag and water began streaming into the wastebasket.

Amazing what a little duct tape and ingenuity can do. Nine hours later, the wastebasket was half full of water. Too bad it isn’t gardening season — it would have been useful for watering the garden.

I’m trying to decide whether to make myself scarce or hang around when the plumber arrives. Maybe he’ll offer me a job. Probably not. I probably shouldn’t give up my day job…yet.

Ever since some friends admitted that they don’t allow themselves to end their daily walk until they’ve found at least one penny, we’ve adhered to the same rule. Most of the time, it works out. Sometimes, we have to give up and come home empty-handed.

This can be a dangerous practice because you spend a lot of time looking down, hoping to catch a glimpse of something shiny…and you tend to forget that other people are walking on the same sidewalk until you run into them…literally. It’s even more dangerous if the coin is in the street. Of course, this becomes even dicier if you’re riding a tandem and the front rider is the person who spends more time watching for money than oncoming cars. But let’s not go there…

So for the record, here’s the count of found money in the five years we’ve been doing this:

2007  $22.19
2008  $23.07
2009  $12.25
2010  $27.80
2011  $9.01

Also found this year, but not added to the count for obvious reasons were these three “coins”. We’re still puzzling over these:

A gold-colored coin the size of a dime that reads “Napoleon Empire”, a nickle-sized dirty coin that says “Ruhl’s Bakery” on one side and “Good for one loaf bread” on the other side, and finally, another nickle-sized pewter colored coin that bears a number “1″ and reads “Missouri Sales Tax Receipt”. Your guess is as good as mine, but since the family numismatist hasn’t squirreled them away, their countenance is suspect.

So okay…our next dinner out will more likely be Wilson’s than Panera or the more electic Melt in Cincinnati’s Northside. But hey, it’s still a free dinner.

Bring on 2012 — perhaps a better year for finding loose coins and maybe some more paper currency.

An article in the Dec. 27, 2011 Wall Street Journal suggested that we’re more likely to stick to our resolutions if we outsource them. No, not to Mexico. To a friend or relative. One woman and her son began doing this 10 years ago when he was 12. Apparently, they’ve had some success.

Here’s the problem. If I ask my husband to make my resolutions for me, I’m pretty sure they’ll be things I don’t want to do, like cut back on running, sleep in more often, quit worrying. You get the picture. On the other hand, if I were to make his resolutions, they’d probably be greeted with about as much enthusiasm. So I guess we’ll skip the outsourcing this year.

If you think about it, the best resolutions to make are ones that you’re pretty sure you can stick to. This is probably cheating, but hey, who cares? For example, resolve to eat more dark chocolate. This works especially well if you already love dark chocolate. It contains flavonoids, which act as antioxidants, which protect the body from aging caused by free radicals — the stuff that causes damage that leads to heart disease. Dark chocolate contains something like eight times the number of antioxidants in strawberries. So…just in case you want to stock up now, I recommend Poco Dolce bittersweet chocolate bars with sea salt.

But as I said last year, I don’t make resolutions. But if I did, here’s what I would resolve:

1.) Keep a running journal to track how many miles I put in over 12 months. In more than 35 years of running, I’ve never done this. Truthfully, I’m not at all good at journaling, so this will be a tough one.

2.) Eat more dark chocolate. Hey, it sounds good to me.

3.) Write real letters. On paper. With a pen. And mail them. Just doing my part to support the U.S. Postal Service even as it threatens to yet again close another regional center.

Okay, that’s it. I’m stopping with three. I already know I’m going to get a good start on the mileage tracking since my New Year’s Eve plan is to join more than 300 other runners at the

Starting lineup at the 2008 Midnight Special

11th annual Midnight Special 5K in Whitehouse. All I have to do is figure out how far I have left to run at midnight and I’ll have my first mileage to record.

If I celebrate with some dark chocolate at the finish line, I’ll already have two resolutions already underway and it’ll only be 10 minutes into 2012. Good thing I didn’t resolve to get to bed earlier, because I’ll have blown that idea right away.

One day when the girls were little, we took a cassette player along on one of our visits to Grandma. Our plan was to tape her playing piano (or pie-an-a, as she pronounced it in her Swissish voice), then to interview her telling some favorite stories.

The hymns ended with one of the girls joining her in playing chopsticks, Grandma taking the upper part and deviating a bit from the traditional version. In the background, an old-fashioned phone is ringing. Or wait, I think I’ve heard that ring tone recently on someone’s cell phone.

That ended the piano playing for the day. Grandma launched into her storytelling, beginning with her memories of attending school at the Mulberry School. After they turned five years old, they walked 1 1/2 miles to school every day. She was trying to remember her schoolmates, mentioning Hiram Reichenbach and Tilly Steiner, and then sort of sadly said “Mmmm…they’re all gone now.”

