Quote of the Day - 2/10/2012

Of social life, I had, and still have, almost none. I have never had a talent for acquaintance, only an enjoyment of intimacy. People who have more than 3 or 4 friends whom they wish to see often, who come and go to dinner parties and so on with a wide circle of acquaintances whose company they enjoy although they do not know them very well, fill me with envious admiration. - Diana Athill in Instead of a Letter: A Memoir

~~~~~

Are you naturally an introvert or extrovert?

Diana Athill’s words describe someone more on the introvert side - someone who values depth in relationships over numbers of relationships. There may be more natural introverts out there than seems obvious since introverts are often quite intent on what it takes to enable professional success; ‘networking’ is a kind of prescription to apply as needed to make contacts to advance a career. But - always - people retain their natural inclination.

The publicity around the emergence of social media implies that everyone should want lots of connections. A good portion of the population may be OK with that idea for professional acquaintances but their optimum for the number of connections for truly social reasons - the deeper relationships - is quite small.

The Architecture of Home - Part I

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like?

This is a very good question to answer just prior to beginning a search for a new home. It also turns out to be productive for anyone trying to hone the way space is utilized in their current home since many of the things that may be not quite right can be remediated without moving to a new house.

This is not so much an exercise in preparation for ‘building your own’ as it is about making choices that utilize or adjust the architecture to make wherever you dwell into your home. It should be unique to you not someone else’s ideal. To clearly visualize your ideal - become familiar with your needs and preferences (and those of the people that share your home).

The list below (and continued in tomorrow’s post) is intended to help you develop a deeper understanding of your

Ideal Home Architecture.

Enough space - Think about what you really need from many perspectives

‘Caves’ for each person in the household - A ‘cave’ is the place for each person to have as their individual space to do things on their own; it could be a place with computer and comfy chair or simply surface area for projects. The key is to acknowledge the space each person needs for just themselves. My 'cave' looks most like an office - with a pleasant view from the window and good lighting.

Shared areas - every home needs spaces where people do things together. Maybe it is a large kitchen/breakfast area or a den or an outdoor patio.

Kitchen 

• Counter top space - For kitchen equipment and/or multiple cooks. Cooking and eating together is an important part of the interactions in my home so the kitchen has to accommodate multiple people cooking in it at the same time.
• Counter top material - Granite is popular now…but is the durability of granite may be over the top for what you really need. There are some beautiful counters made from recycled color glass that I’ve been looking at.
• Cabinets (or other storage) - For at least the frequently used kitchen items. The challenge for me to is to get everything I use frequently onto the shelves I can reach without needing a step stool (if what I need is out of reach I tend to avoid using it).
• Cabinet material - Color/type of wood. Light is important to me so like light colored wood cabinets the best. I like the kitchen to be one of the brightest rooms in the house.
• If there were extra storage in the kitchen - what would you use it for? The area where the phone is in our current kitchen is never used for food. It holds mail and projects and purses. I’m spoiled enough by the extra space that now it is part of my ‘ideal.’
• Pantry - storage for non-refrigerated food. Do you buy such food in bulk? I prefer a long pantry that is not very deep so that I can easily see and retrieve things on the shelves. The bulk items (like paper towels and cat food) go on the top shelf or under the bottom shelf.
• What layout fits the way you cook? I like a big U with an island counter in the center. I do most of my mixing on that island. My salad preparation is done next to the sink although I put most of my parings in the compost rather than garbage disposal. The refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher can all open all the way with some room to spare although there is barely enough to walk by; at first, I thought my ideal would be to have a bit more space to walk but I’ve gotten used to them now.
• Space for Appliances - what appliances do you need: microwave, oven/range, refrigerator, dishwasher, etc. We have a large side by side and were pleased that the house was built with a water connection for the ice maker. The microwave is built-in over the oven/range; the configuration is ideal but the reliability of the unit has been abysmal. We are getting ready to replace it again.

 Bedrooms 

• Number and size- Keep in mind not only the people that normally live in the home but if you need to handle guests. I like a guest room that has another purpose (such as for special projects) or is small enough that it does not take a sizable chunk out of the space that used every day.
• Double as 'caves'? - This can be quite easy if the bedroom is for one person…more complex if it is a shared room.
• Closet space - Do you like walk in…sliding doors…builtins…shoe racks…other closet features? Will all clothes be kept in the closet or will out of season clothes be moved elsewhere? There are a lot of solutions for closet limitations. A quick and easy one I’ve done several times it to raise the bar a few inches then create a double decked section with Hanging Rod from the top bar. 

Bathrooms 

• Number and size - How many people have to get ready concurrently? Is there one on each floor of the house? We have full baths in the basement and bedroom floors but only a half bath on the ground floor. My ideal would have a full bath on each floor to add flexibility to the ground floor rooms.
• Shower/tub - both, together, separate. I definitely prefer a shower rather than a shower tub.
• Towel and toiletry storage. I find that I don’t care as much about a full linen closet as I do about storage in the bathroom itself. My idea would be to have adequate enclosed space in each bathroom for everything that would be needed there.

Minimize these types of spaces: Every home has some of these---if they are significant enough, think of ways to improve the spaces for your family. I’ve listed some ideas below.

• Hallways - Make it into a picture gallery or add hooks for car keys and purses or build in narrow shelves for paperbacks/pictures/display items. Improve lighting if it is too dark.
• Small rooms with lots of doorways - Close off one or more of the doors and put furniture in front of it or consider repurposing the room to have a table and chairs in the center with minimal furniture against the walls.
• Awkwardly shaped corner cabinet spaces - Get a rotating spice rack to put in the space, store special occasion dishes or platters only used once or twice a year in the space.
• Garage without shelving - Add free standing metal shelving or cabinets along part of the back wall and on the sides if the garage is wide enough or add higher wall attached shelving along the whole length of the back wall.

Tomorrow I'll continue this post with sections on room configuration, lighting, and features that have potential for the future.

Quote of the Day - 2/9/2012

Every person is a dam between the past and future. - Yehuda Amichai in Open Closed Open: Poems

