Fall 2012 Filoli Seasons Photography Class

My husband and I love to garden, and consider ourselves lucky to have a place like Filoli nearby to be members of. The perks of membership are many, including having access to the gardens all year round; a 10% discount at a local nursery; and taking classes / attending events at discounted rates.  These are just some of the many perks we enjoy throughout the year.

   

This is my second year of taking the Seasons of Filoli photography class - a series of four classes that take place over the year - one for each season.  I hesitated before signing up for this year's series (which started fall of this year and goes through summer of 2013) - due both to cost and because I'd taken it before.  I am so glad I did though.  (In fact, three other folks from last year's class are taking this series again too.)  Whereas last year's series met one day for each season, this year's meets for two.  This gives us plenty of time to go over the concept being taught AND delve into the world of editing - a science all of its own.

Learning about photography is like learning a foreign language.  The more you "hear" the language - immerse yourself in it - hang out with "native speakers", the more it soaks in and the more you learn.  When I first started taking classes about a year ago - it was overwhelming.  Aperture, exposure, F stops, stepping up, stepping down, metering, stops, iso, shutter speeds....whhhaaatt?  How does any of that translate to what I need to do with the the camera to get a nice picture?

I remember feeling very overwhelmed in last year's fall Filoli class.  None of the pictures I took that day turned out well. I blamed it on not having a tripod. I wanted to work on everything - and as a result - focused on nothing.  What a difference a year makes!  I came to this year's class (minus tripod) with the intention of working on composition and exposure, and as luck would have it - exposure is exactly the topic our instructor Susan Rosner chose to explore in class!  (I quickly let go of composition though upon realizing how much there was to learn and experiment with the camera with metering and exposure.)

I learned so much over the next two days. Instead of feeling overwhelmed like last year - I felt as though I had a small enough handle on the "lingo" - a base of knowledge (albeit it small) - that enabled me to ask questions that took me  to whole new level of learning on the topic.  Not only on how the camera works - but on editing too!  (on a side note - I invested in Adobe Lightroom earlier this year - but up until now - was only using it to catalog and do some rudimentary editing - without fully understanding all what I was doing on the editing side.)  Don't get me wrong - I'm still very much a beginner in both - but I have bit more knowledge - and you know how dangerous that can be!

So here are some of my first real efforts at photorgraphing and editing with the knew bit of knowledge I gained this weekend.  I still have a lot to learn (for example the pictures at the start of this blog tuned out  more red/purple than I intended) but oh how fun the learning process is!

 Busy Bees

and fall leaves.....

a flower 

fall fruits

And fall wouldn't be complete without a wild turkey too! 

The way I like my turkeys - wild and free!

Planting the Fall Winter Veggie Garden

A weekend free of outside obligations (the first one since Labor Day!) converged happily with a stretch of warm and sunny days last weekend to create space and time for us to clear out our spent summer veggies (tomatoes, cucumber, basil etc.) and prep and plant our fall and winter veggie garden.

Mama's little helper inspects veggie bed before old basil is cleared

It's been a long term goal of mine to get better at seasonal veggie and flower planting, and slowly but surely, year after year, this dream is being realized - and expanding - as we add veggie beds and wine barrels - and experiment with various veggie seeds and plants. And yes - while I lust for more - especially after our  Gamble Garden tour of edible gardens:  chickens, raised veggie beds, maybe even a green house - I am content and grateful for what we already have.

Gotta love the smell of those gardening gloves

 
This year, despite the army of aphids that took more water than environmentally correct to wash out of last year's plant, we are going with broccoli again.  Four plants instead of the one.  I hope/plan to stay ahead of the aphids and do a better job of harvesting to encourage additional growth this year.  But if I think about it - this is our third year of planting brocolli.  The first year - I let two plants go to flower and they became butterfly feeders.  Super.  Last year - we got one broccoli head - and a ton of aphids.  Great.  At least we ate one meal with our own broccoli.  This year?  Nowhere to go but up!
 

