... and off goes 2025

Some years end with a spectacular sunset; some with grey clouds; some, like today, with some hazy yellow shafts of light, and a lot of dark sky.  In front of it sways an empty humming bird feeder ...

2025 was a year that was mostly deep grey: not in personal terms, but starting with the LA fires, and then going on, and on, and on from one political outrage to another.  I wish everyone a far far better year than the one that's just crawling out of the door.

Gramsci, however, may have the right approach: he's trying to sleep until at least the mid-terms.

 

frozen/not frozen

Given how cold it's been the last couple of nights, the birds - primarily finches and robins - are extremely pleased that the sea-green bowl is heated, so the water doesn't freeze.  The ice in the stone bowl is pretty solid, and remained that way all day.  All the same, the house is warm - hot, even - given how the low sun heats it up at this time of the year.

 

looking towards the end of the year

We are very much a Christmas-tree-comes-down-on-Twelfth Night household - at least, that's how I was raised - and I'm always glad of its festive presence in these strange days before the end of the year, in particular, when we're both back at work but not back at work.  I am so very glad that this coming semester I'm not teaching: one course release because I'm Director of Graduate Studies, and one course release that I banked aeons ago.  Just now, I was thinking - I barely feel that last semester has ended yet: I would be horrified to be heading back into the classroom two weeks from today.  Of course, if that were the case, I'd probably be looking forward to it - but since it's not, I'll simply appropriate Gramsci's inwardly thoughtful expression as I contemplate 2026.  Of course, he's probably meditating on finches.

 

winter gourd

These buffalo gourds, being completely inedible and bitter for everyone - human, animal, and bird alike - are still enduring in the roadsides of Eldorado.  I suppose they'll break down into organic components eventually (we're due to get a heavy frost tonight - that may help).  In the meanwhile, some people - children? - managed to lay a few in the road where they've been duly smashed by cars, looking for all the world like a tennis ball massacre ...

 

birds (and thirds)

Wet, grey weather today - quite likely the tail end of the system that hit Los Angeles over Christmas.  But this didn't deter hordes of finches coming and raiding our hanging birdseed contraptions: I was particularly pleased with myself not just for bending and shaping the wires that they're suspended from, but for attaching little perches at the bottom, made of piñon kindling, that have proved extremely popular.

And I've been putting together my 2026 calendar - not, technically speaking, too late, although I imagine they'll get here a few days after the new year.  I was always driven by the imperative to have them ready to transport one over to England as part of my parents' Christmas present, but now that's no longer an issue, calendar production rather lost out the last couple of years to the end of the semester.  But this year I was struck by how little choice there is among the major card/calendar printing companies if you don't want a square, 12 x 12 product.  I had all my rectangular images ready ... but only one reputable company seems to want to take them in that form.  And if one composes so many photos by reflexive default according to the rule of thirds (even this bird feeder is roughly positioned 1/3 up, 1/3 in), that means having to do a compositional rethink for square images, and that's not something I felt like embarking on ...

 

Christmas ... balls

To Cafe Pasqual's for lunch with friends - this was one of my go-to eating places a million years ago, but I realized that I'd not been for nine and a half years, which was a bit of a shock.  My food was excellent; Alice's less so - so the whole is-it-or-isn't-it worth the wait went unanswered.  That being said ... I always love all the Mexican paper flags, and tiles, and the rest of it.

And our friends gave Gramsci and Moth little catnip balls, which have been an enormous success.  I guess that we're going to have to call the blue one a mothball.

 

Christmas lights

Two views, about half an hour apart: as we were coming back from our late afternoon walk (even fewer people out than there were in the morning); and then from our back yard.

I hope that you all had as peaceful, happy, and unstressed day as we did.

 

unseasonably warm weather - no ice here

Unlike Los Angeles, where it has been pouring, and we just have to hope that no - or, being realistic, not too much - rain has got into our garage, it is warm and sunny here, and therefore uncannily unseasonal.  This morning I made wire hangers for three large seed/nut/dried mealyworm canisters for the birds, and distinguished myself by wiring little perches to them, too, but there's not a hungry feathered friend in sight, apart from the ones dropping in for a dip in the bird baths.  Santa Fe should not be this snow, frost, and ice free at this time of year.  The only snow visible up on the mountains is that made by the artificial snow cannons in the ski area.

