January In The Garden

Here, courtesy of Dustin and the other fine folks at Sloat Garden Center in Danville, is your to-do list for January.  If you live in the SF Bay Area, that is.  If you live in the frozen Midwest or the stormy East, you have the month off.  And if the weather doesn't thaw soon, you might not be gardening until June!  I'm not sure right now whether I envy you or feel sorry for you.  I guess it depends on whether I'm on my way out to the garden, or on my way back in.  

January In The Garden

• Plant deciduous flowering cherries and plums, dormant fruit trees and Japanese maples. Look for deciduous vines as well: wisteria, akebia, and Boston Ivy.
• The first of our summer bulbs (gladiolus, dahlias and lilies) arrive in select stores this month. Call ahead to the Sloat Garden Center location nearest you for information.
• Dormant roses have arrived.  Learn how to plant and care for them. Plant roses with E.B. Stone Sure Start and Greenall Rose Grow Planting Mix.
• Top dress roses and tender plants with Sloat Forest Mulch Plus.
• If it has rained, continue to dormant spray. Dormant sprays help prevent peach leaf curl, fungal rot and other diseases. We recommend Monterey Liqui-Cop for disease. Bonide All Seasons Oil or Monterey Horticultural Oil for insects. They can be mixed and sprayed at the same time!
• Protect your plants from slugs and snails with Sluggo or Sluggo Plus.
• Protect citrus from rodents with Bonide Repels All.
• Don’t forget to water houseplants, especially if the heater has been on.
• Deadhead cyclamen to keep them in bloom.
• Protect plants and tender succulents from cold with a frost blanket such as Easy Gardener Plant Blanket or N-Sulate and Cloud Cover anti-transpirant spray.
• Clean up the garden: Prune roses, shrubs and trees. Prune and cut back perennials & ornamental grasses. Need a little guidance? Contact us!
• After pruning, be sure to clean your tools.
• Stop the weeds! Weeds that begin with winter rains go to seed in March & April. But the clever gardener never lets them get that far. Pull weeds now before they go to seed. Apply Weed Prevention Plus made from natural corn gluten to prevent weed germination.
• Now is the time to remove plants that aren’t thriving to make room for healthier plants. Sad, but true!
• Feed the birds: We carry Wild Delight Gourmet Bird Seed, Songbird Blend, Nut & Berry, Nyjer thistle, and Sunflower Seed. Also we have suet in 6 flavors to attract a variety of birds from woodpeckers to phoebes. Finch Socks with Nyjer are easy to use and popular with the birds!

Looking Back

It was a beautiful Christmas.  The trees..

 ...the tags.  

Thank you Des for teaching me how to make them, and for giving me the confidence to go off in my own directions.  Next year we're having another gift tag making workshop...in July.  Mark your calendar.

Our party was great fun - 

and there was barely a scrap of food left.  That made me so happy!

Leslie made chocolate mousse with real moose.  Oops, I mean with real gold leaf sprinkled on top.  It was fabulous and gorgeous.  It disappeared so fast! 

Everything that would hold still got garlanded and lit and wrapped with ribbon:

Brit and I made peppermint bark, and granola, and butter toffee, and wrapped them with cellophane and bright ribbons.  Gifts for her friends - I think we have a new tradition.  Brit?

Early in the season for inspiration we went to the Flower Mart.

 And to Ron Morgan's.  He is walking talking inspiration.  If you go to one of his classes and don't come away inspired, you weren't paying attention.  

It was a Christmas filled with friends...

...and family.  

It was a wonderful year.

No Resolutions

Accomplishments.  Not resolutions.  I swear everyone  I know resolves to lose 5 pounds, to exercise more. 

And no one ever does. 

People resolve to spend more time with family, or less time with family, and more with friends.  To quit smoking, to finally start that novel.  And really?  If you wanted to, you would have done it by now. 

Nope, starting last year we are not setting ourselves up for failure, we are looking back at what we have accomplished during this year just past.  So here are some of mine:

I learned the words to Quizas.  In Spanish.  Thanks to my friend Delin who sang them all the way thru Cuba, who inspired me.  And I sing them - loudly - in my car.

I learned to understand Italian.  Despite feeling like a big dummy a lot of the time (not Gina's fault, she is a most encouraging teacher and celebrates every success, no matter how tiny) I stuck with Italian class.  Every Wednesday, rain, shine, or crutches.  And when we went to Lucca I realized I could understand the people walking down the street.  And at the table next to us in the restaurant.  I cried.  The lightbulb finally was on.  I am so proud of myself!

I lost my nerve.  And the tumor that was growing on it.  Hopefully now I can hike pain-free.  So glad I lost my nerve.

I learned not to let it go - I did something massively cringe-worthy humiliating, and I owned up.  It was hard.  It would have been so much easier to pretend it never happened, or it didn't matter.  But it did.  And I did not want to hurt my friend and not own up.   And I didn't want to live with a lie.  My lie. 

So I said I'm sorry. And a lot more.  And my friend forgave me.  Lucky me.

I learned to smile and nod.  Thank you Gossip Girls for pointing that out - I would have missed it.

I got more strips for my Jill Jar.  From the adorable Morris family.  They give me curled strips of beautiful paper with all the things they love about me.   Like "She makes even a cast/boot look chic,"and "She can teach a twelve year old how to make a beautiful Thanksgiving centerpiece."  