~~~~~

As we get older, the reservoir behind our ‘dam’ may get larger and larger. Contemplate how you keep a healthy focus on the present by tending that dam --- drawing from your reservoir of experience to make the best choices and take the best actions to keep the gurgling stream of your future full of exciting potential.

Being Green – Reuse

The ultimate of being green is to reuse rather than trash. Here are some activities that have worked for me and I’d love to hear about ones that have worked for you:

• Re-purpose. Think of a new use from an item that you would have previously trashed or recycled. Some examples:
  • I have some plastic trays that were used by a caterer that would not go through the dishwasher well…but worked great under pots on the deck to catch the water run off.
  • The candles that come in a glass container with a lid made wonderful canisters. I use mine to hold tea bags and packets of sweetener. To clean out the wax, set them in a shallow pan of boiling water until all the bits of wax melt and can be poured out. Wipe clean with a paper towel. Soak in water to get the labels off then put through the dishwasher.

• Thrift stores. There is no consistency in thrift stores – but it is often worthwhile to at least check out the ones near you. Yes – the selection is totally unpredictable and there will be times you will not find anything you can use. But when you do….it is usually a terrific bargain and the reuse is just an added positive.
• Donate. When you clean out closets or otherwise identify things you no longer need…decide if some of them can be easily donated to a charity. Some charities will even pick up from your porch!
• Freecycle. Post items that you want to give away …or pick up something someone else is giving away. To find a group near you – check out http://www.freecycle.org/ and let the reuse begin! I have gotten rid of a partial package of roofing shingles, an old ice cream freezer, and a box of art project supplies!
• Bring your own Bag - Use canvas or reinforced paper/plastic bags from conferences or received as gifts for charitable donations when you go shopping rather than using the stores plastic bags.