We did go and have Christmas Eve lunch at Harry's, and were very pleased to see this large notice warning off the wrong kind of ICE on their door - not to mention this figure, out of the window, in the back yard, who is clearly ready to give any such invader the evil side-eye.

 

a wall

Somewhere on Paseo de Peralta, between Sage Bakery and the Farmers' Market.  We picked up supplies for the next couple of days from Sage, and (we're regulars) were delighted to find later that an extra Christmas treat had found its way into our box.  We were also on our way back from walking into downtown to do some last minute shopping: for two days before Christmas, it really didn't seem very crowded.  To be sure, there were a few Texans in their big cowboy hats and their turquoise jewelry, but - well, it's hard to know whether or not to be pleased that there aren't too many tourists (more room for us), or worried about the economy: an economic worry linked, of course, to wondering how many overseas visitors are actually going to make it over here.  People in shops are, of course, optimistic when they hear me: "So where are you visiting from?" "Eldorado" (that is, twelve miles down the road) doesn't quite cut it ...

 

more Christmas shininess

This star was a misguided online purchase during the pandemic - I thought it would fit neatly on top of the Christmas tree, and it might have done so, if the tree were seven feet tall ... as it is, it's a definitely destabilizing force.  But it manages to sit, if wobbling a little, on the shelf above the fireplace, and catches the very early morning sun.

With luck, now that I've finished reading through and commenting on the graduate papers, I'll be able to finish my decorations tomorrow ...

 

Christmas decor

Not a single string of our Christmas tree lights worked (cheap made-in-China crap, I'm sure), even after I slowly went around tightening up the bulbs.  So that's a whole bag ready to go to the strings-of-lights recycling bin at La Tienda.  And as a result - off we went to Target (do not politically judge us - where else could one reliably find lights on a Sunday morning that wasn't worse, like Home Depot?) - and found that they were on sale at 30% off, so as well as adorning our tree, I bought this ridiculous tinsel orb and hung it from a tree in the yard, where it's gently rotating in the very slight breeze.

And yes - Christmas decor has been rather last-minute this year, and is by no means complete, but there's actually something rather satisfying about doing it late in the day ...

 

red sky in the morning

... though there didn't seem to be any shepherds (or sailors, depending on which version of the rhyming maxim you prefer) around to warn, and in any case, warn them of what?  Maybe the adage doesn't work in the llano.  Maybe the warning is operative for Los Angeles, where it sounds as though it's going to be dreadfully wet over Christmas (we may get a few damp remnants in the days following, but I think the storm will have fizzled out for the most part, which is a shame, since it's dry dry dry everywhere here).

 

Moth: geometric perfection

The cats love it here so much, because it is warm: warm from underfloor heating, and warm - very warm - especially in winter, when the sun comes in low through all the south facing windows (I always swear that this time of the year is when the a/c is most useful).  And Moth is particularly fond of this bowl, and always curls up in it.  I bought her a very similar one for LA, but she spurned it entirely ...

 

seed pods and sunset

The remnants of last summer's morning glories - the wind has been so strong even since we've arrived that I can guarantee that there will be lots of little MG volunteers come next summer.  I just managed to get off a Zoom call about graduate funding patterns to see the tail end of the sunset (no - no news there about next year - the current office staff and I (actually, as of today I should say the former office staff, since supposedly they've taken up their new roles) were Onboarding the new graduate adviser - an impossible task, in some ways, since, as we kept saying, each case ends up being very different.  Like seedpods.

 

so happy to be here!

Gramsci speaks for us all.  He may not be quite so tired as his humans - after all, he seemed to be asleep a good deal of last night.  We weren't.  Moth, having slept all day, wanted to eat, to knock things off the bedside table, to lick our hands (very sweet, but not at 3 a.m.), and the rest of it.  A huge thank you to Alice, who actually brought (strong) coffee making equipment with her, and made a brew with which to start the day, before heading to La Posada's Turquoise Room for breakfast at 7 ... only.  But.  They've changed its hours - it didn't open till 8, and we wanted to hit the road way before the time that this would have meant that we left.  This was not welcome.  That, plus the fact that the last few evening meals that we've had there haven't been at their old standard (and the service worse) meant that we brought our own room picnic last night (all the more making us look forward to breakfast ...).  This is causing something of a travel dilemma in our minds: what's been great for twenty years, if slightly declining recently, seems to have slipped a bit more.  Not that Gramsci registered any of this - he, and his handsome paws, were just happy to get back on his palace and snooze in the afternoon sun.

