Another revolution around the sun…. speaking of the scientific nature of the word revolution…. not the political. It seems there are multiple “revolutions” happening around our world… the Peace for which we sing during the Christmas season, seems to be ever elusive in the grand scheme. Fortunately, my brain doesn’t focus on that continually. Peace comes in snippets of daily life, and interactions with people, places, events and even things close around me.

I walked into the post office in Ukiah to send off a knitting book to my daughter Zarya. It was quiet, and the line was short. The woman at the desk, buying stamps, turned to face us in line, and began singing “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks,” and the man in front of her joined in with, “dressed in holiday style” So, I added my voice with “in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas.” We continued through the verse and chorus of “Silver Bells” and started another, before she ambled out the front doors, wishing us all a Merry Christmas! The clerk smiled, and thanked us for the serenade. “That’s a new one,” I heard her say, as I finished with my transaction. Snippets.

Below, the mighty Eel, down at Robin’s Pool, yesterday afternoon. It was higher the night before, when torrential rain poured, but walking to the river with the sun shining is lovely!

Soup takes center stage for a couple of days each week at this time of year. We prep on Mondays, cook on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and deliver on Thursdays. I spent Christmas week perusing various books, and searching the web, trying to pair my enthusiasm with particular recipes. The hardest part of the procedure is deciding which ones to make! Therefore, I’m ready for the next several weeks! Decisions made! This week we’re doing a chicken, a pork and a veggie: Apricot Butternut Squash Chicken Curry, Pork Chile Verde, and Spicy Indonesian Yam and Peanut. The rolls will be Red Pepper.

Pomegranate season in California is long….. much longer than I knew. We’ve adventured to a Pomegranate Orchard outside of Corning a few times… we being my grandkids Linden and Magnolia, along with their parents, Sarah and Malanyon. I thought we had to get them by the middle of October. We had no time this year, October zoomed by, then November, but I thought I’d check in anyway…. Sure enough, we were able to drive over in early December and pick to our hearts content. There were PLENTY of pomegranates left…. We picked enough for 18 gallons of juice (the great part of this place, Hillside Poms, is that they have hydraulic presses there, which we can use to press the fruit into juice) We still have some frozen for another batch, but in the mean time, we were able to re-stock our supply of jelly, and make some Pomegranate Syrup, too. Needless to say, their dogs were an especially nice draw.

We never lack for projects on the farm…. even ones we don’t spearhead. Family Tree Service, under the guise of protecting power lines, came in and took down one of the dead firs up in camp, by Cabin 5. We tried to get them to cut a couple more… but couldn’t convince them that they were a problem to the lines, just our own buildings. Grateful, though, for getting this giant down. It remains in 20 foot lengths beside Cabin 5, and will so, until we get our friendly excavator team out to finish the job.