.  .  .   like Christmas at 1880.  Mother sent real bayberry candles.  They smell so good.

My neighbors brought over this lovely arrangement:

And I hung the ceremonial family wreath on the kitchen door.  I still love it, but I cannot actually remember what prompted me to buy a plastic wreath at the Flower Mart in SF about forty years ago.  It is the only fake thing I ever display.  And I always will.  You can look at previous December posts on this site to see how we always used to take pictures of daughters on the porch in their holiday finery pretending to hang this wreath on the front door.

I have always been conflicted about about the lies told to children regarding Santa Claus.  Especially the scary stuff about how if you were a bad little girl you wouldn’t get any thing. I was not an especially good little girl, but I always got wonderful things from him.  I remember very poor children in my grade school in Oklahoma who were told the truth, but I think they were told not to spoil it for us “rich” kids.  They just joked that they had been very bad and consequently got nothing.  It made me sad for them.

I put this up in my little guest bathroom just for fun.  It’s up high on the wall, so it shouldn’t scare little children.

I guess they best way to think about this lie is that it gives parents a way to give gifts to their children without taking credit for it.

And now I am about to dress up to go hear the Oregon Symphony play beautiful holiday music.  Christmas carol singing always plays a part at this concert.  People around here seem to know all the carols and sing heartily.  The Symphony’s programs always begin with a very hearty singing of our National Anthem.  This is an audience that knows one does not applaud after the National Anthem.  It’s not a baseball game, for heaven’s sake!

It’s always a bit of a surprise when they decide to bloom.  I pot them up every year Thanksgiving weekend.  I thought, since that came very late this year, they would probably pop out just in time for New Year’s Eve, but here they are, on December 17.  

My early morning plans changed this morning when Jack decided that he felt well enough to drive himself to the hospital for his daily radiation treatment.  So, I popped out back in my pajamas just to replace the frozen hummingbird feeder with a warm one but lost my train of thought.  Luckily, I had put on the down coat MM left behind when she moved to paradise, because it was so beautiful out there, I forgot to come back inside until I had snapped a bunch of pictures with my cell phone.  I should have gone back inside for my UGGS and my good camera, but I was literally on a roll.

An abandoned web or two:

A frosty garden mirror:

The Crown Princess Margarethe Rose:

The Coast Redwood wishing for its native marine cover:

A shocked rhododendron:

The faithful Tahoe waiting for its girl to return and so glad she wrapped it up in a tarp before she also departed for paradise:

The rosemary:

The raspberry won’t be providing any berries for while:

The California Bay Tree, transplanted from California, is probably asking just what we’re doing here.

And the gazing ball:

I am getting better at cell phone photography, but I really should keep my good camera in my pocket.

I was thinking I had never before been anywhere where the temps hovered in the 20’s for ten days.  Then I remembered a winter long ago I spent in Buffalo, New York.  I had just moved from Texas and I didn’t have a coat.  I was very young and foolish and bought a cute one rather than a warm one.  Ah, well.  I survived. Young and foolish only goes so far, though.

Older and wiser now and better at getting my priorities right, I am just about to bundle up in MM’s down, UGGS, monkey hat and gloves to walk to the library to meet a dear friend for lunch and finally to show him Elizabeth’s pictures from her September trek through the Western Rockies where he recently hiked too.  Hot chocolate will probably play a part. That’s a priority!

Zipped up to Bridgeport yesterday.  Had a beautiful drive up in between snow showers.  It was fun to walk around and window-shop.  Zipped back home to make soup for some friends who were coming over for supper.  We had so much fun singing, talking, eating that I forgot to take pictures.  Everyone liked my Italian meatball soup:

Make meatballs out of Italian sweet (not hot) sausage, some large, soft bread crumbs mixed with a little chicken broth, sauteed, minced onion. Form them very gently.   Make them big —  about golf-ball size.  Roll in flour and brown briefly in olive oil. 

Make soup out of two cups chicken broth, two cans of cannellini beans, drained (save liquid.)  I used one can of S&W petite cut tomatoes “diced with sweet onions, roasted garlic in rich sauce,” but any would probably work. (I suggest using low- sodium everything because Italian sausage can be very salty.) Two diced carrots.  Two or three diced stalks of celery plus leaves.  Bay leaf, rosemary sprig, two cloves garlic.  Add a pint of liquid.  (You could use water, more chicken broth, or the cannellini juice if it’s not too salty.)   Add meatballs and simmer briefly so vegetables will stay crisp. Stir in three cups sliced spinach leaves at the end so it will stay nice and green.  Remove bay leaf, rosemary sprig, and garlic cloves if you can find them 🙂  One meatball per serving.

I used my big red soup bowls.

Nobody likes fruitcake, but St. Anne’s made about 500 of them in the kitchen at St. P’s last month, and now we’re selling them off for a small fortune each.  I have serious doubts that we’ll see any profit.  The ingredients were very costly and the packaging was very upscale.  Everyone is being very nice about buying them.  I bought one and served it up last night with hard sauce.  As fruitcakes, go, this was the best one I ever tried.  Everyone here seemed delighted.

Still, in my opinion, trifle is the best holiday dessert.

Easy to see this wintry, early Sunday morning

that suet is the most popular item, as evidenced by the swarm of bush tits bottom center.

I heartily agree.  Very important to put on a good padding of fat when the temps drop.  (These shots were snapped with my iPhone from the warmth and safety of my dining room table where the fatty offering looked a lot like sausage.)