Ziggy getting in on the action

Having had great success with red swiss chard last year - we planted six of them again this year in the veggie bed.  In the wine barrel next to it, six chiogga beets joined some spring onions already in residence.  Beets are a first for us.  Up until now - my husband hasn't been so hot about eating beets - but then -  I don't think he's ever tried them roasted.  We'll see come harvest if he changes his opinion.  If not, that just means more for me!  Yum.

Arugula (planted from seed) pre-thinning

We would have loved to have planted some kale next to the swiss chard - but unfortunately - the nursery was out.  So instead, I planted some seeds and am crossing my fingers that they work out.  I don't see why they shouldn't - as the arugula above - also planted from seed - is doing swimmingly.  So well in fact, that time had come to do a little thinning.  Thinning seedlings is something that all the veggie seed packs say one should do - but what up until now - I've never been able to bring myself to do.  It's hard pulling out perfectly good seedlings - I want them all to grow up and prosper.

Arugula (planted from seed) post thinning

 
As I mentioned above though - every year brings new growth, awareness, and experience to me as a gardener.  So this year - I am heeding the advice and thinning away - trusting that this helps the health and robustness of the plants that remain.  This doesn't mean the plucked seedlings went to waste.  Instead - those sprouts joined blondkopfchen cherry tomatoes harvested just the day before and we enjoyed them with a spritz of lemon juice and flax seed oil.  Doesn't get much fresher than that!

Fresh arugula sprouts and cherry tomatoes

To wrap up the fall /winter veggie garden - we planted radish seeds and as soon as the tomatoes along the side of the house are done for the year, in will go four brussel sprouts plants.  Another first for us.  As the seasons progress, and plants mature and are harvested - we'll add and modify our veggie garden accordingly. 

Can't wait to see what produce this year's fall & winter veggie garden yields....

R.I.P. Willie (the) Feral (cat)

Willie

The hardest part of pet parenthood is having to say goodbye.  A week ago today, Willie passed away.  His body cradled in my arm (we hadn't made it to lap sitting yet), his cheek resting in my hand, and me whispering "I love you, I love you, I love you" over and over again as the vet administered the final meds that would take him away from me.  I loved that cat so much.  It was the hardest but most humane thing to do - given his still wild little spirit and the advanced stage of kidney failure and anemia he was in.

My Angel

I learned so much in the two short years he was with us.  The investment of love, time and money I placed into Willie - slowly convincing him to appreciate a warm cushy bed (he had three), teaching him to trust in twice a day meals and 24/7 kibble, and in the last 10 months of his life - using baby food (the crack of all cats) to start us on a path that would eventually lead to hour long cheek tickling/ear rubbing/back stroking sessions - and in the last few weeks - combing.  Oh how he loved to have his belly combed.  Silly Willy.  All that investment and more was returned million fold by the trust, love and learning he gave to me. 

I will never forget him.

Your mama loves you Angel and I always will.

R.I.P. Willie

a.k.a. Willamina, Mina, Big Boyyyyy, Sneezy, Skankalishish, Angel, Bupplemauss, Buepchen, and many, many more,

Summer Fun & Filoli Photography

My August semi-sabbatical staycation is on.  I'll be working one week this month - the rest I'm taking off to spend time reading, hanging in the garden, playing with my cameras, touring around town, spending QT with family, friends, the husband, the cats - and with me!  This is a new first and one I've been dreaming about ever since visiting Paris in August many years ago - and experiencing a city filled with more foreigners than French as all the Parisians closed up shop and headed out of town for a month long vacation.

Up until this year, with the American "work-work-work, busy-busy, stay-connected 24/7" work culture as it is - it felt impractical and perhaps, as a consultant,  unwise to implement a similar type of break.  People/organizations seem to have such a hard time unplugging here.  Delineating between on and off, work and non-work, plugged and unplugged. 