 

road warrior

Gramsci, on top of a wardrobe at La Posada, Winslow, looking heavenwards.  Maybe there's someone in the room above?  Or spiders??  

There've been times during the past few weeks when I thought we'd maybe never get to the point of leaving town.  As it is, if I had another two clear weeks before Christmas, I might reach some degree of preparedness.  But the reality is mounds of grading, and admin, and and - at this rate, it'll be next semester before this one is fully finished .. However, merely hitting the road has felt like a triumph of a sort ...

 

December mists

It's the marine layer, floating inland ... or, Silver Lake/Los Feliz on our way to take Moth to her dentist's appointment.  She was told that she's healing beautifully, and can once again eat kibble.  Only ... poor Moth: it's a. bit hard doing her very best with kibble when she's a little dentally challenged.

We're hoping that it's not so misty tomorrow morning: with Mothy cleared to travel, we'll be hitting the road, at last ...

 

other people's cats

Meet Nikos and Dmitri (Dimitri?), our friend Connie's cats.  People keep asking Alice, as she slides into retirement (ok - the teaching and grading is done - she's still technically on USC's books until January 5th) if she has A Plan - a kind of scary question, as if one is still being asked to be accountable for one's time (although, yes, of course I get the principle of not suddenly finding oneself staring into a Dark Abyss).  I think when my time comes I'll offer my services as a cat portrait photographer.

 

California Christmases

Usually, we've left LA for New Mexico by now, but we're waiting for Moth to be seen by her cat dentist again in order to be given (we hope) a travel All Clear.  This means that in other years, we've always missed the local Holiday Block Party on Griffith Park Boulevard (which largely seems to be full of many bouncy castles, and a small tent of people playing jazz, and - well, we were there a bit too late for Santa, or the food and drink, but clearly it's mostly for the under 10s and their parents).  I would love to take that top picture and blow it up - what looks at first glance like a naked man is actually a woman with a handbag and small child looking for all the world like it's 1963.  Then at the bottom - how to re-purpose your small dinghy as a Christmas tree, with a palm tree in the background ...

My first sense that Californian - even American - Christmases were somewhat different from the UK came in around 1963, I should think, with the arrival of a Christmas card from an old Birmingham University friend of my father's, John Lerry - who for some reason moved to the US in 1952, and then in 1960 took up a job as Manager of Construction and Engineering at Stanford (I do not have a phenomenal memory ... his obituary was easy to find online, and it's a marker of the weirdness, to me, of his Christmas card that I remember his name).  On it were his three preternaturally blond children sitting round a Christmas tree, with unwrapped presents - presumably it had been taken the previous year, and banked for this very purpose.  Back then, in the early 60s in England, one simply did not, ever, put a family photo on a Christmas card - this seemed like a quintessentially strange American thing to do.  Little did I think that sixty or so years later I'd be strolling down a street a few blocks away (little did I yet know the term "blocks," of course) and looking at scenes as foreign as these, in a temperature that was still hovering around 70.

 

wreath

I still find it strange to be on the cusp of Christmas and everything to be so green and leafy in many places, including our front yard.  I bought a little evergreen wreath for the front door, but I think I may move this back there from its bush: the door wreath looks too shy and modest,

 

balcony

Seen on my ride home: a second floor balcony Christmas door wreath and bicycle parking, on S. Hoover St.  I'm not sure why I find this so satisfying: the shapes, the evening light?  

