Year-End Letter - Pandemic Edition

This year we did not send the usual Christmas card.  Instead I made a simple card that contained our year-end letter which T and I signed.  The letter and card were simple - reflecting the life we all had during the year in review 2020.

Eucalyptus: The illustration used on our card this year.

  

December 25, 2020

Dear Relatives and Friends --

To say that 2020 is a different year is both an understatement and a cliché. And yet in spite of the sudden shift in the way we lived due to the pandemic, life in 2020 was mostly ordinary. Tim and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary early in the year. When the shelter- in-place was imposed, our children were in different places: Shannon in Madison, Wisconsin; Brahms in Arcata, Humboldt County; and Miriam in Davis, Yolo County.

Most significant this year
Miriam: Participated in an hour long performance of the Steve Reich piece “Music for 18 Musicians”.
Brahms: Got my teaching credential and moved to Redding for teaching job.
Shannon: Bought a house.
Helen: Got my Certificate in Botanical Art from Filoli.
Tim: Lived with Helen 24x7 at home.

Weirdest this year
Tim: Enrolled in a college class.
Shannon: Got into volleyball for a couple of months
Miriam: Had a month where I was fixated on learning everything about the Zodiac Killer.
Helen: Raised chickens
Brahms: Spur of the moment trip to Portland and Seattle.

Learned in the Pandemic
Brahms: Sometimes you need to be the person reminding others of the seriousness of the issue. Other times you need to be the person assuring others that everything will be okay, and sometimes you just need someone to remind you of these things.
Shannon: Plague horror movies weren’t wrong in depicting lots of people breaking quarantine and failing to take the disease seriously.
Miriam: I learned to let go.
Helen: Learned to make artisan breads using my own yeast culture.
Tim: Learned to grow and enjoy dahlias.

We hope that the resilience and grace we practiced in 2020 has made us all better people to face what 2021 brings.

Best Wishes for 2021

From the Lewis Family

Hint of Spring in the Fall

Hyacinth 

The combination of colors in this picture reminds me of Chowking halo-halo.  The maple tree was turning yellow while the Japanese maple trees have already lost most of their orangey leaves baring their grayish red branches as the fog softened the colors behind the blue and green from the hyacinth.  We got this basket of bulb arrangement from my father-in-law as a gift.  I never knew how fragrant these flowers were. 

Devil's Lake State Park

Back in the days when our kids were younger, we brought them to places.  Now that they are older and learning the ropes of being independent, they do things for us, one thing at a time, as we did for them.  They show us the places they thought would be interesting to us. 

A week ago, Shannon showed us one of the bigger state parks in the area - the Devil's Lake State Park  in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  There we hiked all around the lake.  One side involved hiking on a railroad while the other half involved trekking among huge boulders.  I preferred the latter.  But it was a good hike of not just Tim and I but with our two daughters.  This does not happen very often anymore but whenever it happens, we are grateful.  It good to have an insider tell us what time to go there because the place got busy after a while.  We were fortunate to have been able to find a decent parking and not had to walk another mile back to get to the car.

Devil's Lake was beautiful.  People from the area go there to do all sorts of outdoorsy things including hiking, picnicking, snorkeling, partying, swimming, reading, boating, rock climbing, just being in the sun, and many more.  I even saw people taking pictures of wild flowers!  :)  I thought to myself that in our own area, we also have the Folsom Lake but in general people go to the lake to be active and be cool.  At the Devil's Lake Park, it was like Stephens Green in Dublin, Ireland where people just go there to be outside their homes and be in the sun.  Although they also do all sorts of activities, they don't have to do anything else once they are there - other than collect some sunshine, I guess.  

The boulders on one side of the lake were pinkish in color, which to me was unusual.  According to geological record of the place, the rocks are made of quartzite which are characteristically whitish gray.  The ones in this lake, however, are a special type of quartzite - called the Baraboo Quartzite which contains a significant amount of iron that changed the color to pinkish to purplish gray.  

At the end of our hike, I was feeling the effect of the Wisconsin humidity.  But we stopped at a nearby town to enjoy some Culver's and enjoyed the refreshment from Buffalo chicken tenders, butter burgers, French fries, cheese curds, and frozen custard.  

It is a good feeling to experience things that our children discovered on their own and are now shared with us.

Peaches, Lemons, and Neighbors

This morning while I was watering in the backyard, I noticed buyers who are looking at our neighbor's house which has been in the market for at least two months now.  I know that because when we came back from our trip to the Philippines last June, we were surprised at how many signs for sale have sprung up in our neighborhood.  Anyway, as normal buyers do, they evaluate and make comments about the house loudly as if none of the neighbors are listening to what they are saying.  I did not hear about what they said about the interior of the house but I heard everything they said about the backyard.  They commented about the pool and the surrounding area - how nice it is.  They though the greenery above the spa was ridiculous - not sure what they were referring to.  They liked the mature Queen palms around the yard.  And get this, they like it that the neighbors (which is us) are growing the peaches and lemons. 

We planted our trees along the fence line and although we regularly prune off the branches that hang into their yard, we also asked Steve and Melissa (Miller) to feel free to cut of any branch that they don't like from the trees.  For a good reason, they decided to let one tiny lemon branch which was loaded with fruits to remain hanging into their side of the fence.  Now that branch is at least two inches in diameter and continues to bear a lot of lemons every year.  This made me happy because they are taking advantage of our overly prolific tree - either for practical use or aesthetics as lemons can be very pretty when the fruits are yellow. 

