What in the Hee Haw...two blog entrees in one day?!?!?

Okay, so my sister says, "What in the Hee Haw" which makes me giggle every time. I've been thinking about my sister a lot lately. Probably because for the first time she gets to host our family for Christmas in Austin! Mom, Dad, Alvaro and I will arrive four days before Christmas and we get to have the grand tour of Austin at Christmas...the lights at the capital, the one street with all the really gaudy but wonderful decorations and lights, the warmth of her cottage style house and her cooking. The night before Thanksgiving, Alvaro and I went to pick her up on the way to Blackacre. We decided to spend the night and in the morning she made me this oatmeal that should be entered in the dang State Fair. That was some life changing oatmeal! I think it made me more spiritual.

This is the first year that we, as a family, won't spend Christmas in the home where we grew up. Mom and Dad have moved to their new property near the farm and tradition is changing. Do those two words go together? Tradition and Changing? As I get older and our lives change and progress, I'm learning that our real tradition all along has been 'being together'...not where we are but who we love, who we cherish and what our attitudes are. I have always characterized myself as being adverse to change...my German head is really hard! But in the small changes that have happened in the last ten years or so, I'm now assured that I'm not as adverse as I thought. And this is a HUGE revelation to me. Does this mean I could be growing? Am I becomeing more flexible? Horrors!!!! I think I am. What a wonderful thing! All that meditation (not medication), all that prayer...it's working by golly! Maybe I'll get freaky and suggest a new side dish for Christmas dinner!!! Okay, let's not get crazy!

I'm having fun keeping up with my favorite blogs (please click on them to the right) and listening to what others are saying about Christmas traditions. Comment on what yours are. Since I'm in the growing mood, I may adopt yours.

Feeling Green

So it's colder outside and I'm lamenting the absence of gardening activity. The morning glory vine is truly sad looking, the impatients are leggy and everything is looking wintery. I love living in Texas which provides an actual changing of seasons even if it does go from 85 to 55 in the course of one hour. It's just hard to see the back yard go from lush to SKELETOR. Very sad.

What that means is all the plants come indoors. So in the course of coming through the front door to stepping into the living room you've already passed 5 plants and you can see at least four more. I choose to surround myself in green. This either means I have a green thumb or I truly can't stand to not garden...even if it does mean just keeping plants alive indoors. Sometimes, since I'm fanatical about it, I just sit and look at the way the sunlight hits an ivy at a certain time of the day. There is an obsession about keeping things alive. I'll cut the plants down and watch to see what they do with their new growth.

As I was cutting a couple of closet plants back today I felt great guilt. Here they are killing themselves to thrive and I'm hacking away. They look naked but I have to get all that old growth off. Surely they can't do well in this dry manmade heat with all of last year's growth. Sometimes we all have to start fresh and see where we can go...just see how far we can go with a new outlook. It may be a new job, a new promise to be healthy or a renewed passion for our spirituality. At first we look naked and vulnerable...all our shoots sticking out...not pretty

Today, in preparation for the new year...think about what needs to be cut down and given a fresh opportunity for growth.

Fall Plantings

It's Friday...the day I take care of things around the house that I don't get to do all week. Errands to the grocery store, laundry, chores...the stuff that requires a large block of time that we don't have during the workweek. What I really want to do today is go the Home Depot, buy 6 bags of potting soil and some nice fall plants and spend the morning replanting the flowerbed around the sweetgum in the front yard. That sounds like much more fun than doing the laundry and cleaning the bathrooms.

Spring has always been the symbol of new beginnings, freshness and renewal. In the home we even call it 'spring cleaning'. But what about Fall? There is a new freshness in the air, children start a new year of school and there just a new crispness all around us. The children get new notebooks, pens, glue, paper...on my new book cover I would practice writing, 'Mrs. Alvaro Jose Martinez Cabal' about a hundred times ha! New friends, new teachers...Fall is just a time for new stuff, physically and mentally. Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to play outside but Fall Plantings and the new beginning that represents for me seems much more attractive.

So, if we're going to think of Fall as a time for new beginnings, what is the next step? I'll have to go farther than putting new plants in the flowerbeds. I need to look for more ways to take advantage of this opportunity. At our church there is an abundance of new studies and new opportunities for giving and volunteering my time. Opportunities for me to grow and maybe even make a difference in the lives of others. These opportunities are laying around everywhere...not just at the church. Our communities are full of people who could used some care and compassion. Let us all think of how we can take this season and make it meaningful...we don't have to wait for the new year for a new beginning. Plant something this fall!

SF Day 5 - Wine Country and Hwy 1

Each day I think we've seen the greatest thing and then the next day comes. We were up and at 'em pretty early so the Enterprise guy could pick us up. Then we were off to Cakebread Cellers. I'm more of a beer girl than I am a wine girl but boy...was this a great experience!! Our tour started in the vineyard and ended at the outdoor grill where we tasted 5 wines...my favorite was the 2005 Napa Valley Chardonnay. The best part for me was learning about the earth, the plantings made over the vine roots to change the mineral make up of the soil, the natural climate, bug detection and removal techniques (of course I would find that amazing), and other issues dealing with the vineyard...Once we got into the pressing, fermentation process and such, I thought that that could just be left to the scientists and their french oak barrels. :) From my point of view, it's what happens to the grape while being nurtured by the earth that determines later on how it will measure up as a wine. So much depends upon it. (I'm doing the 'palms up measure action') What goes into making us what we are? How are we nurtured...can we nurture ourselves? Can we change our acidity? Can we alter the course of how sugary sweet we are?
I like to go to our farm in late July and pick the wild mustang grapes that grow all over the place. The jelly from this grape is amazing but I just get what I get. I never noticed before if the jelly ever tastes different from year to year. I know that the Cakebread wine makers would laugh till they tinkled if they tasted the Mustang Grape wine my uncle makes. Anyway, my question is...are we a wild mustang grape who will just end up how we end up or do we strive to improve ourselves with an effort to adjust and become 'fine'. I certainly don't mean to say that I think we should pretend to be someone we're not. I'm just sayin' that I think it's good to constantly recognize the need to improve and become better, nicer and more genuine individuals.
After Cakebread, we found our way over to Hwy 1 where we took an amazing drive all the way back down to San Francisco. On the way we saw incredible beaches, cliffs, some harrowing hairpin turns and lots of great looking oyster bars. Now we're taking a little rest before heading out to dinner at Aqua...I think it's pretty foo foo so I guess I have to change clothes.