 

dappled

 

In some intangible way, this stands in for me today - dessicated in spirit after a long graduate studies directors' meeting, and wondering if the semester will ever end, to the extent that I feel that I may be merging into the building, unable any more to tell the shadow from the substance.

the parsley forest

... as seen from inside the kitchen window.  If there's one thing that grows in the rather shady light of the kitchen windowbox, it's parsley.  There's also more parsley growing on the terrace below.  It's not that we eat large quantities of the stuff, but it grows like mad.  And, whilst on the topic of parsley, I'm wondering why it is that - in the US at least - curly parsley ((Petroselinum crispum) is so rarely seen, when once upon a time (and of course my memory is here stretching back to England), there were little sprigs of the stuff plonked on top of all kinds of dishes as Garnish, and it was ground up in the parsley mincer and stirred into white sauce in order to be served with ham.  I never much cared for ham, but I certainly enjoyed parsley sauce.  I'm sure Italian flat leafed parsley could be substituted and have just about the same flavor ...

 

work isn't going well

Gramsci is, of course, adorable, right down to his little white paws.  But when I am trying to finish off the first triage-ing run through of graduate admissions, and answer a sudden flurry of Hi Professor emails, to have him determinedly lodged between me and the computer, or persistently bringing one of his little mice up onto the desk so that I can throw it for him, is ... exhausting.

 

retirement orchid

Alice's retirement celebrations have meant a wonderful few days: tonight, out to dinner with a very good friend (who made some of the best red cabbage with apple, vinegar etc in the universe).  Here is a wonderful orchid gift from some other dear friends, which greeted Alice to her complete delight when she came back on Thursday evening, and which, having been moved around the house and tried out in various light-filled places, has now taken up residence in the kitchen.  I'm sure the reality of the fact that actual retirement doesn't take place until January 6th (excuse for more dinners! more seeing New Mexican friends) will kick in rather too hard when the grading for her two classes arrives at the end of the week, but the first installment - the end-of-teaching installment - has been pretty fine.

 

elderly tulips

When flowers get a bit too drooping and weary to carry on doing well inside, then we put them in a kind of half-way house, on the table in the front yard.  Here our Thanksgiving tulips are living out their final days in a kind of decorous retirement.  It's also indicative of the fact that yes, we are spoilt by having California sun right into December ...

a geranium placeholder

At breakfast today, the sun was hitting a geranium leaf just so.  And I thought - any other day, I would have bagged that as my p of the d - picture of the day - and have felt content.  But ... I knew what I wanted: a good picture of Alice at her Jubilación dinner - I took her to Musso & Frank, where I'd never been, and it was wonderful.  But could I take a good picture?  No.  Not as bad as yesterday, when I had to crop her out of the group pic because she was munching on a cheese straw, and that just wouldn't have done.  But tonight - I didn't want to make a big deal of it, but to take a quick shot or two, and put my cell phone away, and - well, no.  It just didn't capture the evening, alas.  But the geranium?  That, I guess, encapsulates my long-lasting photo taking maxim: just capture those moments of fleeting beauty or strangeness when you see them.

 

last day of school! Alice's jubilación

Today was Alice's last ever day of teaching.  So I wasn't going to let the day go unmarked, of course ... and gathered a little group who surprised her - really surprised her - jumping out of a classroom at her after she ended the final class, with disco balloons and flowers, and marched her off to the Art History Seminar Room, where champagne and wine and a hastily gathered assortment of snacks from TJs were consumed, and a Spotify playlist of Black Funk Disco put on, and her health drunk.  I discovered yesterday that the Faculty Club would be closed - my original plan had been to go there - but this was much more fun, it turned out.

And jubilación is so much more sun as a word than the ominous Retirement, so I decided to go with the Spanish.

Of course, Alice still has grading to do, and her office to empty, and so on - but this, really, is It.  More celebrations follow ...

 

end of semester, end of an era

Three very hastily snatched photos to commemorate today: our Art History Holiday Party.  In the past, this has been a spectacular event - at the Gamble House, the LA Athletic Club, the Grammy Museum.  But this year - university strict budget rules - we weren't allowed to spend any funds on such an event.  So instead, a faculty-sponsored event in the University Club, which didn't have the same glitz, by any means (though I have to say that the Chipotle Margarita may have been the best drink I've ever had on any of these occasions).  And we weren't huge in numbers, this year, so it was actually very friendly and comfortable.

