Long, drawn out, better late than never Year In Review.

Well, I didn't figure out the meaning of life this year.

I did, however, spend a lot of time looking for things I thought were true. But the more I try to sort things into good and bad, beautiful and ugly, the more I miss the point. Like Nea here. Simultaneously good and bad. The great Snarfer! That's been her name this year. Snarfy, Snarf Face Killer - the renditions are infinite. Sometimes I sing her the song Little Surfer Girl, by the Beach Boys but instead - you guessed it! - Little SNARFER Girl!!!

This year Eric and I built up a lot more of our lives, the stuff of life at least. The home building, the animal husbandry, growing food and flowers. The business of trying to sell some of that stuff so we can build more. Here's a picture of the main room in our house back in April when we had young chickens inside, and trays of soil blocks on every surface. Eric says "farm house?" that means you farm in the house, right?

Of course the chaos of it all is appealing to me. I love a beautiful mess, more than anything. When I die, hopefully here at Worlds End decades from now I want it to be ten times the mess. And I hope that when that time comes, I will have learned better how to be around people and connect to them. This year I have been working on my intimacy issues; trying to figure out why I want to be alone all the time or why I favor brief encounters with strangers. 

That sounds funny, like I've become a hooker, which did not happen this year, trust me.

I did fall in love with chickens though. They are incredible weird little things - so social, so bossy. Everyday they follow complex agendas I can only wish to understand; fanning out across the homestead in patterns coinciding with times of day. There's the mid morning rest followed by lunch at the coop (usually), then foraging west out towards the drive. Noon? Siesta. Two o'clock you can find them under the lilac dust bathing if the weather allows, and by 3 they are on the move south towards the kitchen garden. 

Our girls have shown (limited) moments of uncanny intelligence. I hug them and make up stories for them. I call them the beep-beeps. In the morning when I open the doors of the coop they pour out in a gaggle of clucks and tweets and suddenly it's time  (cue music!)  for the BEEP-BEEP show!!! ... Featuring the BEEP-BEEPS!!! With special appearances by (you guessed it!) the BEEP-BEEPS!!! God I love that show.

This time last year Nicolette and I went teaching in Australia...subsequently I've been connected to a lot of Australians. Working with flowers makes the world shrink. Infinitely small, this flower world of ours... [insert winking heart blowing emoji]

This year I thought a lot about doing a book, publishing a book of my own or working on a bigger book project. I talked to lots of people about it - agents and publishers but in the end I scrapped it all, it never felt right, too forced, or I'm just not ready. Why rush? People say it's the cornerstone of your brand. Wait what brand? We don't even have business cards.

We started our flock of Icelandic Sheep here at the farm. A bit earlier than we had planned, but fools rush in. There are 9 ewes ranging in age; two older stragglers we adopted from friends and 7 strapping young girls with good milking lines. Next year we'll get a ram, breed all the girls and in spring 2014 we'll have lambs - hopefully 15 or so. When you have lambs, you have milk...this all took a while to comprehend, for me at least. Here's a picture of the day we drove to Vermont to pick up our sheep guarding dog, Puccini otherwise known as Poochi.

Poochi is a Maremma, a dog bred in Italy since ancient Roman times (salve canis! I took latin in school) to protect flocks from wolves (lupus - not to be confused with lupus the disease which I also thought I might have this year). Around here he wards off coyotes and the occasional cougar. 

There is no training with this type of guardian dog; as long as he bonds with the sheep (ovis). He has to think the sheep are his family. This means we're not allowed to take him out for walks or love him too much. This has been really hard.

Tu non potest diligere canis qui habitat cum ovibus. (You must not love the dog who sleeps with sheep.)

Last spring we threw a big plant sale in the city to raise money for a tractor at the farm. It was one of the best days in our Saipua history, and the following week we put a down payment on a John Deere. (Which ironically, is called 'going green' around here because of the paint color on the tractor, not for the gallons of diesel fuel it consumes)
Plants for plants! I love this idea so much; this year we'll do it again on March 8th.

The tractor let us really get into growing this year -- we planted all sort of things. 

All these ^ flowers? We grew them ourselves! In hindsight feels like a big deal. I learned a lot about timing. I learned a lot about the fragility of some plants and the resilience of others.

In 2013 I did not have to buy one can of tomatoes. When I get frustrated with what feels like slow progress it's small facts like this that keep me motivated.

We installed solar panels at the farm this year. My dad has always been a geek about alternative energy, and lately -- parasites -- but that's another post. In the eighties we had giant 1 foot thick solar panels on the side of our house. He helped us finance the project, and we are now gratefully receiving approximately 95% of our yearly energy from the sun. Still putting diesel fuel in the "green" tractor, but hopefully that will change this new year if we can hook up the deep fryer. That's all you need for bio fuel right?  

I can't write a post about 2013 without mentioning all the amazing help - interns and apprentices and volunteers we had work with us.

Bianca, the sensitive lover of beauty. I've loved watching her bravely change careers and seeing her excitement as she discovers flowers for herself...

Nicole, the type of woman you look at and then you have to look at again. She is mysterious and witty. A dancer, and (she's gonna hate me for writing this) a real deal intellectual! God, I want to keep all the interns forever!

Evelyn, our most committed apprentice. She came from SanFransisco for three months for an immersion experience. I miss her can-do attitude at every event since she left. And her indispensible graphic skills (without which we would never have finished our 2013 soap sampler box.

Reuben! He wrote me a letter from the perspective of a feral cat last year..wanted to come on as an apprentice for a few weeks. I like to work but there's nothing like an enthusiastic 21 year old in the field, let me tell you.





Mikee; graceful, stylish and inquisitive. I miss his help getting dinner ready talking and sipping wine together. I feel his flower talent is about to rise so fast...watch out!



Natalie - I met her at a class we taught last January in LA. She loves animals and it must be said that she was the first intern to really bond with Goldie (the prettiest chicken). She's thinking about flowers and how they are going to fit into her life, I'm waiting to see.

What a strange year of figuring things out, an unsettling year of unknowns. Back in the summer, at the end of the day I would walk the rows of flowers and cut things, making bunches in my hand till I couldn't hold anymore. I'd walk these fistfulls back to the work table - a makeshift studio in front of our house. Usually I would just toss them into a bucket and forget about them. This is a florists ultimate luxury I would tell myself. To pick all the most beautiful flowers for yourself and then never arrange them...

Maybe this year was a year of resting a little more. Leaving the flowers be while I worked on the farm or...didn't work at all. There in lies the root of my moody troubles this year. 

My one new years resolution?

TO WORK HARDER.