Planning out the deconstruction of the Holidays is always an activity that defines the most fundamental of differences in people. I am a planner by nature and, of course, others are not. I am also a person of great focus, which is particularly necessary and valuable if you are also, as I am, a person who has many varied interests and preoccupations. As soon as the Holidays have passed their peak, I start thinking about how and when we will start the process of putting things away for the season and getting on with the new year. Transitions are a specialty of mine, based mostly on the 30 primary residence transitions I have had to make over my life. That means I have lived less than 2.4 years on average in any one place. The longest were the 10 years I lived in the Seaport and the nine years I lived on Canterbury Road in Rockville Centre. The shortest was the three month stint I spent in Cleveland the summer before starting college. When you transition that much (and I am not even counting the transitions involved in the nine vacation properties I have owned along the way), you force yourself to transition expeditiously so as to be able to get on with your life. Some of you understand that need very well because you too have moved around a lot. Others have been more stationary in their lives and transitions seem to wig them out to the extent that they proceed much, much more slowly. I suspect that all factors in when doing simple chores like putting away the Holiday decorations. I want it done and done right to both get on with life and to prepare for the inevitable repeat performance next year.
Just as it was my job to put up the outside decorations, it is my job to take them down. One south to north sweep of the back hillside will take care of the bells, bows and wreaths which hide in the lower northwestern storage room. In the front it’s a bit more involved, but the pre-lit entry trees, the battery-driven Whoville balls (on the agave serpentine’s), the barrel cactus red balls, the big pot wreath, the red berry wreaths, the battery-operated light strings on the evil-eye tree, the tin Christmas sign and the sail shade string lights all all have their labeled bins and spaces on the garage shelves. I have to remember to take down the new additions like the four bell balls on the deck palapa, but I still think it’s at most a one day job with time to spare. Kim has more to do inside and I will offer to help, but she too has her system and gets through it fairly efficiently. Home Depot may sell us a few more storage bins this year to hold all the new decorations. Technically, the twelve days of Christmas ends on January 6th or Epiphany, the day the Italians call Befana, after the Christmas witch. Tradition has it that all Christmas decorations should be removed by Epiphany Eve, so we always try to comply with that schedule. To be honest, its less about dogmatic tradition and more about just cleaning the slate for the new year ahead.
This year, Kim and I will be spending New Years in San Francisco to be with my dear friend, Frank, who is pretty much homebound these days by a six month course of fairly severe chemotherapy. As we all understand, that is not a pleasant process, so we have decided to go up and share some New Years cheer with him. This will involve flying up on the 31st and staying two nights at the University Club of San Francisco for two nights. That will put up about three blocks from where Frank lives on the top of Nob Hill. It will also provide me with some good start to my “walk more” new year resolution since everything in that city is an uphill hike…both ways. When we return we will need to prepare for our January weekend away with Kim heading to Pasadena to babysit the namesake grand niece and nephew, while I host New York friend Chris on a quick ride out to Oatman, Arizona to meet up with Phoenix buddies Steve and Mark. That spot and the road through the Black Mountains east of Oatman intrigued me when we drove through with the grandkids last year. It’s the most treacherous part of Rt. 66, called Bloody 66, so we will pick our way through the old mountain road and spend a moment in the old ghost town with the wandering town burros. It’s really just another way to keep the motorcycle wheels greased so that 2025 will continue to be a riding year in some manner or another.
We really don’t have any specific agenda after that weekend in January until we head off to South America and our cruise around Cape Horn in early to mid March. There will presumably have work on my plate for several expert witness cases that are lining up, and Kim will have some singing to do, but we are otherwise here on the hilltop, hanging out as usual. I already have a bead on my winter gardening projects, which is all a part of the planning and transitioning problem I enjoy. Gardening is one of three things to me. There are the things I enthusiastically embrace, like new projects that I can stand back and admire and even show off to visitors. There are the routine thinning and disposing activities that I tend to leave for Joventino on his monthly visits (these are back-breakers that have little joy in them and even less specific feel-good, since they seem almost invisible in such a large and mature garden as ours). And then there is tree-trimming. Mike spends a lot of his gardening time spreading mulch and trimming his trees. I think he likes to spread mulch for the exercise and takes the weed avoidance as a bonus outcome. But tree-trimming is different. There is sculpturing aspect to tree-trimming that speaks to the shaping of your future environment. Your trees will be around a long time and the form and shape they take is a direct result of the trimming that you do to them. Mike wants trees that do specific things for his aesthetic without interrupting things like his views or his overall property look. He is much more dogmatic about his trees than I seem to be.
My trees are of three types as well. The most defined are the four large ficus trees that separate our property from our neighbors to the north. They are lush and full-grown and provide the perfect barrier from my standpoint since they are quite distant and downhill from our house and do the visual shielding they were intended for with little muss or fuss. I’ve had them professionally trimmed once, and I do not think they need more for a while yet. The second type are the indigenous ones which are mostly live oak and manzanitas. I occasionally trim out a dead branch or two, but they grow rather artistically all on their own. And then there are the specifically and purposefully planted specimen trees. To me, they make the property much more impactful. At the head of that class is our Queensland bottle tree on the patio. I trim that away from the house and palapa as needed, but otherwise, leave it to fend for itself in its regal grandeur. I have five mature Palo Verde trees that need bottom-up trimming, and four other younger ones that I am just letting grow upward and outward. Those are trees that follow the sun, so you can always tell the sun’s path by looking at a growing Palo Verde. And as of this past summer, I have three other specimen trees down by the play area: an orange Coral tree, a purple Jacoranda and a pink Silk tree. They all need some careful pruning to get them in the best position for a strong growing season. I also have a yellow Tulip tree behind the garage and a potted Japanese red maple on the patio.
If I have room for a second resolution for this coming year, it will be to do more regular trimming of my trees. That has the dual benefit of helping them optimize their growth and also saving me from excessive tree service, which has gotten quite expensive. I like the thinking of all aspects of my life like my trees, tending to the trimming is always a good idea.