Have a peaceful "Quiet Winter"

Every year about mid-November I begin decorating the house and starting my holiday planning and wonder how I'll ever find myself feeling sick of it all by about December 26th. It seems like I've waited so long for the season and it's such a joy to celebrate. 

After all, I am the woman who will spend two hours in front of the television on a 100-degree, busy July day watching a Hallmark Channel "Christmas in July" movie, should I happen to come across one. And please don't lose respect for me when I tell you that during the same summer season, if I happen to be channel surfing and land on QVC somehow (Totally by accident! Honestly!) and discover they are selling holiday candles and lights, I will stare at all those LED lights and fake snow like a drunk ogling a bottle of Smirnoff. 

It's everything I can do to keep myself from calling their 1-800 number or going online to buy it all, because I have a persistent, subconscious and irrational belief that doing so will somehow signal winter to come even earlier than usual. 

Yet I can only take about a month of full-on, actual true-life holiday merriment. I could never live in one of those "Christmas-all-year-long" villages that are always the settings of the Hallmark movies, for instance, because I'd end up in the town's silver and gold, garland festooned jail for killing the local Santa once it all became too much to look at and listen to and I snapped. And I'd probably go scott free with a not guilty verdict too, because I know there are others who feel the same as I do.

For people like us, December 27 rolls around and we begin the deconstruction of All Things Holiday, happily trading all the glitter in for the next season, which I call Quiet Winter.

Quiet Winter is the time when it's still cold outside but your home and social life are in a kind of winter dormancy rather than a holiday frenzy. Dinner is at the same time every night, with the usual meals, and with the same people. Your house is relatively organized. And after a month or more of merrymaking, overeating and rushing around, there is nothing left to do but sink back into your schedule and little routines of your life as the snow falls, the rains pelts or the sun shines, depending on where you are.

Quiet Winter is lovely here because it breaks and gives way to spring relatively early. In the east and midwest, you have "mud season," which probably lacks the delight of either the holidays or Quiet Winter. For us, it will be the end of next month when the pear blossoms will begin to turn the trees white and the vineyards start to bud break. The roses will begin coming out of dormancy soon after. But without any major holidays sandwiched over a month or two, things will still feel slow and manageable. Time to organize the house, lose the five pounds you gained over the holidays and just enjoy the fact that nothing much is pressing in on you. You're not obligated to be anywhere beyond your normal day-to-day responsibilities.

Like the holidays, we don't always get the chance to celebrate Quiet Winter due to shifting circumstances in our personal lives, but if you can and are able to, I wish you a long, lovely, and peaceful Quiet Winter. 

We say "Peace on Earth" in December, but sometimes it's not really until January and Quiet Winter that we're able to feel that manifesting in our lives.

End of the Shemitah

So with the holidays approaching, I am also approaching the close of my shemitah year in the vegetable garden...a year I took off not so much because the land needed a rest, but because the farmer did. Oh, I grew a few things here and there, but nothing like I normally do. I grew flowers and decorative corn for fun, put in a couple of no maintenance squash plants and some cucumbers in and around the corn (since they required little care and I needed to can relish). Since I was growing vegetables at work, I still got to get my hands dirty, but it was nice to come home and not have to worry about what was going on in my own plot of land.

But I'm looking forward to a full planting here on the homestead this spring and summer. I have to admit, the down time seems to have been good for the soil, it's healthy, it's been amended with plenty of compost from the chicken and yard waste and is just waiting for spring crops. 

But now is not the time for that. Now is the time to decorate around the house for the holidays. I'm not sure, but I think I've taken a shemitah year or two away from holiday decorating too, from time to time. There have been a few years recently when I just wanted to minimize the hassle, and I was afraid it was the start of a new, downsized trend.

The great thing about taking a shemitah year in anything is that it comes and you get a rest. Then it ends and you get to start up again. It's funny how the chores that seem onerous when you have to do them year after year become pleasurable to think about once you've taken a year away from them.  

