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I have long been a regular visitor at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville, Maryland ever since I got married and moved closer to Washington, DC. I can’t even tell you how much money I have spent over the years because I’ve purchased so many plants and other related items. I’ve devoted plenty of posts in this blog to Behnke’s over the years.
I used to have a regular tradition where I would visit Behnke’s annual Christmas Shop at least once in December and I would take pictures. I last made such a visit in 2017. Last year I didn’t bother much with Christmas other than put up my small artificial tree about a few days before December 25. I really wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit because I had gone through an entire year struggling with finances that was a horrible combination of not finding anyone willing to hire me and my ex-husband deciding to follow the letter of the court decision and end alimony payments. (I even wrote him an email begging him to extend the payments for just a few months longer because I was having a hard time finding work and he refused. He wrote this email using formal language that was more like a boss writing to an employee than a man writing to someone whom he once called his wife. That was more evidence that he never really loved me in the first place and basically lied to me all those years when he said that he did love me but that’s another story.) At one point I almost lost my home because I was having a hard time paying the monthly co-op fees. I had to accept charity for the first time in my life and I ended up getting a housemate to move in with me.
I thought that it was no big deal to skip going to Behnke’s this Christmas because I could always go next Christmas.
Except there will be no next Christmas. After being in business for 89 years, Behnke’s Nurseries will close for good in June. The main reason given is that Behnke’s has long been a family-owned business even since a German immigrant founded around the time of the Great Depression. The current generation running the business is ready to retire and there is no one among the younger generation who is willing to take the business over.
I decided to make one more trip and take a bunch of pictures for posterity while Behnke’s is still in business.
That place was very crowded when I was there. I saw plenty of customers talking to the red shirted employees who will have to look for new jobs soon.
Behnke’s was selling everything, including Christmas decorations.
The checkout lines were incredibly long. I saw people spending hundreds of dollars buying a full cart full of garden-related stuff.
There was a one-horse open sleigh that was available for sale.
I laughed at that humorous sign at this empty table that once held Venus Fly Traps. (I assumed that they were sold out since I didn’t see any for sale.) The sign read: “STOP!!! If you are not a fly, do not trigger the fly traps, as this will cause them to digest themselves and eventually die. If you are a fly, please ignore this message and proceed with caution.”
I only purchased three things at Behnke’s that day—two African violets and an aloe vera plant.
The one thing I’ll miss the most is this giant stone head that had plants growing from top. Unfortunately the plants had been trimmed way back in this picture. You can see what the head looks like when the plants are allowed to grow long in this blog post that I wrote back in 2015 (which includes a watercolor I did of that head based on my photographs).
The store exit had long had two American flags posted over the doors with a sign saying “FARE THEE WELL.” That display now takes on a new meaning with Behnke’s going out of business.
I wasn’t able to get to Behnke’s Nurseries before Christmas so I decided to spend the day after checking out the post-holiday sales. There were still plenty of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations that were available for sale at discounted prices.
I made only one purchase. It was a cute Ginger Cottage that I purchased for 25% off.
Here are a few reasons why I prefer Ginger Cottages over Department 56: 1) They are smaller, which means they take up less space in my modest house. 2) They are more affordable for my budget than Department 56. 3) They are actually made in the USA while Department 56 cottages are made overseas in countries like China.
I did my regular pilgrimage to Behnke’s Nurseries during the holiday shopping season. I took a few new photos but the special Christmas shop is pretty much the same as it was in other years when I took a lot more photos in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
The one thing that caught my interest is that there seems to be a slight expansion in its line of Hanukkah decorations. The store have always sold Hanukkah ornaments for Hanukkah bushes, such as the one in the next photo.
But this year was the first year that I’ve seen actual Star of David tree toppers. I’ve long heard about some Jewish families in the U.S. who keep decorated Hanukkah bushes in their homes but I also know that it’s not a universally accepted tradition. (I remember the times when my ex-husband’s Orthodox Jewish stepmother used to criticize Hanukkah bushes because, to her, they were “too Christian” and it encouraged Jews to blend in too much with Gentiles instead of remaining separate and celebrating their own traditions. Even though my father-in-law converted to Orthodox Judaism before he married his second wife, I also knew that she would have never tolerated him doing anything that even slightly harked back to the days when he used to observe Christmas.) This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a Hanukkah tree complete with tree toppers.
