Last week’s garden tour for the CA Dept of Food and Agriculture’s Pollinator Habitat Program went exceptionally well. Spending two hours walking the property while talking about plants and wildlife was energizing and of course I had rose geranium butter cookies to share. Adding trees, double and quadruple hedgerows surrounding the property, perennials, wildflowers, and eight wildlife habitat areas make this my most ambitious project to date, more so than the flower farm. I don’t have the final size of the newly planted area yet, but I’m guessing it’s around six acres. Native plants are easy once established but they’re like Goldilocks when young, demanding ideal conditions. Gophers and ground squirrels also ate a significant amount of young plant roots, resulting in having to plant the replacements (hundreds) in wire baskets. It was tough working long hours on brutally hot days, but satisfying that I pulled it off in time. The next step is keeping these young ones happy for the next three years before the water lines can be pulled, in addition to sending in insect surveys for research purposes.

My NYPD boyfriend rushed in on 9/11, sister ran out, both lived, others were “missing.” New Yorkers were heroic, smart and kind, in epic form. For me the nightmare began a week prior in Durban, South Africa, where I was production designer for a newspaper covering a United Nations conference. I was young but could create on the fly in a way that landed me prestigious overseas assignments. It wasn’t my first UN confab. I’d previously noticed a mismatch between what was published and what really happened at these events. But nothing I’d seen before prepared me for the abject evil of this gathering. It was called, “The UN World Conference Against Racism, Sexism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” but no practical discussion of these things occurred. Instead, Marxist theory was exalted. Words like intersectionality and Zionism were mainstreamed and added to international law. Delegates from Western democracies were threatened, Hitler posters sold in the streets. It was an orgy of hate against Jews and Western countries, especially America. Malevolence radiated in waves. I arrived home on 9/10. Our towers came down. There was chaos and death. But not despair. Even shocked, grieving and wounded, goodness poured out of us, bravery, kindness, strength and hope. People killed in lower Manhattan, in DC, and on Flight 93, regular working Americans, opposites of the haters and fanatics who targeted them, were loved, are still loved, and may rest in peace knowing we will never forget them. We will cherish and protect their families, their country and their dignity. I quit my job, began doing other work, got pregnant and married my boyfriend, who deployed to Afghanistan. The fire at Ground Zero would burn for 3 months, you could see it from my neighborhood in Queens. The rubble is still bouncing.

A very specific Type of Guy would love this 5x7" birthday card Here's the PDF, print it yourself dropbox.com/scl/fi/2ne5axnwv…