Anyway, this year, thanks to watching too many Hallmark movies and having some cold seasonal weather (low last night of 26 degrees!), I've been on a bit of a decorating binge. I bought a new, thin "pencil" tree for use in our dining room and did the big tree in the library in red and green, which is much harder to do than just stringing normal lights but is definitely worth the effort. I even put some garland over the range hood.

And outside we have Bruce the Blue Spruce, who is decorated in his Chanukah finest. We're nothing if not holiday-confused around here, but it works. I always say I celebrate all gift-giving holidays, so why not? 

Enjoy the pics.

The dollhouse

My friend's dollhouse looks a lot like this one.

This Christmas a friend's little daughter got a dollhouse. It's actually a pretty cool DIY invention, made from a bookcase with holes cut into the shelves for stairs, running from one story to another. So maybe a five-story dollhouse is not realistic, but she absolutely adores it.

I also had a dollhouse as a child, the style of which was not quite realistic for little me, but which I also absolutely adored. It was a one-story, ranch style 1960's house with a big kitchen, fireplace, and large bedrooms. It was totally beyond my 5-year old realm of comprehension because I grew up in a city-style, compact apartment building in the heart of Los Angeles.

The dollhouse of my dreams...and eventual home of my reality.

The dollhouse had beautiful wood credenzas and sideboards and hutches (furniture designed to evoke permanence -- not very moveable, as most apartment furniture must be). There was a large sofa floated in the middle of the living room facing the fireplace, plus a breakfast nook table in addition to the formal dining room. Since we lived in a such a small, shared space we had none of these things, but it spoke of a home I badly wanted. 

Even at a young age sometimes you are conscious of the things you don't have and feel like you were supposed to get, as part of some pre-birth deal with The Creator. But often the contract with said Creator is, in fact correct. You will get the thing(s) you feel like you should have received...but you may have to work to get it for it yourself, much later in life than you'd ever imagined.

I'm not knocking my childhood, indeed I have many happy memories from that neighborhood, which was mostly comprised of houses with stable, long-term families residing in them, unlike our apartments, which had a constantly rotating group of tenants. 

It's interesting to note that my parents could actually well have afforded a house in that same neighborhood, but chose not to live in one, because they thought it was just too much work -- a roof that would eventually need replacing, the carpet and paint they'd have to pay for themselves, a back garden and front yard to mow and tend to, etc. And of course they somehow managed to bring home from the hospital that one kid who felt these things were essential for a happy life. Moí.

My dream come true, in its early form.

That's because if there's ever a kid who belonged in a house rather than an apartment, and indeed in the country rather than the city, it was me. I've known it from the time I was born, which is probably why I glommed onto that ranch dollhouse the way I did. Isn't it funny how sometimes we have to spend the first 30 years of our lives finding our way home? 

Perhaps the dollhouse was a premonition of the future, or maybe just a deep longing brought to life in miniature, but I spent many, many hours creating garden space outside the little doll/ranch house, moving furniture around inside, and dreaming I was actually living within its brick and wood-siding walls.

And so, seeing the little Christmas dollhouse my friend got her daughter made me realize many times you're born knowing where you belong, and you might find it first visualized in a gift, or an afternoon or vacation spent someplace memorable, or even just a picture in a magazine that calls to you and says, "someday."

Check out the rooster on the chimney! 

Who knows, maybe there's a high-rise, multi-story house in my friend's daughter's future. Only time will tell what she gravitates towards and what she sees in her early life that speaks to her. But when those things do speak, both children and parents need to listen and let the little ones walk the path towards their destiny, whether it's a profession, a hobby...or just a nice house with a garden and a sofa by the fireplace.

Happy White Christmas from Wine Country!

Is it a super heavy frost? A light snow? All I know is that we woke up to a thin white powdery layer on everything this morning. The weather station we have installed DID record a few hundredths of precipitation between midnight last night and this morning, so it either fell as rain and froze or fell as light snow and stuck.

Either way, it was a lovely Christmas surprise to peek out the windows and find. Last year we were all in shorts, but this year....it feels quite seasonal.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

The long shadows, one-third in

The thing I love most about being outdoors at this time of year is the low sun and long shadows, pointing north, which seems to make the sky and ocean both a deeper shade of blue and which illuminates the tops of the dormant grasses on the hills, giving them an otherwordly sheen.

