fff april 17
“Do you know Google Meets? I’m down with the flu! Can you help our leader run this meeting?” Thankfully, my near total ignorance with the application did not hinder the conference call with 28 project leaders for our big volunteer day. “We have a last minute request from a principal. Can we accommodate her?” (Typing furiously to our contact to make a last minute add) Yes, we can. “Thanks for the Behr color codes for the mural paint needed. Can you get Dunn Edwards, too? Just in case.” Nice guy at Dunn Edwards helps me make matches. “Can we put those plants you ordered for the raised bed in this agave planter?” Hmmmm. It’s a taste of the week before the week of the Big Day.
While we were in this meeting, I asked whether we could get the volunteer check-in QR code early. Being a new system, logistical details were a bit hard to come by and the leader said he’d look into it. But then a text came through from a friend that I didn’t know was on the call, “Yes, you can! I’ll send it to you!”
This same friend was having her 40th birthday at a skating rink with extended family and friends and kids kids kids. Families were encouraged to wear matching outfits and some were pretty hilarious. Several of us weaker-ankled older types told her we’d come but she’d better have an ambulance on hand if we so much as put on roller skates. Loved the shirts they got for her parents.
In the midst of a busy week (roomie had her own mountain of details to manage, including swapping out a chair for her mom who fell), we had a little oasis of calm and quiet. Anna came down after work and joined us for a small local flower show, coffee at a quiet cafe, and tasty taco dinner.
We got rain! Of course, beforehand, predictions were anywhere from 0.5″ to 2″. On the day of, counts for my area dropped to 0.15″. However, my rain gauge showed we must’ve gotten a particularly wet cell since a brief hard downpour netted us 0.5″. The skies in the days following were just delightful. Fluffy bunchy bright clouds, frothy wispy clouds, stretchy gauzy ones. So lovely.
Hope you had some faves this week. Maybe even more than five!
nicotiana alata – wish you could smell its gentle jasmine-like scent
fff april 3
There are busy weeks and then there are BUSY weeks. This was one of the latter and I have a feeling it’s an on ramp to several more at top speed. But first, some faves:
First, roomie’s mom was released from the hospital in more stable condition. Roomie still has a lot to do for her recovery every day, but a friend who’s a nurse helped some aspects. So thankful she was available at just the right time. When roomie’s mom needed a powered recliner to more easily lift her feet and then help her out of the chair, roomie found a shop that had one that was the right size for her mom. Still a ways to go, but thankful for so many answers to prayer.
For the big volunteer day near the end of this month, I visited the nursery and put in the plant order for the schools, but had to go elsewhere for some that this shop didn’t have. Also, as the project leader for the local school, I worked on some mural designs for the principal and district to approve before we could line up paint and supplies. Mulch delivery schedule to schools was also finalized. Thankfully, details are coming together nicely.
In the midst of all the running around, we managed to keep our brunch date with a friend and lunch with some other friends. It was a good time to decompress and catch up and share in our lives together. The bouquet above is what I brought from the garden to the brunch.
What had been predicted to be barely measurable rainfall turned out to be 0.4″ which was enough to make the garden happy. Partly cloudy days with beautiful fluffy clouds made it a joy to snatch whatever time I could eke out. Here are some developments: the first ever bloom on my passionfruit vine, blackberry blooms that might set fruit for real this year, buds forming on the dahlias, and eye-catching leucospermum bursting with flowers that last for weeks on end.
Roomie and I were returning from a Maundy Thursday service when someone texted roomie that they thought my phone had gotten left at the church. Back we drove, thankful it was caught in time so that I wouldn’t be without it when we’re so busy. As we headed home the second time, I noticed the turn signals weren’t working. Before we groaned about having to squeeze in a trip to the car shop, a quick check with our favorite chatbot said it’s likely a fuse or triggered by using hazard lights (which we used when I ran in to get my phone). Switching on/off the hazards restored the turn signals! Yay!
