It’s tour season and two of my favorite tours–the San Francisco Designer Showcase and the Garden Conservancy Tours happen this month.  The Showcase House runs through May 28 and the Garden Conservancy Tours run in May and June in the East Bay, Marin, Santa Cruz and Mendocino.

This Saturday, May 12, take your mom to the Garden Conservancy tour happening in the East Bay. One of the four featured gardens is landscape designer Keeyla Meadows‘s garden in Albany.  Full disclosure–Keeyla is a friend and also designed my garden.  She’s a multi-faceted artist and her garden is always a delight to visit.  Look at these beautiful blooms planted in colorful pots or in front of fabulous sculpture all made by Keeyla.  Think Monet meets Gaudi.

Find out more about Keeyla’s garden and the tour in this recent SF Gate article. I’ll be working as a docent in Keeyla’s garden Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Also, deer don’t like them.  They don’t appeal to gophers.  And the foxes and wild turkeys seem to leave them alone as well. Which means they’re perfect for our garden on the edge of open space.  We planted eleven different varieties of daffodils  (poets would call some jonquils, others paper whites or narcissus)–specifically Avalanche, Barrett Browning, Carlton, Cornish King, Ice Follies, Las Vegas, Ma Bell, Merels Favourite, Pink Charm, Pipet, and Thalia. They all had staggered bloom times.  But on those weeks where they were pretty much all in bloom, every time I opened the front door it felt like I was being serenaded with the Hallelujah Chorus.  (Did you know that Handel’s “Messiah” was originally performed in April?)

Daffodils belong to the genus narcissus which gets its name from the Greek god Narcissus.  According to legend, Narcissus was so taken with the image of himself as he gazed into a river that he drowned trying to capture his reflection.  The reflected image of daffodils growing along stream banks inspired the association with Narcissus.

We planted them along the dry stream bed in our garden where except for a few exceptionally rainy days no treacherous reflections are cast.  We planted them on a sunny day in December when my family had just started to gather for Christmas.  Though the sun was out it was still cold and it took some gumption to get out there and plant All Those Bulbs (we put 100 tulip bulbs in the back pots safely out of reach from the deer as well.) But once we got started the work was pretty easy and fun.  And boy was there a big payoff.  I’m thinking this will be an annual Christmas tradition.  Some daffodils will return but to ensure we always have plenty I’ll want to plant more.

Here you can see our daughter Claire planting daffodils  (now that they’ve bloomed, I’m thinking the elegant white on white Thalia?) near the leafless variegated dogwood draped with Christmas garland.

And here’s the rest of the planting crew — our pregnant daughter-in-law Lori, Claire, landscaper Keeyla Meadows, son Will and M.J. Right after we planted the bulbs we scurried off to a matinee performance of The Christmas Revels that happened to feature a daffodil as a magical symbol of healing and rebirth!

It’s an act of faith to plant anything but especially homely little bulbs in the dead of winter.  But look what our faith hath wrought!

Happy Weekend All!

True confession?  I didn’t know the Super Bowl was happening here in the Bay Area until last Saturday when my gay Mormon activist friend Mitch mentioned how early festivities had impacted the traffic coming from the city to a conference in Berkeley that we were both attending.  Now how in the world did I miss that?  I’m not that sporty but I do tend to tune in for big sporting events like the World Series or the Olympics.  And this year the Super Bowl is here in my back yard! I don’t have any loyalties to either team in the game but I’ll be watching for the commercials and the Coldplay concert. I’ll also be cooking up some Big Game food from this month’s featured cookbook “The Gourmet Today Cookbook”. Last month I had fun working through some recipes from David Leibovitz’s “My Paris Kitchen”–more about that later–but Sunday I’m planning to make some citrus-sauced ribs and an old family Super Bowl favorite—Whoopee Pies.  Score!

Here are a few other things that touched down with me this week.

Super Bowl “Ad-mojis.”

Some tips for buying Valentine flowers.

Trying to separate Bill Cosby from Cliff Huxtable.

Swimming as an adult. 

Bay Area artist Lisa Congdon’s coloring books!

James Cordon and Rosie O’Donnell rapping Hamilton lyrics.

My friend Dana’s son making the Top 24 on American Idol.  Go James VIII!

Happy Super Bowl Weekend All!

I’ve subscribed to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box for decades.  Every week I pick up a box full of organic vegetables and from May through September I can also receive a bouquet of flowers grown on the farm (Full Belly Farm north of Sacramento). These gorgeous sunflowers were today’s bouquet.

Arranging them in a vase at home, I thought of my sister Jayne’s wedding last weekend outside of Boise.   I worked on flower arrangements for the wedding site with my sister-in-law Saren and my mother-in-law Jackie (it was a big family affair!)  Jayne chose sunflowers as the dominant flower in the bouquets and provided several bunches from her local Costco.  Alas, most of them were pretty droopy.

After dealing with sunflowers from the farm over the years I knew that the woody stalks would need more than a quick trim to help them drink water.  This was news to the rest of the family florists who looked aghast as I pounded the ends of the stalks with the handles of my clippers. But bludgeoning sunflower stalks really does help them take in water.  It’s an easy, aggression-dispelling thing to try at home.

Cut the sunflowers to their desired length.  Smash them with a blunt instrument.  (My bludgeoning tool of choice is a little hammer or mallet.) Your sunflowers should now be able to drink enough water to stay fresh for a week–though it’s still best to change the water and trim and smash the stems again mid-week.

Here are some other helpful things from this week–

One man’s French pottery collection.

West Elm’s VP of Furniture and Lighting Design shares his 5 Favorite Things. 

How a self-taught photographer staged a wedding and ended up as a pro.