It's honestly my favorite time of year, in no small part because of the cooler temperatures. It's always possible to warm up if you're in a cold climate -- hot drinks, heat, fires, or warm bath. But it's not always possible to cool off in the worst of summer's heat, for some reason. The decks are loaded against us cool-weather lovers. But that doesn't matter. We have our elysium in the here and now of this solstice month.

The solstices are, respectively, usually on or close to December 21st and June 21st. This week I've seen a lot of posts celebrating that from now on, the days will be getting longer. I tend be happy on the summer solstice because I know that at that point the days will be getting shorter.

But of course we all know that the summer and winter solstices appear nowhere near at the end of the respective seasons they reside in. In fact, they actually occur about one-third into each season they appear in. 

On June 21st, for instance, we in the south still have the bulk of summer ahead of us. We'll be hot until October, so even the Autumnal Equinox in September is no harbinger of any seasonal change. And I'm sure my friends east of here will attest to the fact that some of winter's harshest days come after Christmas, in the months of January, February and March when there are no presents, lights and decorated trees to cheer you.

Nonetheless, perhaps like the Christmas holiday itself, the sun's travels through it's appointed dates -- solstices and equinoxes, are symbolic of things to come, and very simple reasons to have hope. In June, some part of me understands that now we will begin the slide that will ultimately end in winter. And that all I have to do is wait.  For those of you in snowy areas, surely the days growing longer is a cause for hope, even if an acutal change in temperatures is months away.

And so, for those of you celebrating Christmas, it's a holiday all about hope, right? And so we all have that in common this time of year. I wish all of you a happy solstice, happy Christmas, and happy New Year. Enjoy both the reality of the season and the hope of what's still to come. The present holds our joy, but it's hope for the future that holds our dreams. And so with life, so with the solstices of our sun.

Dig In

Item of Holiday Death #1

So most of us who are the designated cooks for our family have requests we must honor during this season of food -- time-honored recipes we've served to our family as long as we've had one -- and sometimes before. 

I have a Heath Bar/chocolate chip cookie bar recipe that I've been making since the 1980s (college for me, which means I ate them at least once and chased them down with tequila) that I must make at least once during the season if I want to stay in everyone's good graces.

 The other food item that is more or less demanded of me is Yorkshire puddings at Christmas Dinner or Thanksgiving, which means from November - January 1, my kitchen menu features hearty portions of 1) sweets, 2) processed candy, and 3) lard. It's like the homestead kitchen I'm so proud of temporarily relocates to a trailer park somewhere and all I need is a bag of Doritos and Velveeta on the counter to make the transition complete.

It just always seems like it sends the wrong message to those I love most. It's like, "I love you yet I will nonetheless try and kill you with unhealthy food over these next few weeks." But in my defense, I only acquiesce to these requests at this time of year. The other 11 months of the year  I tend to make quinoa and flax-inspired food which makes Big Ag and the kids go "blech." Victory for me. Eat bland and enjoy the healthy blood values now, people. December's comin'.

#2

Because I make these two items, everyone loves me more during the holidays, no question. And I'm -- obviously -- willing to buy their love with deliciously bad food. If I lived in the trailer park, I'd no doubt be the most loved 500-pound woman there. Loved by my 700-pound family, that is.

Anyway, I found the cookie bar recipe where all cookie bar recipes are all invented -- some trashy women's magazine -- long before I became a convert to the natural foods movement. The Yorkshire puddings are a carryover tradition from my godmother's house. They are unhealthy but at least contain all natural ingredients -- bacon fat, flour and milk.  And they both have historical significance to those I love, and so I will continue making them for as long as they request them, even though I feel guilty about it.

So the cookie bars are done, I have all the ingredients on hand for Yorkshires tomorrow, and all we need are the Doritos and Velveeta to really knock everyone's trans-fat, salt and sugar intake out of the park. 

Merry Christmas from Yours Truly, known better by my other name this time of year, which is The Angel of Dietary Death.  

