It doesn’t look like much, but the plum tree is budding out. I’m encouraged, since last year it nearly succumbed to a strange infestation of what looked like tiny aphids, resulting in leaf curl much like that which occurs on the peach tree if it doesn’t get all of its sprayings during the dormant season. These fat little buds seem promising, although I won’t really know for sure how healthy the tree is until it begins to leaf out a few weeks from now. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, the double hellebore never fails to wow me! Unlike the single-flowering hellebores with their cascades of blossoms, it may have only three flowers on it, but I’m grateful even for those.

While I’m out and about visiting family this week, let me share what’s happening in the garden. All the knitting will be accompanying me in my travels, so expect to see more knitting content upon my return.

I’m just mad about yellow… especially when it appears in the form of spring’s first daffodil.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Looks like a daffodil to me!

Well, uh… yes! If you happen to live in northern California, gardening is pretty much a year-round pursuit. Besides the cool weather veggies we grow (that would be Kale, lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas, and chard), there are the flowers. They actually require little effort from me other than twining the occasional rose cane around its fence support. Mostly, what they seem to enjoy is my appreciation… lots of oohing and aahing at their reliable show of color, scent, and ability to perform on command.

What I realize is that many of these winter bloomers are the colors of my favorite yarns as well. For years it was nearly impossible to find a really “good” yellow. Yellow seemed to be out of favor, and the yarn shops were limited only to insipid “baby blanket” shades or – at the opposite end of the spectrum – truly obnoxious, day-glo yellow that was more reminiscent of a traffic sign than of anything one would care to knit up into a garment (unless you happened to be a school crossing guard, for example). But for a while now, yellow has been having a moment. There is every tint out there from palest buttercream to squash blossom to sunflower to mustard, and every shade in between, and they are all perfectly smashing. Forthwith, I give you Crocuses:

Back in the 1980’s, a very popular color scheme in interior design combined two revolting, putrid, thoroughly appalling shades of mauve and gray. Fortunately, knitting had not yet undergone its renaissance in popular culture (which meant the craft was far less tied to the fashion world and to current color trends than it is today), and thus we knitters were mercifully not subjected to yarn-y incarnations of these heinous colors. Now, though, when one sees gray yarn, it may be anywhere in the spectrum from fog to thundercloud, and every skein is gorgeous. But the color family that includes “mauve” has stepped far more dramatically into the 21st century. From the most delicate shell pink to the richest, most saturated cabernet, mauve is enjoying its turn in the limelight. My own preferred version includes, not surprisingly, Hellebores:

For the last year I’ve been perplexed to detect in myself a growing fondness for the color purple. And I’m someone who NEVER liked purple. I absolutely did not wear amethyst jewelry, would not deign to own a single item of clothing that could be called ‘purple’, and would turn up my nose at any and all yarns that included a single, even vaguely purple strand. But suddenly (and maybe this is attributable to hormones, like every other unexplainable thing that has happened to me for the last two or three years), I LOVE purple. I adore lilac (oh, swoon – those slightly dirty, grayed-down lavendars are divine, are they not?), and can’t get enough yarn in the color range I refer to as ‘orchid.’ I must accept that deep, mysterious eggplant tones now monopolize an obscene amount of shelf space in my yarn stash. But let us not forget my favorites, the sweetest of all, the Violets:

Happy birthday to my lovely and loving, compassionate and spirited, age-defying baby sister.

Here is a little birthday bouquet, especially for you:

It is a privilege to know you, let alone to be related to you. I hope you have made wonderful plans to celebrate your day!

Especially when it yields a bouquet of this magnitude. The coral bark maple by our front walk achieved truly stunning growth over the last year, to the point that it was considerably taller than the roof and needed to be taken down a few feet (if only to keep squirrels and the rest of the local rodent population from using its branches as ladders). These cuttings demonstrate how the coral bark maple tree got its name, don’tcha think?

Yes, I know that in many parts of the country February is bloody cold, snowy, windy, etc. Here in the Bay area, if we are lucky it will continue to rain. The forecast is promising… because we really need it. But February is a wonderful month, too, in my estimation. My father, a sister, and my aunt all have their birthdays this month (Dad is turning 89 – you rock, Dad!). My anniversary is this month (13 pretty terrific years).

Knitting magazines ask for design submissions for their FALL issues this month – planning six months in advance is the kind of challenge I relish, even though it means I can’t talk about any of the ideas I submit.

 I’m going to see family this month, including a detour to visit my daughter at college. Since I’ll be on the east coast anyway, it was pretty easy to justify the trek to see my only offspring in situ. Since my dad has a rare form of cancer (and an appointment with his oncologist is the main reason my trip is scheduled for that week), and my mom has what we euphemistically refer to as “memory issues” (which get more severe by the week), I try to get out to see them as often as possible, and now that my little girl is a mere four and a half hours away by car… you get the picture.

Meanwhile, I picked the first navel oranges from our tree. Just a few; there are about a dozen more left on the tree, which is, I say in its defense, a very small navel orange tree. In fact, it has been relocated twice over the years to progressively sunnier areas of the garden, and was nearly given up for dead at one point. Thankfully it rallied, and these oranges are among the sweetest I’ve ever eaten!