While I love my iWhatevers to connect, produce and create - I'm also the kind of person who operates best with periods of focused work balanced with periods of spacious "me-time".  Time to slow down, unplug a bit, reflect, create for the sake of creating, putz, daydream, etc. When I have that balance - I'm a better coach, wife and person to be around.  Period.  Without it - I get cranky, uncreative, a little angry, and generally unsatisfied with my lot in life.  My productivity wanes. As does the power and impact of practicing daily gratitude.

I usually work this "me-time" in by setting aside two to three weeks throughout the year as "project" weeks.  The juiciest part about these weeks for me is to not schedule any meetings or coaching appointments.  Projects range from home-projects - like spring cleaning, to work-projects-  like setting up this blog, working on the paperless office, creating a collage, and so on. 

I'm never entirely unplugged though during those project weeks.  I'm still reading and responding to emails and calls.  It's heaven enough to have the appointment free time to do what I darn well want to.  To be FREE ( a huge value of mine).

So this year - with no official vacations planned - the siren call of a Parisian style "gone for the month of August" unplugged sabbatical-staycation proved too hard to resist.  While a whole month off would have been divine, the more practical way to do this was to schedule three weeks off and one week on at work.  (Maybe next year I'll go for the month!)

One week in - and I'm finally getting around to posting again.  The last few pics you've seen are from the summer session of the Seasons of Filoli photography class - a series of four classes spanning winter, spring, summer and fall - taught by Susan Rosner   I've learned a lot about photography over the series - and interestingly enough - about myself.  The series started in the fall of 2011 - and I remember being so disappointed with my photographs from that first class.  Lots of unfocused pics.  Not a lot of great composition.   My attention during the class felt scattered.  A need to "get something" out of that class - a few perfect pictures? a lot of learning? a great experience? -  actually led to me creating a crappy outcome. I'm also not a big fan of crowds.  I knew this  - but felt it more acutely taking pics in a garden filled with all those "pesky" visitors getting in the way. ;-)

By letting go of expectations over the four classes, I've opened up to opportunities. I'm learning to relax more during a "photo-shoot" or class. I'm happy if I get just one good pic in - and am therefore tickled when there are a few more.  I'm learning more, and I've started pointing the camera not only at the landscape - but at the people too.  Like this next one of our fearless leader Susan heading back to class after our morning photo shoot.

I've also started to dabble more with photo editing.  These that I'm sharing are some of my first more rigorous attempts at that. Still lots to learn (and s/w apps to invest in) - but it's fun.  In fact, in the last class, Susan made a comment which stuck in my mind.  She said when she takes a photo - she's taking it with the edited end product already in mind.  By knowing what she can do with editing tools - she takes a photo that can be edited to get to the end product she has in mind.  I sure would love to have the skills and knowledge to do that one day too.

In the mean time,  I'm happy to be at this beginner's stage.  Soaking up learning as I go, taking pics here and there, and enjoying a long coveted and first of (hopefully) many more August summer sabbaticals to come.

Savoring Summer

First sunflower of the season

The start of summer is upon us and I cannot help but feel joy and gratitude welling up inside as I look around and see all the wonders that it brings.  It's already mid July though, three weeks into the season, and it feels as though time is flying by faster than ever.  What once felt like an endless two to three month summer vacation as a kid seems to flash by in the blink of an eye as an adult. 

Tasty summer appetizer idea from Pintarest. 

My husband - the engineer - says the phenomenon of time moving by faster as we age is based on the fact that a given set period of time - such as one week or one year - becomes an increasingly smaller percentage of our life as we age.  For example, one year of a 10 year old's life is 10% of their life.  Whereas one year of a 40 year old's life is 2.5% of their life. So one year for the 10 year old feels like an ETERNITY in comparison to us 40 something year old folks. 