For the past month or so I’ve seen people pass around photos on Facebook of insect hotels that one can build for the benefit of bees (which have been on the decline at an alarming rate for the past few years). I finally saw such a hotel in real life when I was at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville, Maryland. This insect hotel is pretty tall and it’s very impressive looking.
This holiday season I didn’t do as much walking around observing the various Christmas shops before Christmas mainly because I was distracted by the six-week Artomatic event that was held near the New Carrollton Metro station in Hyattsville, Maryland. By the time that show ended it was close to the Christmas season. So I wasn’t able to make it to the Christmas Shop in Behnke’s Nurseries until December 26 (a.k.a. Boxing Day). I basically checked out the post-Christmas Day sales and see if there was anything I was interested in buying at a lower clearance price. I also took a few pictures as well.
I didn’t take quite as many pictures as other years mainly because the battery died in my smartphone and I forgot to bring a recharger. I took more extensive photos of Behnke’s Christmas Shop in 2012, 2013, and 2014 so if you’re curious to see what it’s like, I suggest that you click on the links (which will each open in a new window).
Yesterday I celebrated Halloween and it was mostly good. It fell on a Saturday this year and it was also the day when Daylight Savings Time formally ended so we had to set our clocks back one hour. Which means that everyone got an extra hour of sleep, which was perfect timing because people could attend Halloween parties on a Saturday night knowing that they can sleep one hour more than usual.
When I was growing up, Halloween decorations were limited mainly to window decals and paper decorations that one can post on the front door. It’s just so amazing to me the amount of stuff that one can buy nowadays in order to decorate. Right now I’m starting to think that Halloween will eventually rival Christmas for the most over-the-top decorations that one can purchase for the home. Here are some incredibly decorated Halloween homes that I saw.
The next few photos showed this house in Bethesda, Maryland that was really decorated with these really cool looking lawn decorations. I wasn’t able to get any night shots of this house but one can only imagine that it must look just as fabulous (if not more fabulous) as in the daytime when I took these photos.
One night, shortly before Halloween, I was in the process of walking to a meeting at a local church in Greenbelt, Maryland when I came across this lit scene in someone’s yard that looks like there’s a graveyard.
The headstones all contain amusing puns that reminded me of the ones at the Haunted Mansion ride in Walt Disney World.
There was even a spotlight featuring Halloween images that were shown on a nearby building in the background.
A few days later I revisited that house in the daytime and I found that there were even more details that were better viewed when the sun was up.
There was another house in Greenbelt, Maryland that also had some interesting Halloween decorations on the front lawn.
Then there was this house, also in Greenbelt, Maryland, that had a bunch of Halloween decorations on the front lawn.
The next few photos show this home that belong to some friends of mine who throw a really awesome Halloween party every year and I make an effort to show up. They really go all out for the decorations, as you can see in the next few photos.
I didn’t take too many interior shots inside their home mainly because I was busy drinking and socializing. My sole photo was one where I messed around with the Hatsune Miku app on my phone for the first time in many months. I took a photo of the virtual pop superstar in my friends’ living room at the party.
As I left the party I noticed that one of my friends’ neighbors had these really cool looking carved pumpkins.
Compared to other people, my home is relatively sparse in terms of Halloween decorations. I live alone these days so, for me, it doesn’t make sense to do a huge amount of decorating on my front lawn because it can get pretty expensive and some of them can also be big electricity suckers. I did some effects that were low-cost. For example I delayed cutting the dead bunch of black-eyed susans so I had the effect of dead weeds growing in my front yard on Halloween. I’ve seen decorations that resemble dead weeds on sale but I thought it was cheaper to just delay gardening for a while so I would have some real dead and dried plants.
Last year I didn’t bother with carving jack o’lanterns because my oven broke and I didn’t have enough money to hire a repair person. On Black Friday of last year I purchased an Oster convection oven at Target for $40, which was a perfect stop-gap for me since I’m only cooking for myself these days. The sole snag is that the convection oven broke a week before Halloween. By that point I had purchased one pumpkin from Clark’s Elioak Farm and I really wanted some roasted pumpkin seeds this year. I ended up going to Best Buy where I purchased a Black and Decker convection oven for $75. (Note for self: Never purchase any major appliances with a super cheap sales price on Black Friday from a big box retailer ever again.)
In any case I managed to get my new oven put up and I even purchased a second pumpkin just in time for Halloween. Here are my two carved jack o’lanterns.
Here is what they look like at night. In one of them I put in an electronic light that turns the pumpkins a variety of different colors, which creates a very cool effect.