Quote of the Day - 2/8/2012

Over the course of the next few years the house changed into a ruin. No one tended the garden, either to water it or to weed it, until it was swallowed up into oblivion, birds, and wild grasses. The blind statues and the singing fountains filled with dry leaves, bird droppings and moss. - Isabel Allende in The House of the Spirits: A Novel

~~~~~

In the early years of my daughter’s life there was a house we noticed on the way to her favorite park. It was a two story white farm house that seemed misplaced near a heavily traveled road. There as a large oak tree shading it, tended flower beds and a neatly mowed lawn with a grassy field behind. Over the course of the next few years, it became abandoned…was boarded up to keep vandals out…and decayed enough that it was finally torn down - well before my daughter went off to college. The big tree that shaded it was cut down and the grassy field became a staging area for highway construction.

It wasn’t as grand as the house and garden with ‘blind statues and the singing fountains’ but it had the same sort of feel about it. I often find myself wondering about the story behind that house. Was it as simple as the state claiming the property well in advance of the highway construction or a more complex story about the decline and death of an older person that has started out as a farmer, living in the house for years and years on the proceeds of selling parcels for the housing developments that had grown up around it?

It often seems to me that there is a story in every abandoned house. Allende told us about one of them in her book.

Recipe of the Week: Soft Tacos

1 pound hamburger meat

1 can tomatoes and green chilies (Ro-tel or similar)

1 packet low salt taco seasoning mix

1 can refried beans

Tortillas (my favorite are the Carb Balance ones)

Your favorite condiments: shredded cheese, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, guacamole

In a large pan, brown meat thoroughly. If there is a lot of fat, drain most of it from the pan. Add tomatoes and green chilies, a can of water, and taco seasoning mix. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid is gone. Add refried beans. Stir to mix. Continue cooking until the beans are thoroughly incorporated and are hot. Spoon meat mixture into tortillas. Add condiments of your choice. Fold over to form a soft taco. Enjoy!

If you need to suddenly feed more people - the recipe can be stretched to feed a few more. Cut up an onion and add it while you are browning the meat. Add a cup of pre-cooked rice and additional salsa when you add the tomatoes and green chilies and seasoning packet.

Note: to enjoy the flavor of taco meat but dramatically reduce the meal’s calories --- use the meat mixture as a dip for celery stalks or green pepper wedges. Limit condiments to lettuce and/or salsa.

Quote of the Day - 2/7/2012

By 1935 and 1936 the American camera manufacturers and the photographic supply shops found their business booming.  Candid cameras were everywhere. - Frederick Lewis Allen in SINCE YESTERDAY - THE 1930s IN AMERICA

~~~~~

When do the candid images start in your family…ones that were not taken in a studio? There may be a few from the 30s in my family but they ramped up considerably in the 40s. When my mother was a young teenager, she enjoyed using her Brownie camera; one of her more memorable pictures was of the head and shoulders of her young twin sisters looking out from the bathroom window (obviously more interested in being outside than taking a bath).

Cameras have certainly improved since the 1930s. There have been incremental improvements in the technology - black/white to color to faster film to better lenses to easier flash lighting to miniaturization to digital rather than chemical images. Many people now have a camera with them all the time (since it is in their cell phone).

The cultural change the candid images of the 1930s initiated is still with us and now the ease with which images can be shared with a very broad audience (i.e. the world via the internet) is causing another cultural change. Our lives can very easily become a lot more public than ever before.

Do we understand the world better with the increase in images? We expect more visuals now in just about every aspect of our life. It is easier for us to absorb but there is no guarantee that we understand what we are seeing. A picture is only worth a 1000 words if we understand the context and content of the picture!