Not much teaching there, these girls are seriously talented.

And there are days when this jar saves my life.  Thank You Morrises.

I learned to sketch - again.  I learned to make really good chili.   And I learned what an Oxford comma is, and why it's needed.  Besides the Vampire Weekend song.

What did you do this year? 

The Christmas That Almost Wasn't

Mommy has been saying for a while that this is her last year hosting Christmas Eve.  "I've been doing it since we lived in the apartment house - that was  long before you were born," she told me.  "And I'm tired.  I'm 88, after all.  It's time for you all to form your own traditions."

Not bloody likely.  Christmas is about family, and although we are very different people we are fiercely loyal.  And Christmas is sacred.  Family only; attendance mandatory.  

The day before this Christmas Eve, mommy called.

"I am too tired to do Christmas Eve this year.  I've been doing it since before you were born, and I'm just out of gas.  I'm 88, you know."  Even tho we bring all the food and drink, just getting the house in order and the table set is too much.  And she can't sneak off and have a rest in the middle of Christmas - so we were on our own.

I asked Wally about moving it here, and he said we were having Christmas Day dinner here, and it would just be too much.  

Mommy had called all her daughters, my sisters, and I found out later one of them had cried for an hour.

Christmas Eve morning mommy called.   The Seattle contingent had arrived late the previous evening, and not having Christmas together was not part of their plan.  Thank Goodness.

 "Would it be alright if Rick, Carol, Ian, and I came for supper?"  she asked about noon on the 24th.  No problem, I can rustle up supper for 6 from the pantry (thank you Maria Franceschini and your pomorolo!)

"Sure" I said. 

"And may I invite Mary and Brittnee and Debbie and Damon?" she asked.  

What could I say?  I was so happy we were having family Christmas, I didn't care if we had to eat cinnamon toast for dinner.  

I was not going back to Lunardi's - it was crazy busy there, just looking for a parking place was taking your life in your hands...  But we had cream and butter, fettucini and parmigiano.  And Pomorolo thanks for Maria.  

A few nuts, a lot of chocolate.  Some of the salad we had planned to serve Christmas day, some pears and apples, and lots of cheese.  Helps to be Swiss.

All my sisters brought things - chocolate and snacks, wine and good cheer.

So we had the miracle of the loaves and fishes - there was plenty of food.  And we sat and told stories and opened presents and laughed until it was very late and Ally was asleep in mommy's lap, and mommy was nodding off on Ally's lap.

It was a great Christmas.  Made more precious for the fact that it almost didn't happen.  Christmas Eve is here next year.  Mark your calendars.   

Books: Food For Thought.

In "The Encyclopedia Of Trouble And Spaciousness", Rebecca Solnit touched my heart with this:

"Admiring houses from the outside is often about imagining entering them, living in them, having a calmer, more harmonious, deeper life. Buildings become theaters and fortresses for private life and inward thought, and buying and decorating is so much easier than living or thinking according to those ideals. Thus the dream of a house can be the eternally postponed preliminary step to taking up the lives we wish we were living. Houses are cluttered with wishes, the invisible furniture on which we keep bruising our shins. Until they become an end in themselves, as a new mansion did for the wealthy woman I watched fret over the right color of the infinity edge tiles of her new pool on the edge of the sea, as though this shade of blue could provide the serenity that would be dashed by that slightly more turquoise version, as though it could all come from the ceramic tile suppliers, as though it all lay in the colors and the getting."

I am somewhere between picking out tile and living with meaning.  And I am keenly aware of how strongly I am influenced by my surroundings.  

I am not happy in an ugly place.  I am not calm amid a mess.  I crave order, small touches of beauty.  It doesn't have to be expensive, some of the most beautiful things are the simplest.  A flower, a twig covered with lichen.  A picture from a magazine, a tin that once held cocoa.   A pencil drawing made by a child.  A book with a beautiful cover.  All these and more are on my night table.  

What's next to your bed?

You can read more - and find more books that will have you drooling - and thinking - on Brain Pickings Weekly. 

Happy Reading.    Happy Thinking.

The Gift of Memory

Long before Christmas, a box arrived from my friend Aileen.  You'll remember her, so many of my favorite things to cook have come from her.

She has decided not to have a tree anymore.  After years of collecting ornaments.  And she decided to give them to me.  Lucky me!

Thank you Aileen.  Every time I look at our tree I think of you - of biking in Morocco, of picking green beans at Round Swamp.  Of biking to Shelter Island coated in bug spray.  Of my first cosmo (but not my last), and the recipe you coaxed out of the reluctant bartender.  Of long summer evenings listening to the waves and watching the fireflies.  

Thank you.  For your memories, for the memories we share.  

It is the most wonderful time of the year.

Yosemite in Winter

We live in a place with no snow.  If you're shoveling snow, that probably sounds like a great idea, but it's been raining for weeks and we needed a little winter wonderland.  So we headed for Yosemite...

It was like being in an Ansel Adams photo.  Compete with wildlife...

Our friends were in the Bracebridge Dinner, a medieval pageant and feast.   And the Ahwahnee was warm and cosy. 

It's beginning to look a lot like...