In the other pumpkin I put in a lit candle.
Otherwise, there was very little difference between how I decorated my home this year and last year. Unlike last year I went back to my usual practice of waiting until the day before Halloween before I put the decorations outside. I still have memories of last year when I decided to put my decorations outside a few weeks before Halloween and someone stole this rubber bat that I’ve had for many years. (I’ll admit that it’s not like the bat was very valuable. It was something that I won at an office party when I was employed by one of my former jobs a number of years ago and I’ve used it as a Halloween decoration for years afterwards. It’s annoying that someone decided to steal it.)
I’ll leave the decorations up until Tuesday since today and tomorrow is the Day of the Dead holiday in Mexico and, like Halloween, this holiday deals with skeletons, ghosts, and the afterlife.
A temporary Halloween store had opened in the nearest mall in my area. There were a variety of costumes available for sale including sexualized female versions of Spider-Man, Captain America, the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, the Care Bears, and even Alice in Wonderland. There were also all kinds of Halloween decorations that one could buy.
I ended up purchasing this hat that resembled Grumpy Cat for only $10.
I also went to Behnke’s Nurseries, which had a bunch of pumpkins, gourds, and other types of Halloween decorations on sale. It was the same store where I purchased my second pumpkin to join the other one I purchased from Clark’s Elioak Farm just a few weeks earlier.
Talk about mixing the holidays up! The foreground had Halloween decorations while, if one looked in the background to the left of the Halloween display, you’ll see a Christmas angel that has just been erected on one of the store’s doors.
This year I decided to go as Grumpy Cat as I wore my new Grumpy Cat hat. As for the rest of the costume, I paired it with this My Little Pony Rainbow Dash hoodie that I purchased a few years ago. I was inspired to do this after seeing my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds being flooded with images of Grumpy Cat being dressed in a variety of different costumes such as ship captain, jester, pirate, and two Star Wars characters—Yoda and Princess Leia. I printed up three signs based on slogans I’ve seen on various Grumpy Cat memes. I wore this outfit to a Halloween dance that was held in my church on October 30 and the Halloween party that my two friends threw on Halloween the following night. I had a lot of positive responses to this although there were a few less-Internet savvy friends who didn’t understand the joke.
Other years I’ve seen Halloween Peeps shaped like ghosts, jack o’lanterns, and black cats. This year I saw something that I hadn’t seen before—Peeps shaped like cemetery headstones
Since I had planned on attending two parties on two consecutive nights, I decided to bake some cookies using my recently purchased convection oven. I purchased the sugar cookies from Aldi (it was the store’s version of the Pillsbury cookies where you horizontally slice a long vertical piece of dough and you get special cookies with pictures on them). I purchased enough to make two batches, one for each party. The cookies were well received in both places. Here is what the cookies looked like.
This year I gave out special mini packages of Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels which had a colorful cute monster design on the front package. The only downside that only a total of 10 trick or treaters showed up at my doorstep this year. I was glad that I only purchased one package of the special pretzels so I don’t have to deal with too many leftovers. I’m also glad that I didn’t buy candy because I would’ve had to deal with getting rid of it without eating so much of it.
I received so few trick or treaters that I decided to quit giving out treats early and walk over to my friends’ home for the Halloween party. I really enjoyed myself even as I drank hard root beer for the first time in my life. (I never knew that there was such a thing as alcoholic root beer.) I then drank hard cider. At one point my head was feeling woozy so I walked past this couple and I started to wonder if they were that Backstabbing Couple From Hell (a.k.a. my ex-husband and the so-called “friend” he left me for and subsequently married soon after the divorce was final). I wasn’t 100% sure because everything was dark and there were a lot of people there. I decided to ignore my paranoia and stick around. I was glad I did because I was busy socializing with people.
At one point I was feeling tired and woozy from the alcohol so I decided to go to the bathroom then walk back home. (I was so glad that I decided not to drive this year.) I ran into a guy who recognized me from the support group meetings for people who were separated or divorced. (He’s also friends with the people who threw that party.) We met while I was leaving the bathroom and he was waiting in line to use the bathroom. He told me “I can imagine you feeling awkward with your ex-husband there.” I turned around and I found that there was my ex in the next room and I realized that I wasn’t in some kind of an alcohol-fused hallucination. Those people were actually there. On that note I decided to walk home.
The next day I overslept and missed church. I was feeling a bit hungover so I just went to a nearby coffeehouse and worked on this post. So that’s it for Halloween 2015.