Quote of the Day - 2/6/2012

Mothered by the same earth, dust and dirt have different fathers.  Dust – finer and more discrete – belongs as much to air as to earth. Dirt – bigger and clumsier – is identified with soil. - Joseph A. Amato in Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible

~~~~~

I like Amato’s distinction between dust and dirt. In addition, they both can be transformed by human activity; we may still categorize them as dust or dirt but they are potentially quite different. Will the new nanotechnologies produce a new kind of dust? Is an oil puddle leaked from a car in a parking lot a kind of dirt?

In our homes, the battle with dust is constant although there have only been gradual improvements over the past 50 years. Filters on heating/cooling, vacuums, and dust clothes are still our primary tools. There are many more kinds of filters now and vacuums come in all shapes and sizes. Dust clothes can be rags or coated fiber fluffs (like Swiffers). Endust and Pledge products have come and gone over the years. Our houses are sealed from the outdoor air more frequently now than ever before. The battle continues. Maybe I’m noticing it more at the moment because I am cleaning out boxes that are almost 30 years old and the cardboard is breaking down; it is producing and holding dust at the same time.

There are very few times that I actually have dirt in the house. Occasionally we track it in from outside or a potted plant gets spilled. Doormats and leaving shoes at the door reduces the first type. The second is just part of having plants indoors.

What are your dusty challenges today?

Remembering a Grandmother

I was fortunate to reach adulthood with all four of my grandparents in my life. Then the grandfathers died while I was in my 20s. One grandmother died when I was in my 30s. The last one lived until I was in my 50s. She died a few months shy of her 99th birthday. Today she would have been 100. It is a good day to remember her.

I’ve made a list of things I associate with her and attempted to order it in roughly chronological order - noting what, in retrospect, I was learning from her all along the way. 

• A crockery pitcher full of cream to make homemade ice cream - a first memory… putting things together to make something else
• Big garden with watermelon, cantaloupes, tomatoes, and turnips - really good food coming from a garden rather than a grocery store; that watermelons came in yellow/orange and red; that tomatoes came in all sizes; that turnips were hard to get out of the ground
• Kolache  and raisin buns - Czech heritage and dough making
• Pork chops - having plenty of a favorite food (I think I must have been growing really fast because I ate more pork chops than anyone else every time they were served for about a year and she just cooked more after that first time)
• Picking peaches and canning them - enjoying food fresh and how to preserve it for the future
• Oatmeal cookies with raisins - healthy snacks
• Wishes from Christmas catalogs coming true - choices and sweet anticipation
• Roses cut from the bush to take to teachers - thinking of others and bringing the beauty of outdoors inside
• Peppermint tea - good for you and smells good too
• Apple/pineapple/carrots in orange Jell-O - plain Jell-O is not worth anything; it needs something else to make it a good food
• Sitting down for lunch - enjoying more than just the food at a meal
• Doctors - listen to your body too; take care of yourself by eating well and exercising rather than relying always on medicine
• Apple cobblers in the freezer - so many apples ripe at the same time on the tree…take a little time and there will be great desserts all winter long
• Mail - knowing when the mail comes and sorting out the important items right away
• Project helper - getting involved in others projects and seeing the finished product can be very satisfying
• Mowing grass with an self-propelled lawn mower - it is good exercise and needs to be done (she did it into her 90s…until she couldn’t see well enough)
• Isotoner slippers - there is no good reason to wear shoes in the house and slippers are always comfortable
• Macular degeneration - fading sight is a huge impact to quality of life; do everything you can to avoid the problem
• Textured pedestal glass - beautiful and easier to hold (the glass in the picture was the one she used in the last part of her life; she could recognize it by it’s ridges and it was just the right size; it is my favorite keepsake from her) 

Quote of the Day - 2/5/2012

Flagstone floors can present us with a…picture of harmony between contrary forces. There are floors in which large, obtuse stones have been persuaded by a mason to take their place within a methodical grid. One senses how the excesses in the character of these stones was tempered, how they were educated out of savagery still evident in the craggy cliff-faces from which they were heaved….we can appreciate order without danger of boredom and vigor without the shadow of anarchy. - Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage)