Edited to add: A terrific plant share! We continue to have an influx of new faces to the event. I brought mostly flower seedlings and brought home a little fern, a few terra cotta pots and saucers, lemon, grapefruit, geranium cuttings, and a sugar snap pea. It was loquat season and everyone who had a tree or a friend with a tree was sharing fruit. Those who didn’t have plants or fruit to share brought baked goods. We had a great time. Then roomie met me and neighbor for coffee and catch up.
Thankful for the pockets of quiet for contemplation and to anticipate the coming joy of Resurrection Day. Isaiah 50:7 “For the Lord God will help Me; therefore I will not be disgraced; therefore I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I will not be ashamed.”
‘Golden Celebration’ rose
fff march 6
leucadendron ‘Safari Goldstrike’
Plant shares are (nearly) always going to make the Faves, but February’s was especially fun and lively. The warm weather has jump started many gardens and people brought all kinds of new stuff. I brought seedlings (cosmos, gaura, calendula, nigella, centaurea, zinnias) as well as rescued plants ready for a new home: passionfruit vine, sweet potato, geranium, germander. My aunt’s large pots were claimed early by eager participants. So many new-to-me plants that came home with me: yacon (a root veg), Pakistani mulberry (smaller, more suited to SoCal), Boston fern, perennial purple poppy, a section of sugar cane (for my aunt), and a white blooming Brazilian plume. That year-old mulberry is already producing fruit! Bonus: Afterwards, roomie, neighbor, and I enjoyed the air conditioning (and coffee!) of a local coffee shop that had big open spaces. It was good to get caught up with all the news. Neighbor works for a tile company owned by a carpet company and always has ideas for projects.
Another plant fave: My aunt had given me a black Surinam cherry sapling grown by a friend of hers. I’ve had it for a year or two, but this is the first time I’ve seen tiny blooms on it. We’ll see in a few weeks if those turn into actual fruit. Nasturtiums have been loving our wetter cooler January but the heat wave has really pushed them into full bloom. Bonus: while I was noting plant growth, dozens and dozens of American robins were swooping in and out of the garden to eat the Carolina cherry berries that are still on the trees.
I had two outstanding businessy things to deal with that had been delayed for weeks. One was a document originating from my mortgage company that needed to be corrected (you can guess how eager they were to fix it… not). A second issue seemed to have been lost in the mail. Both were resolved without too much effort on my part. Such a blessing and relief to have them off my plate.
When a neighbor was giving away a small bench with storage, roomie and I immediately thought about our friend Anna — and the excuse to drive up to see her as we delivered the bench. We had a delicious lunch she’d packed for us at her favorite coffee shop and two hours of rich conversation. Bonus: we survived two near misses while on the way there and made it home in time for roomie’s doctor appointment despite having police run a break on the freeway a mile from our off ramp. Whew!
My job as the city-wide volunteer day’s Plants Person has really kicked into high gear. I visited one school with its principal and our project supervisor. Then the three project supervisors and I met with the school district’s maintenance and operations team for review and approval of projects at each of the 20 participating schools. Many more meetings are being scheduled to nail down plant and mulch details, estimating number of volunteers, ordering materials…
It’s that time of year for overflowing citrus — neighbor brought me a trug heavy with her mom’s tangerines and a friend from church shared a big box of ripe grapefruit. I juiced both but also sectioned some sweet grapefruit for eating, too. Mom’s neighbor shared her tangerines as well as a woman at my Bible study.
Happy almost-spring weekend, friends.
freesias are miles ahead of daffodils
fff feb 27
Finally. Finally, we were able to deliver the music instrument centers to the school. A couple of the kids from the special ed class noticed what was going on and immediately started playing, trying out the bells, clanging on the triangles. They couldn’t keep away from it even when we were posing for a photo.
Roomie is already planning another project for this same classroom. And projects for this year’s volunteer event in April are underway: principals have submitted their project list, project leads for each site identified, gardening projects getting lined up. It feels good to see details emerge.
