Happy Holidays everybody! Hope your stockings are full of gardening gadgets and seed packets! My wishlist includes Michael Dirr's new book on Viburnums...fingers crossed that anybody even looked at my wishlist :-) The Bluestone catalog and a few seed catalogs are already here so I am already thinking about next year's bounty!! Here's a cute pic of my Connemara/Morgan pony Sneaks, during last week's snow.

Merry merry Christmas, everyone. We're having a thunderstorm this morning, which is supposed to change over to a wintry mix this afternoon - we'll see. Usually any snow forecast is taken with a grain of salt around here. We had lasagna for Christmas eve dinner, and everyone wanted tamales for Christmas dinner, so we're having Sharon's spinach enchiladas, tamales, and some kind of Mexican slaw I'm going to try to duplicate. I realized that I accidentally planned for basically the same dish from different cultures - enchiladas from Mexico and lasagna from Italy. Oh, well, I've never been good at menu planning. Have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year, everyone! Sally

We had a laid back day here, also. Quiet, except for occasional mandolin and uckele practice. Both were gifts: a nice mandolin for DS, and a cheap uckele in PINK from DH to me. Now, I have NO eye-hand coordination for music, so this should be interesting! Nancy

Belated Merry Christmas to all. Especially to Triciae, who was on my mind a lot this holiday and will be during future holidays. Dear Wonder Woman, I hope you are doing well, where ever you are. Thank you for showing me what courage and strength and kindness are. We drove down to the Bay Area for the holidays. Christmas Eve we had dinner with our good friends in Berkeley, raw oysters with mignonette, cracked crab, and the traditional Buche de Noel. Last night we had dinner with other good friends in Richmond, tenderloin, mashed potatoes and a warm cauliflower-brussel sprout salad. I made half of the tenderloin, cut pieces 1" thick and tied them into rounds, pan cooked, with a sauce of reduced white balsamic vinegar, Muscat wine, shallots and garlic, butter, sauteed mushroom stems, blended smooth, then simmered over whole mushroom caps. No recipe, just made it up. Our hostess roasted the rest of the tenderloin with a red wine and shallot reduction. We were supervised by a friend who is a head chef at a large hotel and, for the first time in many years, didn't have to work on Christmas day, but was nonetheless pressed into service which he did with good humour. I've been negotiating a stressful matter at work for the past few weeks. As of Dec 24, we were uncertain whether our little business unit would be shut down and I had prepared myself to be jobless come Jan 1st. That all got resolved satisfactorily at noon on Christmas Eve, final document review pending, so for the first time in a month, I was able to relax and unclench. It was nice.