Lydia B Fit

There is a little hope for warmth and sunshine out there right now. Thank you blue and purple hill irises 🌤️

I couldn’t have done it without

What a delight! I learned so much today from ✨ there’s still a lot to practice, but I learned how to bridge the gap between dark jewel tones and white. Thank you 🦆

Also I saw the most stunning snowberry that’s ever lived. A literal vine of snowberry up to the roof 🫐 A perfect day.

A collection of recent bouquets from the cut flower garden. All flowers grown myself and started from seed or tuber in the basement ✨

I wish you could smell these amazing lilies. The heat wave means they’ll go over way too quickly, but in the meantime I’m going to enjoy them every evening ✨

Happy Gregorian New Year! Animals, it seem, innately know how to measure time through the entorhinal cortex, the pituitary gland, and the pineal gland. A dog truly does know how long you’ve been gone for. We have evidence of humans recording the phases of the Moon 30,000 years ago, a little after we domesticated dogs and right before we invented the oven.
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The sun can literally give you the time of day and the moon can give you the time of year. The calendar though, is a tool of power to dictate processes and to advance the power of the ruling class.
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In the Roman Republic, consulships would lengthen years controlled by political allies and would shorten years in rivals’ terms of office. During wartimes the date was so frequently changed that the average Roman citizen often did not know what day it was. In 45 BC Julius Caesar reformed the Roman Calendar to create the Julian calendar, one that contained 365.25 days per year.
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Other calendars throughout Eurasia and Africa, slowly became aligned, at least fiscally, with the Julian calendar. These calendars often kept their own conventions, but modified them to contain the Julian 365.25 days. The conquests, large trade network and Christian missionaries of the Roman Empire also forced more and more countries to adopt the Julian calendar.
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In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII modified the Julian calendar to shorten the year’s days to 365.2425, which more accurately reflects the Earth’s orbit. Leap days were removed from years that are divisible by 100, unless they are exactly divisible by 400. This reform brought the northern spring equinox back in line with Easter, as the too long Julian year caused the dates to drift apart. Again, the calendar was a form of political and religious control of the Holy Roman Empire and Catholicism. Through globalization, colonialism, and ironically, communism, the Gregorian calendar is now “the” calendar of the vast majority of the world.
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All this is to say, although our New Year’s is innately tied with colonization and the proselytizing of Christianity, I hope this time of shift from the long nights of 2020 into the long days of 2021 is happy and healthy for you and all you know.

It’s winter pruning season. I always kick off my pruning season with the acer palmatums, or Japanese Maples. Their branch structure is so stunning and with a little bit of pruning you can really open up the tree and show it off. Remember: winter is the time to make larger cuts, and winter pruning encourages growth.
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Rules of pruning thumb: Always have three points of contact when you’re up in a tree. Use sharp tools. Don’t force cuts, use a different tool. You can always come back to cut back more, but trees also grow back quickly. This really depends on the tree species and age, but in general, don’t remove more than 20% of your tree during the entire growing season.
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Check out my December YouTube video for more pruning tips!

Get your preps in order 🥕