Blooming hen-and-chicks - or "chicken heads" as they're known at our house

I'd like to think that we can work with this "fact" and still create a sense of spacious summer time - a sense of eternity - by changing habits and routines to accommodate the impact of aging.  That similar to changing  my eating and exercise habits to accommodate aging's impact on my body - I can change or add habits and practices to slow down the march of time and savor summer like my 10 year old self would.

I find that being present in the moment - and practicing gratitude on a daily basis - help me to slow down and savor time - no matter what season I'm in.  So I decided this summer to "turn back time" and make it a daily habit to reflect on what I'm grateful for about the season.  What I love about summer.  To  pause and be grateful for the first sunflower bloom from seeds planted earlier in spring; the sweet burst of a homegrown apricot melting on my tongue....

...tomatoes ripening on the vine and piles of sour cherry pits where the squirrels do their noshing

...cherry tomatoes still warm from the sun - popped into our mouths straight from the vine

...laughing with my husband about how few of our cherry tomatoes ever make it into the house and a "real" meal

...the first ripe figs of the year!  (and beating the squirrels to them)

...bird netting which works equally well against squirrels

...brunch in the courtyard with the Sunday paper, oatmeal, a mug of tea, my honey, and a summer fruit salad 

... the sights, sounds, tastes and sensations of summer BBQs

 ...fresh corn on the cob and ice cold slices of watermellon

 ...summer fruits:  peaches, nectarines, apricots, blueberries, strawberries, rasberries, cherries, figs...and the fruit salads they make

8 fruit salad - 10 if you count white and yellow peach and nectarines separately

... summer vacations

                                      

... going barefoot

....summer salads.  period.

... a good book, a cold beverage, and time to enjoy them lounging in the back yard after a day of gardening

... cool (and healthy) smoothies on a warm summer night!!

... shorts, tank tops, bathing suits, flip flops....and the cat who wears them when I'm not.

... sparkling clean windows washed by my honey

... the "dry grass sagey" smell of California (on a trail walk)

...basil picked fresh from the yard - on it's way to becoming pesto pasta

 ...thai basil - and the three course thai themed meal it inspired

...the hypnotic hum of bees and insects in the warm summer air

...one happy feral cat rolling in the sun

oh yeah - it's working!  give it a try.

What are you loving this Summer?

2012 Spring (Cleaning) Wrap Up

Saying farewell to spring with some of this year's tulips at Filoli

Today's the last official day of spring 2012 (summer starts at 4:09pm Pacific today), and I'm feeling the need to close out the season and start anew by celebrating all the spring cleaning I did this year.  I don't know about you, but I was definitely bit by the spring cleaning bug in 2012.  It started in my clothing closet.  (I'm not a big clothing shopper, but tend to hold on to what I do buy way beyond it's "expiration date".)  Despite this, I was able to convince myself to part ways with a few outfits and items I felt no longer represented who am I today. (Though I suspect there may still be some lurking in there that really ought to go!)

Grouping products by their EWG Skin Deep "hazard" ratings

Then I found out the hard-  "what is that red bumpy rash on my face" way - that I'm sensitive to fragrance in skin care products.  This was just the catalyst I needed to use the Environmental Working Group's  skin deep web-site to go through all my skin care products one weekend  - weeding out those with higher "hazard" ratings - and finding new, low hazard, fragrance free sun, skin and dental care products to use.   (Ratings are on a scale of 0-10, lower ratings mean lower hazard).

If you plan on doing a similar review of your products - I recommend budgeting plenty of time for review of current products and research for new. You can manage your time by breaking the project down by the categories you'll find on EWG's website (sun, skin care, eye care, makeup, babies and mom, oral care, nails etc.)  

I'd used EWG's skin deep site a few years ago to to find a body lotion and shower soap.  What I learned by going back this year is that you have to check their site periodically - maybe once a year - because brands sometimes change the formula of their products which can impact their rating.  For example - the body lotion I had chosen a year ago because it was rated a 3 had recently been bumped up to a 5 due to a change in their formula. The nerve!