~~~~~

There was a flagstone floor in the central hallway of the oldest building where I went to college. I always felt that the floor had more panache than the whole rest of the building. The irregularity of the cut edges of the stones and the slight unevenness of their surface always caught my attention as I made my way to class. The cleaning crew must have spent a lot of time on that area too because it was always spotless. It seemed that the floor would last longer the building - like it was on a different time scale than the cinder block, linoleum, and sheet rock. When I found the quote above, I realized that that floor was one of my most vivid memories of the architecture of the school. Perhaps the ‘order without danger of boredom and vigor without the shadow of anarchy’ of that flagstone floor is what made it so.

February Sunrise

I’ve been watching all week for a great sunrise…and it happened yesterday. The clouds were just right to reflect the colors. The pictures below were taken from the front of my house in Howard County Maryland. This is about as easy as it gets for a sunrise photography project: simply walking out the front door at about 7 in the morning, taking pictures from two vantage points with a hand held camera. The first series was taken over a 3 minute period; the second over 4 minutes. Catching a great sunrise does not take a lot of time; being in the right place for those few short minutes is the challenge. Next time I’ll add a bit more location/setting control (i.e. use a tripod and just take one vantage point).

Trees still in silhouette

The red - pink - orange light

Reflected on the clouds

Begins a new day

The color sequence always the same

Red - pink - orange until

It all washes into yellow light

That bleaches away

To the dazzling brightness

Of a sunny day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 4, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Magnetotactic Bacteria found in Death Valley National Park - evidently these bacteria are unique because they can biomineralize both greigite and magnetite; they may prove enabling to mass produce these minerals

Severe Python Damage to Florida's Native Everglades Animals Documented in New Study - Near complete disappearance of raccoons, rabbits, opossums in the southern part of the Everglades where the pythons have been the longest (11 years)

Learning-Based Tourism an Opportunity for Industry Expansion - lifelong learning and personal enrichment travel increasing among affluent and educated people

Are Diet Soft Drinks Bad for You? - A study finds that the answer is ‘yes’ if you drink one or more a day.

The National Mall gets more efficient LED lighting - Note the paragraph at the end of the article about the phase-out of incandescent bulbs

Snowy owl Invasion - Video from the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory

iRobot ventures into Telemedicine - The company that makes the Roomba robo-vacuum is entering the hospital robotic arena

Innovation without Age Limits - More complex innovation takes more training…and that often takes time.

Yellowstone in winter (video) - a short video just over 4 minutes…full of vignettes of animals…snow…mists

Evolution of the Businessman (infographic) - Does the very bottom (Today’s Businessman) jive with your observations?

Quote of the Day - 2/4/2012

Love me or hate me, the desert seems to say, this is what I am and this is what I shall remain. - Joseph Wood Krutch (books)

~~~~~

Our surroundings leave an impression. Krutch gives us one for deserts - “Love me or hate me…this is what I am and this is what I shall remain.”

What impressions do you have about the place you are right now --- or places you remember? Here are some ideas to get your brain storming started.

Forests say “We’re better as a diverse tribe.”

Plains say “It’s best to see things coming from a long way away.”

The mountains say “While being closer to the sky has its challenges, it has the advantage of being above the fray.”

The shores say “Ending and beginning are often combined; the boundary can change.”

Quote of the Day - 2/3/2012

Newborns are like cats, they have no emotions and no memory. - Isabel Allende in Daughter of Fortune: A Novel (P.S.)

~~~~~

Newborns and cats…maybe it isn’t exactly that they have ‘no emotions and no memory.’ Maybe those things are just reduced enough that we perceive the difference and/or the difference is magnified by inability to communicate effectively.

We watch our newborns for signs of developing emotions and memory. I remember years ago watching my baby in REM sleep. She made a series of facial expressions from smiling to frowning in her sleep; she was practicing the emotional feedback our faces provide to each other. A few days later she smiled at me and her father for the first time. It was a milestone both for showing emotions and memory.

