January 2016 Upbeat Times

6 • January 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC.

Consider the Garden... January 2016 by Kimberly Childers • kimberlychilders@att.net

Happy New Year !

are wonderful as well when everything else is brown and fading.

I hope you are sitting by the

warm fire, or heater, sipping a spiked cup of organic French roast coffee. Well, it is the hol- iday season after all! Every- thing in most gardens is dying and wet, except the vegetables are loving the rain and grow- ing, soon to be sautéed or sim- mering in some winter stew with organic barley.

Or-

SANTA ROSA, CA. ~ Garden- ers are sooooo grateful it’s wet outside, very, very, very wet. Slithering salamanders beneath big terra cotta pots are rejoicing in the long awaited dampness. Skinny paths are covered with

the tiniest of green sprouting plants. Stunning blue Winter Iris (Algerian Iris/ iris unguicu- laris) are blooming in profu- sion, brightening up even the dreariest of winter days. Their thin swords of evergreen leaves

ange Persim- mons are still holding on, in the tops of trees, and they certainly are something you might consider

planting this year, Persimmons!

Nurser-

ies are starting to fill up with wonderful assortments of bare root everything, sweet, color- ful pansies and more than I can list here! Time to put on your rain boots, rain coats, and visit your favorite nurseries and if you don’t have a favorite yet explore and find a few. You can Google your area and see what nurseries appeal to your garden

senses or maybe a friend told you that you ‘must’ go here or there. . .or maybe I mentioned some particular nurseries to visit like California Flora to find natives to bring home and plant in your ‘ever evolving’ gardens. Check out Harmony Farms, harmonyfarm.com with an extensive on line catalog and lists of fruiting plants they have right now and what’s coming soon. Pick up a pair of my fa- vorite ‘Mud Gloves’

(in

all colors!) while you’re there and browse thru their seeds, plants and soil amend- ments. It’s quite an edu- cation to go

there, especially if you’ve just started the addicting, fantastic habit of gardening, and their web site is really marvelous! Start thinking about creating theme gardens, like fragrant gardens, lavender gardens or gray leaved collections of as- sorted salvias, medicinal herb gardens and so much more. You decide! Start cutting out pic-

... continued on page 12 Weird Facts & Fun Trivia - 2

A German traveling sales- man named Nicholaus August Otto constructed the first practical internal combustion engine; it used a four stroke cycle of a piston to draw a fuel- air mixture into a cylinder, compress it, mechanically capture energy after igni- tion, and expel the exhaust before beginning the cycle anew. Issued (US) patent 194,047 on August 14, 1877.

Edwin Herbert Land, Ameri- can physicist and inventor, was born in Bridgeport, Con- necticut. While a freshman at Harvard University in 1926, he became interested in polarized light (light oriented in a plane with respect to the source).

Taking a leave of absence, he developed a new kind of polar- izer, which he called Polaroid, by aligning and embedding crystals in a plastic sheet. Land returned to Harvard at the age of 19 but left again in his senior year to found a laboratory

nearby. Joined by other young scientists, he applied the polar- izing principle to light filters, optical devices, and motion picture processes.

www.williebirdsrestaurant.com

A Sonoma County Tradition! “Turkey always and turkey all ways!”

January 5th through the 25th

Santa Rosa • 2875 Santa Rosa Ave. • 525-0569 www.lazboy.com/santarosa

6 • January 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC.

Williebird’s Restaurant 1150 Santa Rosa Ave

Santa Rosa • 707-542-0861

Restaurant Hours: Monday - Saturday 7:00AM - 9:00PM Sunday 7:00AM - 8:00PM

Williebird’s Retail Store 5350 HWY 12,

Santa Rosa • 707-545-2832 I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8 | Page 9 | Page 10 | Page 11 | Page 12 | Page 13 | Page 14 | Page 15 | Page 16 | Page 17 | Page 18 | Page 19 | Page 20 | Page 21 | Page 22 | Page 23 | Page 24