.com Forum · Off Topic Forum

Does anyone else have any other hobbies other than dogs?

I enjoy cooking and gardening. I am currently experimenting with hydroponic gardening. Hydroponically, I am growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelons, cantaloupes, herbs and a nice little flower garden. I have those in my living room. I then also quite a few orchids, a mandevilla vine, four hibiscus, two lemon trees, my late great grandmother's Nordic Pine and two ice cream bananas in my sun room. I really love my bananas the most. They're about 10' tall right now. We got them when I bought my house.
I used to love to breed royal palm turkeys, light Brahma chickens, Muscovy ducks, mini lop rabbits and silver fox rabbits. I had to get rid of them when I bought my house though because we have a lot of coyotes and raccoons and things.
I used to help with my dad's tractors and enjoyed that. Him and I also really enjoy doing things with trees. I'm trying to get a nice paw paw patch going on at my house. At his house, he is growing a nice little orchard with tons of different fruits.
That's just a few things about me.

Oh my, you must be one busy lady!

I have two American Cockers, not being shown but I keep them in coat all the same, so several hours a week is spent grooming.

I'd love to try hydroponics! So neat (and healthy) to have fresh home-grown tomatoes and such all year long. I occasionally experiment with seeds - I have a grapefruit tree (GretaGrapefruit by name) started from a sprouted seed I found in a store-bought grapefruit about 8 years or so ago. It's about two feet tall - a bit misshapen as it almost died on me once (due to neglect) and I had to amputate its dead top. I've tried apple seeds but they only seem to grow 2 or 3 inches tall then die (I think they are genetically engineered to die). I have snapdragon house plants in their 3rd summer. I want to see how long they last without having to deal with a Canadian winter. I have some seeds from one of them - gonna try planting them this winter I think. And I have a couple of rather elderly African Violets.

I'm rather out of practise but I occasionally still dabble with clay sculptures (that's how GaylanStudio comes about). I'm also playing with a sort of website for those - we'll see how that goes. Gonna try hosting some of my photos to use on my ShowDog pages.

Somewhat related to both preceding paragraphs, I am currently growing carrot tops. I figure they might make perfect miniature plants to go into dioramas when photographing my models.

I read a fair bit - mysteries and adventure, especially in historic settings, actual histories, "good witch" tales, current and historical political writings, genetics.

As well as trying to keep 10 ShowDog kennels going I'm desperately trying to resuscitate ShowHorse (we're holding our own but sure could use more active plyers. Come-on-back!

That along with the usual house and yard chores fills up most of my day.