A plate of joy with a side of grief, please. (said no one, ever)

The Girls are in the north end of the property, cleaning things up and enjoying a fine buffet of weeds, new grasses and some pomegranate seeds thrown in for good measure. We human types are inside, watching Big Crosby and Danny Kaye hoof it up in "White Christmas." Yup, it's wintertime at the homestead.

We've found ourselves collaterally shocked by two events in the last week. One was a friend's sibling, critically injured in a car accident last week that was the result of a DUI. The other was a divorce between a couple I see on a very regular basis at the winery. 

Both these sorts of things make you realize how fragile the holiday season is. We spend so much time working up towards the perfect Thanksgiving, Hanukah, or Christmas. And occasionally, all that work and all those expectations end up marred by a tragedy. It makes you realize in many ways, it's just another day on earth and it might be silly to expect so much from it, what with life happening all around us ... and sometimes to us.

My own father went into hospice around the holidays 32 years ago and although I've certainly found my joy again, it took awhile before my Christmases were no longer saddened by that memory. And so it is for many of us this year, including the two families mentioned above.

So if you're having a joyous season, celebrate it with all your heart, all your happiness, and all your family or friends you bring close to you this time of year. Keep your expectations low so you can be impressed by how well it all actually turns out. Even the Grade C+ holidays should be celebrated for the wonderful, less-than-perfect normalcy they are. That's because things could have been (or may someday be) much less cheerful and bright than they are right now, even though right now probably comes with its own side plate of annoyances and petty grievances.

Take your joy anywhere you find it, imperfect as it is, and hold on for dear life, friends.

The Decline of Western Card-Sending Civilization

Here's a thought for today (which is rainy and cold here on the coast of Central California, for anyone keeping track).

Big Ag and I sent Christmas cards out for years, always with a family photo enclosed. We stopped sending them several years ago, when we realized the only people sending them to us were people who had received one from us and felt the need to reciprocate.  

We did an experiment the next year where we only sent to those we received from, and once we did that our "received card" count plummeted. Obviously the general interest in sending holiday cards was in deep decline. At one time, back in the day, I used to hang a sheet of wrapping paper on the inside portion of our front door and affix the cards to them, as they were received. The door would be filled with cards by the end of the season. But by the time we received less than 10 cards, I stopped. 

Of course with Facebook and Instagram, it's now possible to keep track of what's going on with the Smiths and Jones families (as well as the Al Habibs, Goldsteins, Valdezs and Hongs), without needing to read their cloying, braggy and artificially flavored sweet newsletter many sent out, or look at the happy family photo. 

That's because, thanks to social media, I've watched the Jones' kid play soccer all year, seen the Al Habib girl graduate from high school, and seen enough shots of the Goldstein kid's bar mitzvah that I felt like I should send a gift.

So now we (pretty much as a nation) no longer do the holiday card thing, and even the way our society shops is changing. No longer are we held hostage to standing in line at the department store, surrounded by other holiday shoppers. Now we buy our gifts while sitting in front of a computer screen, in our jammies, with just a mouse click. Then all we need do is wait for the UPS man to drop them on our porch. 

I thought about this the other day when I had to stand in line at the post office to pick up a package that was too big to fit into our mailbox, and which for some reason wasn't delegated to the UPS or FedEx man to deliver.  For a fleeting moment I thought about how much easier life must be now for the workers in the USPS now that they no longer have to deliver all those Christmas cards. 

That lasted about one second. Then I thought about how much of a Devil's Trade this was, because as the hard working USPS workers' lives were relieved from the drudgery of having to sort endless holiday cards, that was just replaced with the endless drudgery of having to sort holiday packages for home delivery. Big, bulky ones. Not much of a trade-up there.

I also wondered how this affects the carbon footprint of the whole holiday. Is it more efficient to order from one big warehouse, like Amazon, and then have one truck drive around and deliver everything, compared to each individual driving to a store and buying all that stuff themselves...a whole family of people, in separate cars, all shopping for each other? 