Because we are not good at pruning, our peach tree is doing the same thing.  However, Steve prunes it on their side from time to time but only after the fruits are gone.  As of today, the tree is still loaded with fruits even after I harvested a big bag of peaches yesterday.  The branch that hangs onto their side of the fence is still fruitful. 

I hope that whoever will buy Steve and Melissa's house, that we will be good neighbors to them regardless of the trees between us.  😊 

Making Memories

The state of the union - 2019

People accuse of me always taking pictures.  That is something I can't deny.  It has been a habit of mine to keep photographs from events - whether significant milestones or the mundane everyday - in our journey as a family.  I enjoy taking pictures because they are visual memories of that split second.  With a photograph there is a greater chance that I can pretend to travel back and feel the same vibe that was there at the time. Sometimes when I look into an old picture, it can either uplift me to think that we once experiences such a delightful time in the past.  Sometimes it brings me a heavy load of nostalgic emotions of sadness - knowing that such time will never come again and that we can no longer go back to it.  It all depends on what my emotional state is a the time.   Sometimes old photographs inspire me to do things that I have long stop doing because of changes in our life. For example I used to love collecting different plants but because of difficulty in maintaining them either due to lack of time as my children's needs demanded more of my time or due to drought, I stopped adding to the already existing plants I had in my garden.  But now that my kids need me less and less than they did.  And although conserving water is now a part of our everyday life, drought in California is no longer a hindrance to gardening.  I could collect new plants again, with restraint.  And this I thought because, I see from time to time pictures of my old garden.  

His new hobby - taking close up pictures of wildflowers.

During our visit with Brahms, I brought my camera. I took pictures and also asked Brahms and Miriam to take pictures with it.  Here are some the ones we took of us during that fun time we spent with Brahms.  

One of few occasions when Tim is my background :)

They don't like posing for me.

Brahms holding the camera.

Brahms and I in Mckinleyville, CA

Miriam at the Fern Canyon 

It was windy in Trinidad

August Trip 2019 - Part 3 (Fern Canyon & Trinidad)

Fern Canyon

There is a place in the northern coast of California close to Oregon where ferns of various species thrive.  This place is called the Fern Canyon.  I'm guessing that over a long period of time, the path of a continuous stream of water coming from the mountains created the ravine that leads to the Pacific Ocean.  Today, the canyon which is part of the Prairie Creek State Park, is so deep that the walls could easily be 20 feet in height.  Ferns  grow on these vertical walls extending their fronds towards the light.  In areas where water trickle from the top of the ridge, mosses have covered the rock walls like a Turkish rug that hangs from the ceilings of the rug store I've seen in Istanbul.  The stream, of water runs low at this time of year but I've been told that there was a lot more water earlier in the season.  Although the vegetation in the canyon is predominantly ferns,  as you go above the ridge, different wild flowers grow there including the imposing skunk cabbages in the minor gullies.
This was the first place.

The Lewises trekking the canyon

Trinidad, CA

As we drove back towards our hotel in McKinleyville, CA, we stopped at the town where Brahms used used to work - Trinidad.  According to Brahms, this is he smallest town in California.  It is a a beautiful place, most of the houses there are vacation homes.  The school where he worked is very close to the beach and on another side there is a cove where the fishing boats are moored.  The view reminds me of Portwenn, the fictitious town in the BBC series Doc Martin.

Windy and beautiful

Brahms showed us the way

Miriam and her stick

It was windy, sunny and cold when we got there.  And we found the place beautiful and unspoiled.
We were all glad that Brahms showed us some of the beautiful sights in his stomping grounds.

August Trip 2019 - Part 2 (Arcata)

Now that Brahms lives in Humboldt County, it is a lot easier to conjure a reason to travel north than it used to.  Having said that, he has traveled back home since he moved more times that we traveled to visit him.  This time he will be a student again working on acquiring a California Teaching Credential and probably he will be busier than before.

Brahms has the gift of making his family feel at home no matter where we are.  He makes sure that we do the things we do as a family regardless of our situation.  For example, he brought a game and some dessert to enjoy while we played.  When he could not be with us on Sunday morning, because he was working to prep for the church service, he directed us to go walking at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary   It was a delightful place especially for us who appreciate wild flowers and for Miriam who paid attention to the numerous species of birds that inhabited the place.  We could have lingered there were it not for other things on our agenda for the day.

Brahms works as Children's Director at Catalyst Church.  We attended  service there which was held outside on the church's courtyard.  There was a fabric awning to attenuate the sunshine but the pastor and the worship team did their thing under the direct sunlight.  We guessed that because this is Arcata where they get few sunny days in a year they were trying to harvest as much sunshine as they can get.  Later on we went to eat at one of his recommended burger place where we again dined on the patio where I had a fancy salmon burger and a very good green salad - I recognized pea sprouts in it!   It was generally a beautiful day with temperatures between 65-75 degrees (F) and knowing that the temperature back home was a lot higher.  Then we walked to Brahms' new place, since we have not seen it before.  He showed us the backyard which has a lot of potential as a garden.  In fact Brahms already staked his claim on one of the planter boxes with the token bean plants which he started in coke cans back when he was in his old apartment.  We strolled a few blocks to go to a used bookstore called Tin Can Mailman.  There I bought a book, 'The Orchid Paintings of Franz Bauer'.  Miriam browsed the music section but nothing begged her to buy it.  

That was the first half of the day.