Our indoor cats have bursts of emotion (cat fights, acceptance of short duration cuddles with lots of purring), but most of the time seem very self-contained, even introverted. Clearly they are dependent on their ‘people’ but they are intent on not acknowledging it any more than absolutely necessary. They are very stoic almost to the point of not showing any emotion most of the time. And on the memory front - our cats have been known to re-discover an old toy and play with it as if it was ‘new to them’ even though they played with it the same way just yesterday.

How endearing newborns and cats are - even without emotions and memory!

10 Years Ago – In February 2002

Many years ago I started collecting headlines/news blurbs as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. Reviewing the February 2002 headline gleanings - I forced myself to pick 10.

1. Intellectual Resources May Help Soldiers Stave Off Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
2. Second space tourist to take stem cells, HIV experiment
3. The recent discovery of two giant Roman water-lifting machines near St. Paul's Cathedral in London
4. Study shows the average sleep for Americans of seven hours per night is safest
5. Texas A&M Clones First Cat
6. Enormous Iceberg May Be In Its Death Throes; Collisions With Another Large Berg
7. Plague fears spark panic in India
8. A cold front that killed about 250 million Monarch butterflies in central Mexico last month may reduce next year's migrations.
9. Glacier melting could contribute 0.65 feet or more to sea level this century
10. One of the odd possibilities that could emerge from global warming is that much of Europe, robbed of the ocean current patterns that help keep it warm, could rather abruptly enter a deep freeze and have a climate that more closely resembles Alaska than the modest temperatures it now enjoys.

Notice that weather and climate figure prominently in this list (6, 8, 9, 10) since it must have been and area of interest to me in 2002. The last blurb must have been from a story about global weather models; I wonder if the low temperatures in Eastern Europe this year are going to happen with increasing frequency.

Item 8 about Monarch butterflies was a turning point in our summer activities. For several years before 2002 we had collected Monarch eggs and caterpillars from the milkweed behind our house, feed them well while they were caterpillars, and released them when they hatched from their chrysalis. There were not enough Monarchs in our area of Maryland from 2002 onward.

Brookside Gardens Conservatory - Feb. 1

The conservatory at Brookside Gardens in Montgomery County, Maryland is a warm moist building full of plants that need protection from winter. It is one of my favorite plant places, particularly when the plants outdoors are still mostly dormant from the winter. Yesterday was warm enough to enjoy outdoors but the plants were still braced for winter….so the conservatory was the place to get the ‘green plant’ fix. One side of the conservatory was somewhat in disarray…not quite recovered from the model train exhibit that is always there for the winter holidays. Even with that work going on, the conservatory is a mass of greenery. There are orchids and bananas and bird of paradise; there is even a corner of cactus. The water trickling through and the smells of lush vegetation make this a place to savor. Enjoy my photos from yesterday!

 

Pictures from the outdoor part of Brookside Gardens posted here.