Roomie has been searching for a couple of particular Bibles with larger print and wanted to be able to look at layout and handle them for size and heft. There are few bookstores anymore, but we found one that had an astonishing collection. The photo below represents about 1/2 of the English Bibles in stock. They had nearly as many Spanish Bibles, too. This notice on one of their shelves made me smile (meant to help guests navigate their store): “Not finding what you’re looking for? Don’t wander 40 years! Search by…”
We had a morning free and lovely sunshine to enjoy before the heatwave (yes, we hit 90F this week). Roomie and I took the Tracks at Brea heading westward where the paths had been extended in the past year or so. There was a nice shady walkway along the Brea Canyon Channel with the downtown shopping center backing up to it. We took the steps up a four-story parking structure for some interesting views. We ran into very few people and only one bicyclist.
My aunt and uncle mentioned they were getting a bathroom re-tiled and mentioned the store, which happened to be where neighbor works. I offered to help them pick it up which turned out to be a good thing since the boxed tile was shrinkwrapped to a pallet that the forklift guy placed on the bed of my truck (hard to do if they’d only had a sedan). And since they didn’t need the pallet, I took it to another neighbor who is reclaiming the wood for his art show. We had a great visit looking at the pieces he’s created from found objects.
Last week’s rain also brought snow on our San Gabriel Mountains — about 30 inches on Mt. Baldy, the tallest peak in the photo below. We found ourselves admiring the sight from around town and being thankful it will recharge our groundwater basins. But it’s the Sierra Nevada mountain range that supplies about 1/3 of my area’s water. Click here to see some fantastic before/after shots from NASA.
Happy weekend, friends. The weather feels like well into spring around here with plenty of sunshine.
fasten-ating
For the annual city-wide, volunteer-driven service day, our fellowship class usually works at a local elementary school’s garden. Last year, we were also asked to convert a somewhat mish-mash area into a sensory garden that the special ed kids (mostly TK and kindergarten) could explore. We’d come up with ideas like a planter with hard-to-kill scented plants (rosemary, mint, lavender), a planter with wooden plants, flowers, and bugs, a sandbox at the principal’s request, a couple of instrument centers.
We were still at the planning stage when there was a pivot. The district decided to use some of their grant funding to install artificial turf. Their head groundsman was adamant that no sand or dirt get near that turf since cleaning it out would be impossible. We did have permission for the instrument centers that would merely rest on the turf. On the official work day in late April, the focus was on removing everything from the area: pavers, plants, everything but the tree.
Meanwhile, roomie and I were researching instruments that were a) affordable, b) weatherproof, c) kid-safe, d) not too loud, e) didn’t require a team of builders. These turned out to be very challenging parameters (check out these cool but wildly expensive options). In May, this was the inspiration (a unit no longer sold) and initial instrument choices we’d shared with the principal. By August, I’d gotten some funding and, more importantly, a volunteer to build the frame.
By the fall, we’d purchased the instruments and began talking about materials and dimensions and my builder volunteer started refining his ideas. Another guy from the same fellowship wanted to join in the fun. One of his first jobs was purchasing parts for the aeronautics industry and he loves tinkering. A perfect add. Builder guy had access to a pretty amazing woodshop where we met to plan exact placement and consider fastener options. The fastener piece was still a bit vague, but we decided to move ahead with what we had.
Once frames were built, they were brought to our place for staining and sealing. The guys started it and roomie and I finished over the next few days. That took a bit more care and time than you might expect — there are a lot of sides to these things! We also had Santa Ana winds and then rain and high humidity into the mix.
Finally time to attach the instruments. Again, the parameters: a) weatherproof, b) kid-proof, c) allow instruments to sound properly (free enough but secure). After quite a lot of discussions and trials, our purchasing guy went on an exploratory trip to a hardware store and came up with eye screws, tiny drawer pulls, key rings, and cable-and-crimp system. Any hitches (ouch! those sharp ends of metal wire sticking out of crimps), were solved by our creative guys (angle grinder took care of those sharp ends). So thankful to have these two!
