YMCA to the Rescue

Since June of last year Mr. B and I have been taking the Enhance Fitness class at our local Y twice a week.  What a difference a little exercise makes!  When we started I couldn’t:

• Get up off the floor without help, either from a person or a piece of furniture
• Walk down stairs one foot after the other
• Turn my head far enough to see oncoming traffic when backing out of a diagonal parking space.
• Take a deep breath without having my lungs hurt

Now I can do all those things, the first two within a couple of weeks of starting the program.
We were so pleased that we joined the Y and planned to use their exercise equipment on a regular basis. 

























The regular basis part hasn’t happened yet although I have used the treadmill a few times.

Last Tuesday we had a pretty good rain and Wednesday morning this was the view of the mountains east of town.
At first I though that white stuff was clouds but it turned out to be SNOW which is a rare sight around here.  Maybe once or twice a year.

 This winter has been much colder than usual with frost almost every morning.  It doesn’t stay below freezing for very long so we haven’t had any damage in the garden, except for some of the Meyer lemons.  But the Washington Navel oranges have been fantastic. 
I usually juice them but this year they are so perfect that we’ve been just peeling and eating.  We’ll probably juice the Valencia oranges, although they are pretty good eating too.
The only other things in my winter garden are parsley and swiss chard.  I really dropped the ball on starting seeds last fall and then I didn’t feel like going out in the garden when it was so cold. 

A Landslide Would Have Been Better

but we'll take this.

Lots happening tonight

The Giants swept Detroit to win their second World Series in 3 years, a hurricane nicknamed FrankenSandy is barreling along the east coast and we had an earthquake. Pretty good shake but didn't last long.

Zito wins one for Gma Harper

Game 1 of the 2012 World Series
SF Giants win 8-3
Barry Zito allows no runs and the Panda hits three homers!

It can't be a coincidence that on April 9th, the day she died, he pitched his best game in years. We think she has been guiding him all season.

Still Alive after All This Time

It’s been so long since I’ve posted on anything like a regular basis, that I don’t know where to start.  Maybe it’s best to go ahead from here and plug in previous events as I remember them.

This has been a strange winter:  Usually we can’t count on any rain until mid-November at the earliest but, after having an inch in September and another in October, we have been dry as a bone since.  This morning we had a bit, not enough to register on the rain gauge but enough to dampen the ground.  However it did energize me and I bought a couple of six packs of sugar snap peas at OSH today as well as onion sets -  red, white and yellow.  I’ll try to get the peas and some of the onions planted tomorrow.  I couldn’t find any English peas so will have to plant those from seeds.

When we were in Gilroy today I stopped at Grocery Outlet and found one-ounce bottles of red food coloring for 79 cents each.  I made a Red Velvet cake for Christmas and the food coloring cost me $6 for the 2 ounces required.  $1.60 sounds a lot better to me and I think I’ll make one for Valentine’s Day.

I used the original boiled frosting instead of the current cream cheese frosting.  Sure was good.

One Hundred and Twenty Years Ago Today

Mabel Clara Trott was born to Isaac Trott and his wife Sophia Algenia Lamb Trott in San Luis Obispo, California.  She weighed , as she often told me, between a pound and a quarter and a pound and a half, and was so small that they wrapped her in cotton and put her in a cigar box.
It’s amazing to me that such a tiny baby could have survived in 1891, but I’m sure glad she did.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
Her father died the following year and her mother in 1900.  Mabel and her older sister went to live with their Lamb grandparents in San Ardo. a small town in Monterey County.  She told me about being wakened from a sound sleep on April 18, 1906, the day of the great San Francisco earthquake.
This photo of Mabel and my dad was probably taken about 1916.  She could be so dramatic!

Mabel was a bit of a free spirit.  I’m not sure if she was still married to my grandfather when this photo was taken.  Look at the peacock feathers on her hat!  Grandma spent most of her life on ranches in central coastal California:  Peachtree Ranch in Monterey County;  Quien Sabe Ranch in San Benito County;  Rancho Santa Margarita in San Luis Obispo County, where my mother and I joined her when my dad went off to war after Pearl Harbor; and apparently Rancho 101 where this photo was taken.  I don’t know where this ranch was located but I suspect it was either in San Luis Obispo or Santa Barbara County.

Mabel was my only surviving grandparent: my maternal grandmother and both of my grandfathers had died before I was born.  However she had remarried in about 1925 to a wonderful man who had no children of his own.  
When my dad went off to war he asked his step-father to take care of me if he didn’t come back.  Grandpa Griffin took his assignment seriously and was a true grandfather to me for the first ten years of my life.
Grandma Mabel died in 1975 but she is still remembered fondly.

Time Marches On

What happened to January and February?

Well, January started out with a big mess.  Day after day the front yard and most of the block would be littered with fallen leaves from the larger Liquidambar tree. 

On New Years’ Day granddaughters 1 and 2 spent some time raking the front lawn for us.  They filled two trash cans which we then emptied into the compost bins. 

After that I was on my own, so every few days I would rake the leaves from the lawn and the street into the gutter, then bag them up. 

The compost bins couldn’t handle them fast enough and now the bags are piled by the side of the house waiting until they are needed.

January also meant the start of orange season.  We have two trees:  a Washington Navel and a Valencia.  The Washington Navel is ready first and is supposed to be for eating but I use most of the crop for juice because I don’t want to wait for the Valencia which isn’t ripe for another month or so.

We always have way more than we can use but every year I vow to try.  This year has been a real challenge because most of the WN oranges are too high for me to reach without a ladder.  I think I need to get Mr. B out there to pick what he can reach and, when the danger of frost is over, we should prune the tree quite a bit lower.

Later in January Safeway had a good price on Foster Farms whole chickens so I decided to make Chicken and Noodles.  Daughter’s family was coming for dinner so I prepared the noodle dough and the granddaughters helped me roll it out and cut it. 

I learned to love Chicken and Noodles from my Midwestern husband.  Mr. B’s mother, grandmother and aunts all made it for family get-togethers.  Each one had a slightly different take on it.  The only recipe I have is from his Aunt Georgia and I had to stand next to her and try to estimate the amounts of flour etc. she was using for the noodles because nobody used a written recipe.  I was never any good at rolling out such stiff dough so I long ago bought this Italian pasta machine and it rolls out the dough as thin as I want it.  Unfortunately, the noodles just don’t have the same texture as the old family recipe.  But they are still good served over mashed potatoes on a cold winter’s day. 

Mr. B is coming along well with his recovery.  Every day he spends some time walking up and down the block using the rolling walker lent to him by our neighbor.  Then he rides the exercise bicycle we bought over 30 years ago.  Every time we moved there was much discussion about whether to get rid of it since we hardly ever used it.  Sure glad we still have it!

In February the almond tree bloomed, for all the good it will do us.  We planted it almost 20 years ago and we have yet to get any almonds.  They all get harvested by the doggoned squirrels before we realize it.

Every year we try another squirrel deterrent but so far nothing has worked.  One year it was human hair from the beauty shop, another year it was moth balls (which are surprisingly hard to find these days).  I suggested trapping and releasing him out in the country but Mr. B thinks it would be cruel to separate Mr. Squirrel from his family.  What are you gonna do?