I took another watercolor workshop at Makerspace 125 recently and here is what I did.
It’s a stone head that looks like it’s half-emerged from the ground that has long hair made from grass. It’s based on this display that I’ve seen in the parking lot at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville, Maryland.
Lately I’ve been planning my garden (if my plans work out, I’ll definitely write a future post about it) so I took a trip to Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville, Maryland. I saw this really cute display where people can plan a fairy garden for either indoors or outdoors.
There were not only fairy cottages and fairy benches but also fairy campers and a fairy henhouse for fairy-sized chickens.
I took a photo of this lovely aquatic garden display.
I also saw this incredible example of recycling old items for use in a garden. It’s a filing cabinet that’s been converted for tiered gardening in small spaces.
I know that this year I’ve been doing a series of over-decorated homes in my area. I started with two such homes in Lanham, then went on to one home located on Lastner Lane in Greenbelt, then moved on to profile another heavily decorated home in Riverdale Park, before returning to Greenbelt to profile another decorated home.
With the amount of posts dedicated to other people’s homes, I’m sure that a few of you are wondering how do I decorate my own home around the holidays. Well, I can easily show you in just two photographs in this post.
That’s it for my outdoor Christmas decorations. He’s a large wooden Mickey Mouse ornament that I bought from Behnke’s annual Christmas store years ago. I remembered that it was an impulse buy and that ornament took up a sizable amount of tree space (and this was with a larger Christmas tree than the one I currently use). So I decided to hang it from a nail that a previous occupant had hammered to the front door and I’ve been using him each year ever since. The one thing I love about this ornament is that I can get all of my outdoor Christmas decorations up in less than one minute and taking it down at the end of the season is a breeze as well.
What’s more, this ornament also functions as a wooden puppet. If you pull the chord dangling from Mickey’s bottom, you can get his arms and legs to move up and down.
This is the perfect outdoor decoration for me and it has been that way for years. (My then-husband didn’t mind sticking with just Mickey Mouse because it spared him the chore of stringing up outdoor lights and giant 3D displays that I frequently see men put up sometime before Thanksgiving.)
Heck, when I was growing up my family was never into putting up tons of lights or other decorations outside. (Inside was a different matter because we had a Christmas tree, various table centerpieces, and other similar things like that.) My family hung a wreath on the door and put electric candles in all the windows and that was the extent of the outdoor decorating. We used to do a car tour of our neighborhood to find really tacky decorated houses and laugh at them.
Unlike my family, I don’t do the electric candles in the windows mainly because the townhouse I currently live in have such narrow windowsills that it makes putting up a candle impossible because the base would end up tipping to the floor. (I know because I tried it one season.) At least I still put something up on the door even if it is a Mickey Mouse dressed as Santa Claus wooden puppet instead of a wreath.
I will keep this puppet hanging outside until January 6 (which is Little Christmas or the Feast of the Epiphany). On January 7 the first thing I do is remove the puppet from the door. Even if I don’t immediately remove the rest of the Christmas decorations inside, I still remove the Santa Mickey so I won’t publicly out myself as being one of those people who are too lazy to take down Christmas decorations. (LOL!)
Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by tight finances with the rising cost of nearly everything. (I don’t really want to go into any details right now.) Lately whenever I feel stressed, I just go out somewhere. Luckily there is enough going on with the holiday season that I can go anywhere and check out some eye candy for either free or low price.
A few days ago I went to Behnke’s Nurseries to check out their Christmas store. Everything was so colorful that it cheered me up.
The strangest product that I saw for sale was this artificial snow that felt cold and wet just like the real thing except that it doesn’t melt indoors. When I felt it I found that, yes, it was cold and wet but it also had this strange texture about it that’s so unlike real snow. Needless to say, I had no problem with passing this one up.
There was a game area where children could play while their parents shopped. Except there were no kids around when I was there. I have to admit that the Christmas-themed games were very colorful.
There were a few nice angels that were carved from olive wood in the Holy Land.
I still have my Ginger Cottage incense burner that’s shaped like a cottage that I purchased from Behnke’s a couple of years ago. There were a few other buildings from the same company that I thought looked really nice.
Here’s are some Christmas ornaments that only a dentist can love.
Behnke’s even had a couple of Hanukkah ornaments for those who observe that holiday (which is still going on as of this writing).
The rest of the photos show a variety of Christmas ornaments and other decorations that were definitely very cheerful.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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