Here, we’re about 90% done attaching instruments. We ran out of crimps and time for this session, but the path ahead was clear.
The last challenge was how to secure the metal mallet so that it would not swing about when not in use or when the units were being moved. We considered a section of PVC, bamboo, or galvanized pipe, but purchasing guy said he wanted to check in his workshop at home. He’s a bit of a magpie, collecting odds and ends for his found-materials art. He brought a jar of jumbled electrical conduit parts, among which we found some zinc conduit couplings that seemed perfect for the job.
But what’s the best way to fasten it to the frame? Just about this time, a young guy came into the shop with a project of his own (turns out he was one of the guys who help build it some years ago and the grandson of a friend of ours from way back). To help us along with our project, he threw together a jig to hold the conduit so that he could use a drill press to drill a small and then larger hole to accommodate some hardware.
And with this last bit (except for one minor touch-up), we were officially done!
“What’s our next project?” asked our builder guy. It’s been such a productive and fun collaboration requiring some creative and inventive solutions. We’ve all enjoyed working together. Maybe we should start another project…
fff jan 30
iochroma didn’t get a winter haircut this year and still blooming away
Seems incredible that we’ve already reached the end of the first month of 2026. All the more reason to pause to remember and be thankful.
We’ve had so many new faces at plant share for the last few gatherings. It’s been terrific to meet them and enjoy how they light up when they see what everyone brings to share. Our group administrator has also encouraged those who don’t have plant things to bring snacks instead. I opted for plants: rooted strawberry runners, flower seedlings, scented geraniums, alstroemeria, African blue basil, iochroma cuttings, succulents, yellow salvia. Some were things I’d grown for sharing; some were things that were no longer working for my garden. Everything went to somebody! Neighbor contributed some of the swag she gets from work, too. I picked up a couple of small terracotta pots and coleus cuttings.
I’d met a new friend last fall, intending to get to know her better to prepare for our interview at the October fundraiser. I contacted her again this week in anticipation of continuing our conversation around volunteer opportunities for our aging class. Many of the projects we’d been doing are labor intensive and we’d like to have options for our older folks who want to help out. So we arranged to meet again this week, along with roomie and another volunteer coordinator. Fantastic fun conversations with lots of laughs and ideas and plans. We went so long that I was very thankful when my woodshop buddy texted to say he’d be delayed a half hour. There was juuust enough time for roomie and me to run home, throw something together for lunch, load the truck with all the things, and drive up to the shop.
That turned out to be the first of three sessions roomie and I had at the woodshop where we’re working with our builder guys to finalize the instrument centers we’d been plugging away on for months. I’ve so appreciated the collaboration as we solved a variety of problems that came up. We’re on the home stretch and it feels great!
And here’s this week’s not-fave/fave. Roomie’s had pain that’s been building over a few days until she decided she needed a trip to urgent care. So thankful we could get in fairly quickly, get seen by a doctor who gave her a shot to reduce the pain enough for her to get an adjustment from her chiropractor. Thankful the chiro could treat her in between his existing appointments. And thankful, indeed, that she’s on the mend.
The robins are back! A few years ago, we had such a flurry of robins flying to our backyard that neighbors were texting to ask what was going on. The robins had just discovered all the dark berries on our Carolina cherry trees and were snapping them up as fast as they could. This year, they’re at it again, though the pace seems less frantic. I’ve yet to get a decent photo, but it’s been great to hear them flapping about in the trees — they are restless noisy eaters. And given the number of cedar waxwings, I’m guessing they eat berries, too. Bonus: Merlin app identified a few new-to-me birds nearby: Cassin’s Kingbird, Swinhoe’s White-eye, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ring-billed Gull, Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, and Orange-crowned Warbler.
Happy weekend, friends. Hope you’re keeping warm and off the roads where winter has stormed in. We in SoCal are putting up umbrellas, pulling out shorts, watering container plants daily.
nikkipolani 
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