Quote of the Day - 2/2/2012

The nation at war had formed the habit of summary action, and it was not soon unlearned. - Frederick Lewis Allen in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s

~~~~~

Wars result in more than just winners and losers…changes in country boundaries. They are disruptions that often change life in fundamental ways. The quote today is about the impact of World War I on the US - pointing out that the pace of life had changed significantly. The faster pace of the 20s must have seemed quiet alien and not even the depression damped it back to the pre-World War I level.  It was a step increase rather than a more gradual trend that has happened since.

World War II set the stage for college education being opened to a much larger portion of the population. Prior to that time, the people that went to college were mostly from elite families that could afford to subsidize their children into adulthood. The GI Bill meant that almost all men could earn the opportunity to go to college. It took a while for the trend to spread to women but it did. Again - it was a step increase initiated by the war and then a gradual increase in availability and accessibility of college education after that.

Think back on your family history and talk to family members that remember the time before World War II if you are fortunate enough to have them with you. How did the war change the lives of your family?

• Did fewer of them remain farmers?
• Did they migrate from wherever they were before? How many ended up on a ‘suburb’?
• Where were babies born (hospital or at home)?
• What kind of school did the children go to (building, size of classes, type of teacher, school sponsored activities)?

Did the Korean, Vietnam, and 1st Iraq Wars have an impact that was significant? Perhaps these conflicts should have taught us more than they did.

It is probably too early to determine the most significant change the Afghanistan/Iraq war has had on our nation. Based on the amount of time and the lives lost, we should expect that there is something.

Perhaps it will be our acceptance of a dramatic reduction in personal privacy initiated by the increased surveillance in our lives (for example, airport security checkpoints). Of course, the advent of social media and data mining on the internet has happened concurrently and that did not happened because of the war. Taken together the ‘step’ erosion of privacy is probably already a reality.

Perhaps it will be our use of surrogates - drones flown by remote pilots or computer controlled vehicles - that will change things over the long haul. It depends on how the technology is translated from the military world into the day to day lives of people. Certainly driverless cars on our streets and highways would change our day to day lives.

What else might be the most significant change from the Afghanistan/Iraq war?

Brookside Gardens on Feb. 1

It was a sunny, spring-like day in Montgomery County, Maryland - a perfect day for a walk around Brookside Gardens. Crews were out trimming trees and taking the holiday lights off bushes and trees. The beds of bulbs were covered with nets to keep the squirrels at bay. Enjoy the photos from my walk. I’ll share photos from the conservatory tomorrow.

Lacy and wonderful even after exposure to the winter cold. This kale actually looks better now than it did earlier in the season.

The only tree blooming profusely....doesn't this scream 'spring time'?

I've been taking pictures of this shelf fungus growing on a stump since last fall. I love the green in it.

Soon there will be loads of daffodils but there are only a few this early. These were in a sunny but protected bed along one of the forest paths.

Brilliant colors...before the leaves appear.

Like the kale - the nandinas have been through the winter and still look beautiful.

Quote of the Day - 2/1/2012

There is something astonishingly satisfying about holding in your hands a physical object that didn’t exist until you made it. - Diana Athill in Yesterday Morning: A Very English Childhood

~~~~~

I agree with Diana Athill. Making a physical object can be very satisfying. In our everyday lives there are lots of opportunities for us to gain this kind of satisfaction. It can be rather ordinary -

• A batch of muffins,
• A contorted paperclip to hang the calendar from the arm of the desk lamp, or
• An arrangement of baskets and silk flowers on top of book cases

Or quite elaborate and time consuming -

• A cape made from old drapery material,
• A tile made to be a stepping stone in the garden, or
• Blocks of wood painted with milk paint to be given as a gift to a young child.

What have you made today?

February Celebrations

February starts tomorrow. What do you celebrate in February? Here are some ideas:

1. Valentine’s Day. This is a holiday to celebrate as a twosome rather than with a larger group. Think about something that you would both enjoy…good food, warmth, favorite music. Savor how fabulous it is to be a couple. Alternatively - celebrate as a family and articulate the love you share. Chocolates and flowers are the tradition but they are just the glitz; think deeper and you may realize it is more about spending time together than purchasing a gift. Note: If you are planning an ‘out to eat’ be aware that many restaurants are crowded on the 14th. Consider designating another day (such as the monthly anniversary of your wedding or meeting) as your day to celebrate.
2. Winter. February may be winter’s last hurrah so celebrate it.  If you ski - February is a good time. If a snow storm is forecast, have the makings for snow ice cream on hand and wood by the door for the fireplace; make sure you know where the coats, boots, and sleds are.
3. Harbinger’s of Spring. Celebrate the crocus and hyacinths peeking through the garden soil. They may even bloom in February if the winter has been particularly mild where you live.