This little plant doesn’t seem to know what color it wants to be. It’s not supposed to be growing here, being a weed and all. But who am I to hold a grudge against something so vivacious and mixed-up?

Poor baby has pinkeye today. It doesn’t seem to be slowing him down any. It’s a different story for me, though. I hope he will be all better tomorrow.

Jan 15, 2010 Edit: Our pediatrician says it’s not pinkeye. Asher has a virus and it has caused viral conjunctivitis. This morning both his eyes were very, very red but not constantly goopy. So, basically, there is nothing we can do for him but let his immune system fight the virus, and support him in all the usual ways.

Aren’t they beautiful? So humble and ordinary, and yet so perfectly formed. Asher has learned to associate mushrooms with Uncle Teeve, thanks to our walk in the Santa Cruz woodland last November.

The golds and oranges of autumn are gone now. This calendula plant grows in my backyard. I don’t know why it decided to bloom in January, but I’m grateful to see its sunny face.

I have hopes that it will spread far and wide this spring and summer.

These Nandina (also known as “heavenly bamboo”) berries greet me as I arrive at my front door.

The gray days of January have arrived. It’s wintery and cold here in the Sacramento Valley, but not snowing. It just doesn’t snow here (except for short-lived, freakish occasions), so the world takes on a dreary, muddy, gray quality for a few weeks. The sky is white or gray, trees are bare, brown and black leaves rot on the ground. Sometimes all we can see is gray fog rolling in or squatting to sit with us awhile.

I sometimes feel down during this time of year. The exciting holidays are over but we still have most of winter ahead of us, with spring a long-off promise.

I decided it would be fun to go looking for some color around my home.

Our first batch of plum jam was made on December 4th with Papa. Last night we made another big batch and we’ll have to see later tonight whether it’s gelled properly. The jam is low in sugar, sweet-tart, and full of pulpy goodness. I hope it’s delicious.

The plums we used were frozen from last year’s harvest, when Dad and I picked way more than we could process in three jam-making sessions. It was a difficult time then, full of anxiety (and flat-out fear on my part) about Dad’s upcoming heart surgery, and making jam together was our bonding activity. It was special and sweet, the first time we had ever made jam together, and laced with uncomfortable overtones of, “what if.”

The jamming has been different this year. More of a celebration. More an act of thanksgiving for me. Dad is well, perhaps not fully recovered, but nevertheless doing great despite a lot of stress and caring for his 89-year-old mother and 96-year-old  aunt. He would say he’s all better now. I know he still tires easily.

I would be very pleased if I could be making plum jam with my dad for another 15 years.

Yesterday morning we woke to find  S N O W !

It hardly ever snows here in the Sacramento Valley. I think the last time was many years ago—probably more than 10—I cannot remember snow falling in all the time we’ve lived in this home.

It was gorgeous and light, just a dusting, and so, so fleeting! It was gone before 9:00 a.m.

The snow was a lovely accompaniment to St. Nicholas Day, which came on the 7th for us. The boys woke to find goodies in their shoes—oranges, chocolates, peppermints, and little Star Babies to cuddle and keep in their pockets. (Alas, Asher could not have cared less about the Star Baby, even though it looks just like him.)

Last year, I managed to throw together a tiny Solstice celebration. At the last minute, I invited Theresa and Greg and Phoebe over for dinner. I decorated the table with a gold lamé and served only yellow foods (butternut squash soup, oranges, summer squashes cut into disks and sautéed, chicken with a lemon sauce, sparkling cider, and probably other stuff I don’t remember). We had a lovely, silly time, subtly worshipping the sun and its return.

Today I don’t have any such thing planned, but maybe I’ll go to the grocery store for some oranges or something.

Over the course of this month, we’ve been observing Advent, à la Waldorf schools and Anthroposophists rather than Catholics/Christians. The difference is slight, however. We have an Advent Wreath (a real evergreen wreath) and in the center we placed a Celtic-style candleholder that was a gift from Flonkbob (and Chilipantz?) many years ago. Although the candleholder is not a ring, per se, it features three outer candles with a place for one elevated candle in the center. It’s beautiful and works nicely as the symbolic equivalent of the four weeks leading up to Solstice/Christmas, with the fourth being the prominent one signifying the birth of the Sun/Christ. (The Advent wreath we had when I was growing up was a ring, but in the Catholic tradition, we used 3 purple candles and 1 pink candle signifying the climax. Pink/purple are the traditional colors of Advent in the church.) This year, I’ve stuffed it with golden beeswax candles made by lovely dakini_grl.

Each night, we’ve been reciting the following poem, which I believe is traditional for the Anthroposophists:

The first light of Advent,
It is the light of Stones,
Stones that live in crystals, seashells,
And our bones.

The second light of Advent
It is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun,
And in the breezes dance.

The third light of Advent,
It is the light of Beasts,
The light of hope that we may see
In greatest and in least

The fourth light of Advent,
It is the light of man,
The light of love, the light of thought,
To give and understand.

I like this verse because it’s earth- and human-centered. It’s pagan-sounding to me. But that pagan stuff isn’t quite so important to me as it used to be. I’ve become like Joseph Campbell in my old age. I’ve been meditating on the meaning of Christmas to me and how well I see the lines that connect this holiday with other, older holidays. My need to step apart and define myself as a pagan, as something entirely other than a Christian, is much diminished. I’m finding that this is making me really happy, and is allowing me to enjoy all the religiosity of the season more. Somehow there’s less of a reason to be uptight.

ASIDE:
At one point last year sometime, Ian’s mother expressed concern that Lucas must be educated about the Christian faith so that he can live in our God-fearing, Christian society.  I hardly fear that Lucas will somehow escape learning a basic knowledge of Christianity, just because we don’t define ourselves as Christians. She worried because we were attending the Unitarian Universalist Society services: “Do they even talk about Christ?!”

Anyway, we have been singing the Advent song that mentions the Christ child along with our candle-lighting ritual. Lucas’s face always lights up when we sing “Then comes the Christ child at the door.” I think that he is really captivated by the image of a child being the inspiration of the season.

The other morning, all by myself, I sat down on the couch in my living room with some Christmas carol sheet music and sang my wondering Christian heart out.