Tiny Garden.

It was looking more promising weather-wise this morning than it turned out to be. My feet were wet from walking through the wet fields and my jeans were wet from kneeling down to take the picture of the plethora of tiny plants which have popped up in the middle of our path through the field since it began raining. The little plant in the thumbnail is about the size of my thumbnail...

Back inside, I put on my fuzzy slippers, hung my socks over the arm of a chair to dry and never set foot out of the house again. As the fog engulfed us, I finished frosting dozens of cookies, got out the dough for the gingerbread houses, put it back in the fridge again, read the newspapers and  finished knitting my cosy throw. 

I tried to fix my kindle which downloads books and charges me for them but then tells me they are 'unavailable. The instructions for rectifying this situation are unhelpfu, but there is a solution. I have gone back to reading 'real' books, which I prefer anyway except for the fact that the light doesn't turn itself off when I fall asleep.

As I looked at the pictures I took today, I was struck by how many things inside and out seem to be in a red and green Christmas colors. I put a couple in extras. 

The Padrón peppers are from our garden and in various stages of ripening from green through red to dried with several stages  in between. They are delicious seared in olive oil and sprinkled with a bit of coarse sea salt. We call them 'Russian roulette peppers' because while most of them are quite mild, about one in ten is really hot.

The frog has begun his nightly chorus outside the front door. We spotted one of them in our pond when we came home last night after dark, and he too isn't much bigger than my thumbnail. He becomes increasingly insistent and has eventually attracts at least one other to join in a sort of amphibian call and response. 

We went to a steak house called Seared for dinner last night to celebrate Will's birthday. Will was our chauffeur and Peter rode shotgun in Will's new car as the restaurant was in Petaluma.( I think they have decided we shouldn't be driving at night and I think they are probably right.) We've been to a lot of steak houses for Will's birthday, including this one, and the food was delicious, even though I didn't order steak.  The waitress was wonderfully attentive without being intrusive, took in the scene and didn't ask to see his ID when Will ordered a Moscow Mule....