Do we now use more paper because of packaging boxes and what not instead of all the paper cards, sent only to be thrown away at the New Year? Or less? Some of those holiday newsletters were at least two pages, after all.

Yes, on cold, rainy days like this, these are the kinds of things I ponder when it's too wet to work the ground and the inside beckons...as I sit here in my jammies, screen up of course, and finish my last minute gift-shopping.

Happiest of Holidays

It is Christmas Eve, and those family members that have not arrived for the holiday are on their way to our homestead as we speak.  The next 48 hours or so will probably rush by in a blur, so I wanted to take a moment and say I hope all my friends and fellow bloggers have the happiest of holidays.

Live long enough and you will have Christmases with joy as well as heartbreak.  But the heartbreak does make the joyful ones more appreciated.  When I was 23, my father was in the hospital at Christmas, dying of cancer.  I sat by his bedside one evening, sometime close to Christmas Eve, listening to the rasp of the respirator and the occasional beep of one of the other machines helping him breathe. I remember thinking it was a horrible juxtaposition of circumstances to be "celebrating" Christmas at a time such as that.

As I sat there in the dimness of my father's hospital room, feeling probably as desperate and alone as I ever have. I started hearing children's voices, carolers, singing a gentle, quiet version of "Silent Night" as they walked the halls of the oncology wing.  As they passed by our doorway a small boy broke off from the group, came in and handed me a small poinsettia plant to put by my father's bedside, then re-joined the other carolers as they proceeded down the hall. It was a moment of kindness and hope in an otherwise bleak season, and for many years that pointsettia plant bloomed each December, reminding me of what had transpired that year, and the fact that beauty can exist even in the midst of sorrow.

That year was a truly sad Christmas, but in time, after my father's passing, healing happened and I have had many joyful Christmases since. Also some so-so ones, where I was in the midst of work romantic, work or financial difficulties.  But nothing compared to the sad Christmas right before my Dad died.  

And as the years have gone by, that sad Christmas has served me well, as it's reminded me of what is and is not a good Christmas.  It has nothing to do with family squabbles, tight finances, car trouble or work issues.  If you and those you are closest to are all alive and well and able to celebrate the holiday without weeping, then it's a good year.  A very good year.  When laid against the pain and desperation of my Sad Christmas, I honestly can say I haven't had a bad holiday since then.  It all comes down to your perspective.

And so, during this happy holiday season, I am hoping this is one of your best Christmases.  If there has been pain, I hope for healing, and if there has been sadness, I hope the sands of time smooths the sadness over so you can once again feel joy.

And if neither one of those things apply and you're simply having a very happy Christmas, then I hope you know what a gift it is, and enjoy it to the fullest.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Memory Tree

Memory Tree

One of my favorite things to do each holiday season is put up the Christmas tree (or Hanukkah Bush, Solstice Plant or Saturnalia Evergreen -- your choice). But since becoming an adult, I've always felt the tree should be more than a representation of the commercial buying season, which it seems to have become.  A Christmas Tree is a wonderful way to honor the life you've lived, and the blessings you've been given.  So, beginning at about 21 years of age, I started collecting ornaments which represented my life, as it happened.

At age 52, I now have a tree full of memories, so much so that there is little room for regular glass-ball ornaments, although I do make sure there are a few of those up.

I have ornaments from my salad days in my 20's when I was so broke I used molds and modeling clay to make my own ornaments.  Some are mementoes from trips we've taken.  Others are symbolic, representing life occasions I've honored through a purchased ornament, their true meaning known only to me.  And as the years have gone by and my family has grown, now Big Ag and the kids have their own memory ornaments they add, too.

I probably spent just a few dollars a year on Christmas ornaments, usually bought on the fly whenever I saw something that had meaning to me, but the investment has paid off in a memory tree.  It's a tree that honors my journey through life both with and without Big Ag and the kids, and every time I hang up a keepsake I remember something or someone that was once part of my life.  

In that way, I feel I really do keep the spirit of Christmas, by remembering how blessed I have been throughout this life of mine, even when I didn't necessarily recognize it.

Handmade ones from the lean times...

Ones that are symbolic of events in my life...

And some commemorating shared family times.