Carly Fiorni’s Look At This Face ad.

What we can learn from doomsday predictions.

Medieval students’ letters to their parents asking for money.

This pretty video that has something to do with a seed.

Happy Weekend All!

When I was a little girl we sang a children’s hymn about “little purple pansies touched with yellow gold.” The message wasn’t particularly religious, just an admonition to “try, try, try” to gladden whatever corner we found ourselves in–whether dark or sunny, warm or cold.  This Easter season I’m grateful for the people and beliefs that have gladdened my dark corners.  Wishing you all some bright spots of hope wherever you find yourself today.

Happy Easter!

Florist Anna Campbell opened the shop as part of PopUpHood, a group that seeks to revitalize urban areas by taking vacant spaces and linking small business people to landlords. ”We’ve loved being in Old Oakland because the community is so supportive,” says Campbell, who also hosts events in the breezeway outside the shop and raises some of its flowers in an urban garden a few miles away. Her goal is to “rewild your life” by connecting you back to the land through flowers, floral-based products and floral-centric experiences.

So if you’re ready to “go in for floral mutiny,” visit The FloraCultural Society at 461A 9th St. Oakland, 94605. Don’t you just love seeing others’ talents on display?

All photos by Liesa Johannssen

The new normal is that my father-in-law, Jed Pritchett, is gone.  After a decade of mentally slipping away, his body caught up with his ebbing mind and he passed away suddenly, leaving behind his devoted wife Jackie, four living children, fourteen grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and five children-in-law, including me.

What followed was the usual flurry after a loved one dies.  Funeral arrangements were made, plane tickets purchased, mourning wear packed.

Then the gathering commenced—first in Boise, Idaho where Jed and Jackie lived for forty-some years, then on to American Fork, Utah where Jed had been raised and where he would be buried alongside his parents and two children who preceded him in death.

The services were tearful, rollicking affairs where Jed’s smart, funny children and grandchildren delivered stories of his life with an equal amount of respect and roast. Had I spoken, I would have talked about all the ways he made my life better, including the fix-it projects he did whenever he came to visit. As it was, I felt blessed to perform one of his favorite songs “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning” with my son and two other in-laws at the Boise service.

After the first service the pallbearers loaded the casket into M.J.’s brother Lant’s white mini-van to drive the six hours to Utah, making sure not to dislodge the beautiful casket spray filled with feathers from pheasants Jed had hunted over the years.

Jackie had balked at a lonely last ride for Jed by way of an anonymous hearse driver.  And so, when the mortician said it wouldn’t be a problem to deliver the body without his assistance, Lant volunteered to drive Jed home.  Jackie would ride shotgun and they’d do their best to get one last speeding ticket as a proper send-off for the fearless (and lead-footed) patriarch of the Pritchett clan.

Alas, no such ticket was issued, but the speedy delivery ensured a second service the next day where Jed was feted with further offerings of song and story before being laid to rest in the American Fork cemetery.  Cinematic snowflakes fell as his grandson Tony played “Stardust,” another favorite tune, on the trumpet.

In and around the services, multiple generations of cousins mingled.  Looking at the people who had known and loved my father-in-law I couldn’t help but note the unspoken “passing of the torch.”

Jed’s generation is gone or going.  Our generation is sobered by a clearer view of the finishing line.  And those little grandkids that used to spill out of Grandma Jackie’s dress-up closet or water-ski behind Grandpa Jed’s speedboat? Well, they’ve turned into a handsome bunch of young adults, tackling the world with the same intensity and intelligence as their grandfather.

Hard to take your eyes off them, really.  Where did the time go?

So I’ll get back to telling you about Peru and upcoming design events shortly.  But for a bit, I’ve been watching time march—no, rush—onward as we said good-bye to a beloved husband, father and grandfather. Godspeed, Jed. You will be missed.

I hear that kids are heading back to school this week. Which means, I suppose, that summer is over. Did it ever really begin? Work proceeds apace and my time away has been dictated by family obligations. Thinking about gearing up for full bore fall productivity makes me long for a stretch of emptied out days that never really materialized this summer. Like journalist David Shribman I’m wondering whatever happened to the “idyll of idleness?” The closest I’ve come was a day this week photographing “white” as part of Susannah Conway’s August Break photo challenge. Here’s a bit of what I saw.

I spied creamy melons at the supermarket

 And chalky fire hydrants dotting my neighborhood.

I found alabaster in the shimmering West Elm light fixture over my dining room table

And frost on the watch band near my bubble bath nails.

I took in the speckled bone surface of a serious sphinx on my early morning walk in the cemetery

 And the lacy ivories of the wedding dresses that live at my house.

All those shimmering shades of white proved nearly as restful as an afternoon on a sandy beach letting the sound of the waves wash away my many-hued concerns. Even if you’re already back in the thick of things, try looking for the white in your August to find a bit of that idyllic summer you almost missed.

Forget the flowers in your hair, if you’re coming to San Francisco be sure to bring a sweater.  Especially in the summer.

Because of the summer fog it’s more than coolish here, it’s downright cold.  Which makes this fair-skinned Idaho transplant very happy. I love a rainy winter day the best, but a foggy summer day isn’t far behind. I feel energized in the morning to work on writing projects and when the sun finally shows up mid-afternoon I head outdoors to tend to the garden.

Today I gleaned a little bouquet of midsummer blossoms—a hydrangea that escaped last month’s hot spell, some oregano gone to seed, a fragrant stem of blue sage and the first flush of a pink-tipped penstemon. When the fog rolled in again I headed indoors to read about the gardens created for Queen Elizabeth.  Under a cozy blanket, of course, because it is July in the Bay Area.

How are you weathering summer?