While this post may be a few months late, today I had a reminder that taking time to do the little things can result in something very special.  I was in my daughter’s 2nd class for the first time this year to volunteer and the teacher brought her up the front to read her “Best Birthday Ever” writing. It was all about her birthday party last April and how much she loved it.

We had a Little House on the Prairie theme, and while it took a lot of planning and research, sewing, baking and running around, it really was one of the best kids’ parties we’ve had, and one that I think will be the most memorable for all of us.

With grandmas helping me sew 13 bonnets and aprons, and my sister, Auntie Robin, to help the kids bake bread and make butter, I was lucky and thankful for the help. When the kids arrived, they got to “go shopping” for an apron and bonnet to dress up in. We gave them each a few coins to buy penny candy at Aunt Robin’s candy store. (In retrospect, we should have done this last!)

They made corn cob dolls and strung button necklaces. The dolls were a big hit and they spent more time than I expected dressing them and styling their corn tassel hair. Then they formed loaves of bread from dough we had made ahead. We let them add cheese, cinnamon sugar and jam to the loaves to let them participate. We shook mason jars full of cream to make butter.

Instead of goodie bags of plastic junk, they took home loaves of bread, jars of sweet cream butter, corn cob dolls and penny candy.

The chickens behaved amicably and participated, and everyone took a photo with one. Big sister and her friend were chicken wranglers and photographer (and later, cattle rustlers).

Pa made a covered wagon to sit in and climb on, and Ma (me) and the girls made a giant ice cream wagon cake that was a memory making event of its own!

It was a birthday we will never forget!

Covered Wagon Cake

Prairie Girls with Chicken

Cattle rustlers take our calf! Oh no!

Aunt Robin helps make bread and butter.

Cleo has to participate in everything.

Doll making fun!

Thanks for sewing my costume, Grandma!

Happy day!

Last night the two kids and two dogs and I took a first day of spring walk. My daughter wanted to bring her chicken but I wouldn’t let her. Anyway, I felt we should commemorate the Equinox!

The first day of spring is a happy day for the gardener!

Yet here on the Point, we are in the gloom of spring fog. I see the edge of sun on the horizon, and think I will have to leave the house and drive to get some sunshine. (I haven’t seen the sun since Sunday when we were in Alpine at a friend’s house.) Living here in spring fog begins to wear on me after a while. And it’s only just the start. This could last into June.

Despite this gloom, which isn’t anything like the weather in the other parts of the country so I know you are saying “Geez, get over it!”, I have some beautiful flowers (and a few pets) in my garden. Here are a few photos from last weekend:

While I haven’t written for about a month, I have been gardening.  First task of the New Year garden in San Diego is rose pruning. With 21 roses, this takes me about two weekends with all the other things on our weekend “schedules.”   But I split it up nicely with pruning one weekend and cleaning, mulching, dormant spray and Ada Perry’s Magical Formula the next.

I hate dormant spraying and it always stresses me out to the point of in-action and ridiculous-ness (like three trips to Ace Hardware, fights with the hose, freakouts about chemicals and the chickens, kids and dogs), but it did help my roses last year with all the humidity. This year I had fruit trees to spray as well so I had to do it.

That done, now I still have mulching–my compost never seems to be ready. Fortunately, there were no rose pruning accidents like getting stabbed by giant thorns (2011 pruning), resulting in about 12 doctor visits and ending me up at a rheumatologist to diagnose what she decided was some type of arthritic condition brought on by a thorn lodged in my knuckle.  That took six months of diagnosis, lots of out-of-pocket fees and ended in me running from an MRI after discovering I really do have claustrophobia. (I had no idea when the technicians asked and then sent me into that outer space tube. I don’t know why they have a black hole at the end–really, they should tape up comforting pictures.) I now wear gauntlet gloves up to my elbows when I prune because I never want to go through that again.

The year 2011 a fading memory, 2012 a success and 2013 well under way, we are celebrating our winter garden and eating lots of wonderful plump sugar snap peas, lettuce, arugula and kale.  Bulbs are coming up everywhere and I’m waiting for a long stretch of day when I can get back out there to finish planting, pruning and mulching.  Oh yes, and with our weather fluctuating between 75 and sunny and 50 and foggy, drizzle, I’d like next Saturday to be sunny and balmy, please. I know we can’t complain about winters here in San Diego, but I do like to garden in the sun.

I have been feeling nostalgic for the year of gardening, thinking back on all I did this year. Now that Winter Solstice is behind us and it’s the eve of Christmas Eve, I am looking at a sunny, green yard, still blooming roses and pansies, sweet peas branching across the ground waiting to be staked and my Christmas garlands and wreaths drying out.

Sunny Southern California offers no rest for the gardener in the winter. July and August are my resting months.

While I haven’t been able to write much this fall, I still found time to garden. Ten minutes, thirty minutes here and there, running outside at 5 p.m. in the fading light to plant seeds or bulbs. It all got done–my ritual fall plantings of sweet peas, pansies and bulbs. Then the vegetables.

My sweet peas are climbing across the ground (never had time to make bamboo trellises yet), my winter vegetable garden has lots and lots of edible pea plants — wow, did I plant a lot of peas this year. There’s kale and arugula and one petite cauliflower.

The bulbs my six-year-old and I planted one afternoon are sprouting. My ugly hill is still ugly but has moved out of the “horrible to look at” category. I feel like I’ve planted a million perennials on that thing.  My chicken garden is not planted but the potted nursery plants sit ready for a free day when the ground dries out and I have time to dig. Two more roses sit in pots ready to plant on my arbor.

I can’t believe I still did all that–the things I wait for all summer long, that take fifteen minutes now in the yard instead of a day. You have to be focused when you don’t have time. I think of my sister who planted one side of my front yard for me one day when my children were babies. I had to go somewhere for an hour, and I’d sat the pots all around the fountain where I wanted them planted.

“I’ll do it later,” I said, my voice trailing off because I really had no idea how I would do it.

When I came home, she’d done it all. Like some super-human sprite, she’d planted my entire front yard (well, almost). I have to muster that “inner sister” a lot lately when I am feeling distracted. “What would she do?” I ask myself. “How would she do it?”

Then I pull myself together and do it. I think of her speed and single-minded action.

I wish I had more time, but I suppose everyone feels that way this time of year. We all need our inner-sister or whoever inspires us to get things done. However, as a writer, I tend to dwell on things. Like this blog, which I’ve been thinking of for days. Perhaps I thought of my sister planting my yard because she is not coming for Christmas this year and I will miss the chaos and her ability to cook a giant dinner in the midst of all that Christmas noise and exhaustion as easily and efficiently as she landscaped my yard.

So I am baking a lot, looking out at the sunshine today, thinking of January when I vow to spend a day in my garden pruning my roses and preparing them for spring, willing myself to be efficient and single-minded and enjoy it all.