 

A treeful of memories.

Hit by a family on Doomsday

We had the first of our family arrive last night for the holiday; the rest will be here later today.  I shopped like a Doomsday Prepper yesterday, stocking the fridge and cupboards with everything they'll need or want for the next several days.  It's nice to be the gathering place, where everyone wants to wake up Christmas morning.

And speaking of doomsday prepping, it looks like we all made it into 12/21/12 without too much trouble.  Which is a good thing, I would have hated to spend my last day on the planet trolling a shopping cart through Von's.

Christmas Feast, reloaded

Last night I was scavenging around in the refrigerator for something to make a dinner for one with, and I found these terrific Christmas leftovers.  Since I left the Christmas dinner clean-up to the kids, I had no idea what was left and what had been demolished completely.  So you can imagine my delight in finding a near-perfect replica of the meal served on The Big Night tucked neatly into Tupperware containers and stacked in the fridge.  There was prime rib, mapled sweet potatoes, green beans and horseradish sauce for the meat.  There was even leftover champagne! The only thing missing was the Yorkshire puddings I'd made, which tend to vanish off the serving plate and into people's mouths at lightning speed anyway, so I wasn't expecting to find any of those.  Maybe I'll make more next year.


This meal, unlike the first, was eaten in solitude and in the quiet of a cold, clear evening.  It gave me a chance to reflect on my blessings and sort of take stock of the year that's just passed, and my hopes and dreams for the one to come.  Christmas dinner No. 1 was sweet because it was shared with family.  Christmas dinner No.2 was sweet for its opportunity for quiet reflection and joy.

Christmas, cooking and crops.

Today our Christmas tree will come down, after a lovely month of enjoying its pretty lights.  As much as I love looking at all the bright ornaments, I am ready to get the house back in order so it can be clean and organized by the New Year.  I'm also done in the kitchen, after a long month of cooking for people during Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and then Christmas.  We won't starve the next few weeks, but my meals will consist of easy-to-make dinners that don't leave me standing in front of the stove or preparation counter for hours like I have been doing.  


Out in the garden, the cauliflower, lettuce, onions, scallions and carrots in our four raised planter beds appear healthy, but are growing slower than ever.  This time last year I was already busy harvesting and freezing our bounty from out there. Maybe it's the below-freezing nights (far more than are normal for us), or the fact that we've had crops in those beds pretty consistently now for a couple of years. The soil may be a little low on nutrients.  I'm not sure of the culprit, but after we harvest what's growing now, I'll throw some grass seed down, then plow the new green blades into the soil to enrich it while giving the beds a few weeks' fallow.  Guess the biblical mandate of a time of sabbath, rest, or fallow is good for everyone and everything, including the earth itself.  There's a time to create, and a time to rest.  

Chanukah was a bust

We're one of those bi-faith families that celebrates both Christmas and Chanukah.  Last night was the first night of Chanukah, and it was a total wash-out.  My husband came home late from work, in one of those mysterious "wet blanket" moods men sometimes seem to get in.  So I rushed through the prayers, lit the candles, and set about feeding everyone instead of really focusing on the celebration and its significance.


The bright spot is that Chanukah lasts eight nights, which means we have seven more times this year to get it right...to say the prayers with meaning and maybe even discuss the significance of the holiday with the kids.  If Christmas gets messed up, you're done for a whole year.  I've had bad Christmases before, and it can be very depressing. There's a massive lead-up of expectations for a perfect holiday, and when that gets a throwdown -- you end up sick, breaking up with your boyfriend, having to work, or being stranded at O'Hare in a snowstorm while trying to get home -- major, severe holiday depression can set in.


Since it's more or less accepted by theologians that Christ could not possibly have been born in December and Christmas was instead grafted on to the Roman Saturnalia and even older solstice festivities, maybe Chanukah is a safer holiday to celebrate.  It's not as commercialized, and isn't trying to celebrate something that's surely a great thing, but on the wrong day.  And if things don't go right -- your spouse is a jerk or you burn some of the latkes, there's always tomorrow...one more candle, one more prayer, one more chance.