Epiphany

 

 

January 6th is Three Kings Day. Epiphany is a Greek word meaning a sudden comprehension, and it marks the visitation of the Magi. It is the twelfth and final day of Christmas. 

In places where they know how to have a good time, today marks the start of carnival season which lasts right through Mardi Gras Day. In New Orleans, friends gather for weekly King Cake parties. 

 

A wonderfully gaudy looking thing you won't find in Seattle. 

Those ponies are stinking cute, but above a dead serious, 6th century Ravenna mosaic. Such forward urgency and yearning expressed with tiny bits of stone. What a masterpiece! 

It is considered bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up past Twelfth Night, and if you do, you're supposed to burn them on Shrove Tuesday, February 9th.  So many old pagan superstitions (or more kindly, traditions) wrapped up in the Liturgical Calendar.  

Everything is finally packed away here and hauled back up in the attic, with the exception of the outdoor lights which I take down around Ground Hogs Day.  

 

 

 

Back to business

 

 

Learning watercolor painting can feel pretty intimidating when you dive into the detailed instruction videos on YouTube. So much perfection! But I ran across a PBS show called Pocket Sketching that inspired me more to get started with this set of beautiful Japanese paints I got for Christmas.

The show's instructor, Kath Macaulay, is a hoot, and I like how she works with small scale papers and sketch books. My little dressing table works fine. 

Her excellent motto is, learn enough to play for a lifetime. She laughs off her mistakes. Watercolor is actually pretty forgiving it you don't take it too seriously. And that can be said for many things. 

"Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it." Salvador Dali 

Monday is here after the long holiday break, so back to normal on our street with the school traffic roaring by twice a day. How nice to come and go as we pleased for two weeks and have a parking space in front of the house. Sometimes we feel like captives at home, but at least a nice place to be holed up. 

Between the rain and dark, it takes a great deal of effort to leave home. The days of ample and free parking in West Seattle are long gone. On Friday night, we were so tired from taking down the decorations we couldn't face the crowded Junction and walking several blocks to the restaurant. So we postponed the Indian food idea and opted instead for delicious takeout from our Thai restaurant 2 blocks away. A good choice. 

More comforts of home

 

 

That screen is the new weather station I gave John for Christmas. Of course, we could just step outside or look at the thermostat, but we seem to find it endlessly fascinating. Life can be boring this time of year.

Indoors (blue) a comfortable 70 degrees with 38% humidity. Outdoors, a typical winter day: cloudy, 40 degrees with 84% humidify. Which is bone chilling, in the way only Seattle can be. 

When we were downtown, I overheard some tourists on the street talking about the temperature. They thought it was in the low 30's, but it was actually close to 50-- our special dampness makes it feel much colder here. 

 

Anyway, a final photo of Christmas last night before everything finally gets put away today. I had time on my hands yesterday afternoon and made a real pot pie with turkey meat and gravy stashed in the freezer.

 

And not one of those lazy pot pies, were you slap store bought puff pasty on top of a casserole. I've learned a few things baking these complicated things. First, a lower temperature and a long time in the oven works best-- this one was in for about two hours. And most important, it needs to rest for another full hour on the counter before you even think of digging a spoon in there. 

Tonight though, a break from kitchen slavery-- we're going out to eat at Maharaja, an Indian restaurant at the West Seattle Junction. It has been there, in the very same place as long as I've lived here, a very long time, although it's been decades since we went. Amanda and Tom has a nice meal there last week, so we'll give it a try for old times sake.

Happy New Year

 

 

I was up early as usual making coffee, and when I pulled the seal off a new carton of half n' half, it splattered all over the dark kitchen. A rude awakening to 2026! Hopefully I got the bad luck out of the way.

Seattle was socked in last night with dense, cold fog so we were happy tucked up in the warm house. John listened to the Buckeye game on the radio (blah blah) and I stayed awake long enough to watch the Times Square ball drop on my phone. It looked like a great way to get the flu.

On that positive note (this not being one of my favorite holidays) here's to fresh year filled with new adventures. Bring it on. 

Happy New year, dear friends and family.  

 

  

 

Comfort

 

 

What is more comforting in the winter than Navy bean soup made with leftover Christmas ham?

Like homemade chili, bean soup is much better heated up the next day after the flavors combine and mature. In fact, this is true of most soups, and sometimes referred to as "curing," although that is not a real culinary term.

I had a dentist appointment and was in need of comfort yesterday. Right before Christmas, I noticed a small chip on a front tooth. The culprit? Probably chocolate chip cookies straight out of the freezer. A bad idea for old teeth! 

Well, my mind had fun all week imagining expensive dental horrors like crowns, implants and veneers. Our young dentist is kind and skillful, and she repaired it with a bit of bonding, good as new in about 10 minutes. I didn't even need the unpleasant numbing shot. 

So this brings us to New Years Eve and resolutions, for those of us who still make and break them. I could start with something like "imagine the best scenario instead of the worst, because both are equally likely." 

Keep it simple. 

And from Brad Paisley: 

"Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one."  

Warm

 

An interesting book I got for Christmas, along with pretty bookmark. Phenology is "the study of the timing of recurring natural events, like plants flowering, birds migrating, or insects emerging, and how these cycles relate to seasonal changes and climatic shifts." 

Gardeners are always tuned in to this, but I wasn't familiar with the scientific term phenology. 

 

 

Seattle has been unseasonably warm this December and the camellia is already blooming. That doesn't mean much year to year, but over the decades, spring in the northern hemisphere (defined by leaf budding) is occurring several weeks earlier. I have lived long enough to attest to this. 

According to the book, this especially impacts insects and migrating birds, and there are depressing statistics, such as over 22% of butterflies have disappeared in the last 20 years. 

Well, a frost is probably still on the way for January or February, and it's an unusual winter when we don't get a little snow in the lowlands. These geraniums will be toast. 

But in the meantime, I can't recall seeing so many insects and birds and other critters in the yard, enjoying the messy bounty. 

The squirrels have trained me to throw peanuts on the deck, when they show up at the back door. It wasn't hard.