But what made it so poignant, and indeed awful, is that our two wonderful office admin staff, Beth and Tracey, won't be with us going forwards.  Beth has been given a position running Scheduling and Staffing for all the Humanities - that means lining up classes, faculty, and rooms, and is a logistical fiddly nightmare that makes cat herding look like an orderly procession.  Tracey - as of this moment, inexplicably, and cruelly, nada.  Our Office Manager will be shared with two other departments - and who, but who, will do all the manifold tasks that have to be done that Beth and Tracey have been so good at?  More than that - much more than that - they've been instrumental in making the department one of the friendliest, most cohesive, welcoming, caring, and efficient places that I've ever worked in.  I couldn't have been Chair as much, or DGS, without them.  I feel that the administration's shift to a new, streamlined managerial system (and yes, it comes with much managerial speak) has been carried out in a ruthless and cruel way. with the minimum of consultation of the people it affects the most.  We owe Beth and Tracey so much: they were quietly feted earlier in the day, and I'm so very pleased that they came to celebrate (hold a wake?) with us all this evening.

 

Mothy - recovering well!

For a cat who's been through major dental surgery, Moth is recovering remarkably well - quite possibly better than us.  She had us very worried in the night - sitting in her litter tray - could she pee? could she not?  and by one in the morning, we were stumbling around wondering whether to call the emergency vet, or rush her off there - and then we realized that yes, she had peed ... but the uncertainty remained during the first part of the day, at a time when Alice was still at home, but I was starting the beginning process of navigating the administrative reorganization and chaos that has been dealt us (oh yes, and teaching, and meeting with my honors student, and all the rest of it).  But all's well now.  Gramsci still thinks that she smells very strange, and is wary of her (probably a good thing), and we hope that we'll soon be able to breathe again.

 

Moth's day at the dentist

As many of you know, I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the last decade or so having complicated dental work done.  Today it was Moth's turn to go to a specialty dentist ...

(she had dental resorption, which is basically like a kind of decay from below).

I love my dentists - my main dentist, anyway, and the more sadistic one has done plenty of technically very good work.  But no one has ever written my name both inside and outside the surgery room;

nor prepared a folder for me with my name illuminated (with a drawing of a moth);

nor texted Alice with a picture of my dentistry team, presumably since I don't look quite so cute in the dentist's chair.  (Moth's dentist comes from Manchester, quite bizarrely.  Or not bizarrely - a quick bit of googling tells me he used to be married to Sophie Ward - actor, writer, Simon Ward's daughter - before she got involved with the playwright Rena Brannan.  That's somehow a very LA story, and I don't know whether Moth was aware of all of it).

Our dear cat seems to have made it through ok - she's home, more than a little wobbly, but ravenously hungry.

 

lemons in the fog

It's not exactly thick fog - more like damp cloud.  It was certainly lightly precipitating when we went for a walk early this morning, and everything was gently blurred, as though one had developed cataracts overnight.  These lemons, on the next street, look as though this wasn't exactly what they'd bargained for.

 

a leaf

and a very fine leaf it is, too: a morning glory leaf outside our front door, with some strange lines and coloration and fading.  Sometimes I think one just doesn't look at individual leaves enough.  

 

a dandelion portrait

If I hadn't written a chapter on dandelions, I would never have learned what wonderful, resilient, beneficial plants they are: long roots that take moisture way into the ground (moisture that collects on those long leaves that have a gutter down their center for rain and dew and the residue from garden sprinklers to run down); early to bloom (although I'm not sure that applies in Southern California) so they're an early source of food for pollinators; invaluable as a biomonitor since they will flourish almost anywhere but those hardy roots will tell you how much heavy metal pollution there is in the soil.  And the leaves are edible, and are effective diuretics, and and and. And they're cheerful.  So don't dig them up, please.

 

the pièce de résistance

though the turkey was pretty good, too.

This tasted delicious: pumpkin cheesecake on a ginger snap/pecan base.  But I had all kinds of dreams for the top ... I painstakingly cut out a kind of large paper snowflake/star that fitted the cheesecake top, and gently gently pulsated icing sugar - that's confectioner's sugar, in the US - down over the pretty pattern, thinking I'd end up with a wonderfully designed top.  I carefully lifted off the stencil - and the sugar promptly dissolved into the cake, forming a thin transparent glaze.  I won't try that again: so much for misplaced culinary design ambition. So here's a smear of ricotta, some frozen raspberry crumbs, and a clementine slice.