Lunch was packed in a little tin box. A cheese sandwich, sometimes a cookie or one-egg cake, and an apple.

Apparently, Grandma was a little bit of a stinker. Every time a truck or car passed by, she stood up on her chair to look out the window, and one of her teachers — trying to tame her shenanigans — tried to set her on his desk so “she could think a little”. He was unsuccessful and gave up. Recess saved her.

Grandma graduated from high school in 1913. She played piano for the march. She had a new dress, a pretty blue one — a gown. They had a baccalaureate “sermon”, then graduation a week later. She admitted with a giggle that Grandpa liked it.

My grandparents began dating when she was a freshman in high school. “We just stuck together and didn’t have any other dates.” Grandpa was a little older and had left school after 8th grade to help with the family farm.

Grandma and Grandpa Suter

Until they got married, she worked for her grandpa and earned $5 a week, which she gave to her mother. When they married in 1917, her mother gave them a stove — apparently, she’d saved all the money Grandma had given her. The wedding was a simple affair at her family home with just a few guests.

Very very simple,” she said, although she did have a white dress. A sister-in-law played the wedding march.

What amazes me in listening to these conversations are the details she remembered. In her 90s, she remember the name of the minister who married them.

I just hope my memory is that good when I’m 90.

It’s probably a good thing I’m not British because I’ve never been very good at carving. And don’t even suggest using an electric knife. We got one as a wedding gift and promptly ruined it by using it to cut up large foam cushions. Worked great for that purpose, but obviously it was done after that.

Since my dad grew up in China, our Christmas dinners often involved various Chinese specialties. Our favorite was Chiao Tzu, which are basically steamed pork and veggie dumplings. When we were kids, my grandma and mom made the wrappers from scratch. This seemed to take a LONG time because it involved making the dough and cutting out hundreds of circles. This number actually varied with the number of persons who would be at dinner.

If my cousin, Mark Ramseyer, was going to be there, this meant making more than usual. Fortunately for Grandma and Mother, he grew up in Japan, so his presence around the holidays was limited. I think he held the record for eating the most Chiao Tzu — my memory puts that number somewhere around 45 or 50. I’m probably wrong. The most I’ve ever eaten at once was 25.

This year, we settled on Chiao Tzu for Christmas dinner. The girls wondered if I wanted to buy frozen ones. I considered that for about two seconds and instead bought the dumpling wrappers to make our own.

That was the easy part. The hard part comes later when you start to put together the dumplings. There are tricks to this — tricks I’ve somehow picked up from watching my older relatives do this over the years. The trick is getting those little tricks to work. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the little dumplings fall apart in the steamer.

I’ll let my husband’s photos tell the rest of the story. For those of you who want to try this on your own, the recipe is included, along with a few of those tricks.

Chiao Tzu

1 pkg. round dumpling wrappers (available at Asian groceries, round ones work better than square), usually about 40 per pkg.
1/2 lb. lean ground pork
1/2 head cabbage (I use Chinese cabbage, but other kinds are fine), chopped fine
1/2 c. onion, chopped fine
1 tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped fine
2 tsp. sesame or peanut oil (actually, I used canola)
3 tbsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt (optional)

Dipping sauce for dumplings
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar
Teaspoon or so of sugar

We make this in varying quantities — depends on the number of persons eating.

Filling: Brown the pork in oil in a large skillet, then add the cabbage, onion, ginger, soy sauce and salt (optional). Let cool.

Making the dumplings:
Lay a cotton tea towel on a cookie sheet and lightly sprinkle with cornstarch (prevents sticking). Open package of wrappers. Using one at a time, cover the others with a damp cloth so they don’t dry out. Have a small bowl of warm water nearby — you’ll use this to wet the edges of the dumplings.

Fill each wrapper with 1 tsp. of the filling; fold over and pinch the edges together (similar to crimping a pie crust). Lay each one on the towel-covered cookie sheet(s).

In the meantime, have several large steamers ready. Put a small amount of water in the bottom and bring to a boil.

Trick 1: Spray the bottom of each steamer tray — trust me, this will prevent sticking.

Place dumplings in steamer — don’t let them touch each other.

Cook for approximately 15-20 minutes, then carefully remove with a spoon or spatula.

Trick 2: boil some water and place in serving bowls to keep the chiao tzu warm until you’re ready to eat. But also, you’re going to want to start eating as soon as enough are steamed.

Provide each person with a small bowl. Place three or four chaio tzu in a bowl, pour in some of the soy/vinegar sauce and start eating.

If you’re chopstick proficient, they’re recommended.