In case you're interested, I let go of a lot of Clarins products in this year's "product cleanse" - and now use Bubble and Bee's unscented and organic:  facial cleanser, facial cream, shower soap, lotion stick and body butter (ratings range from 0-1).  Their products are good enough to eat!  And a little bit of it goes a long way - so I'll be saving money in the long run - while feeling great about using them.  Although it's rated a 4, I'm also using  DML-Daily-Facial-Moisturizer-SPF 25 (recommended by my dermatologist) during the day.  My skin has never looked or felt better.  

Before

A month or so after that project,  Yoga Niche's three week Spring (nutrition) Cleanse started - bringing with it all the cooking that it entails. A week into the program - I had just about had it with a section of our "pantry" - where as you can see on the left, trying to get to any one product - say sun flower seeds or dried garbanzo beans  - meant emptying out the entire shelf.  Augh!  Why I put up with that torture for so long I really don't know. 

After

 A quick trip to Bed Bath and Beyond for shelf organizers and BPA free containers to act as pull out "drawers" for various sections (grains, nuts, seeds, etc) was all I needed to breathe a sigh of relief and make cooking a far more pleasurable experience than it had been before.  

I'm learning that the enjoyment of a meal begins long before it's on your plate - and includes seeing and appreciating all of the wonderful ingredients before they are incorporated into your meal.

The inspiration for my final spring cleaning project was ignited by two things:  a flyer from Recology (our waste management company) announcing a free shredding event occurring in three weeks; and a blog post by Irene Leonard, a fellow colleague and business coach, heralding the wonders of the ScanSnap s1500 - a small "bread loaf sized" instant PDF sheet-fed (20plus pages at a time) scanner.

Over the years I've coached a lot of clients.  Many of these folks work with me at various points throughout their career - finding jobs, grooming for promotions, transitioning careers/jobs, rising in the ranks of leadership, developing their management skills - you name it.  Because of this - I had amassed a huge collection of client folders - spread out in boxes in my office and garage.  And like my kitchen shelf - seeing all those files taking up space had been niggling at me for some time.

Charlie helps with scanning project

So when I got the flyer, Irene's post on the scansnap immediately came to mind.  I knew I didn't want to lose the documents - I just didn't want them in paper form anymore.  They had to be digitized before they could be shredded.

The minute that flyer came in - the project was on!  I ordered the scanner and debated whether to find someone to do the scanning for me.  Time was tight though, so I decided to do it myself - and am glad I did.  It was cathartic to "revisit" the coaching work I'd done over the years - all the way back to when I first started my business.

Files, files, and more files....

 

With little time to get it all done though - I had to keep at it - scanning between client sessions, early mornings, late evenings, and throughout the weekends too.  

That scanner is a work horse!  Should you decide to get one for your own scanning / paperless office project - I recommend you read the reviews (and tips) on Amazon.  I found one that mentioned "inserting the paper gently" of particular help.

Onsite shredding!  Thanks Recology.

By the end of the three weeks though - I was pretty "done" with scanning - both mentally and physically.  (While happy to see the piles reducing - the job of scanning itself , when you have so much to scan, can be mind numbing.) 

I was happy too to see those files get shredded (I waited to make sure they were) -  and to say one final "goodbye" to all that paper - knowing that the info is now safely saved, backed up, and readily available in digital form.

 In some ways too - this post is acting as a final "cleanse' of info I felt needed to be expressed so as not to grow "old and stale" in the recesses of my mind.  I have lots of other "spring cleaning" projects in the queue  - including another run at my clothing closet, cleaning and organizing the garage, using EWG to evaluate and choose better makeup, more scanning and shredding to reach the paperless office of my dreams, more organizing in the kitchen, and introducing you to our four felines on the blog.  I'm not sure when I'll get to them all, but it sure feels good to look back on all that's already been accomplished this year, as spring comes to a close, and the summer begins.

What "spring cleaning" did you do this year?