Christmas was less exciting than Thanksgiving with fewer people. We had Christmas Eve at Anne’s and Christmas Day at Lora’s. New Year’s was at Anne’s with Alice quitting at ten when I played Auld Lang Syne on my clarinet and blew my Vuvuzela. The rest of us stayed up for the bitter end of 2012. Later we watched the Rose Parade on TV. (No one actually went down there this year.)

The January Fresno meeting was a bit boring – how to make hypertufa pots. This was done as a demonstration with the demonstrators wearing masks and gloves to avoid the effects of the cement in the mix. We were then given bags of the mix and sent home to try it. I think Bakersfield was better with its weekend hands on learning.

That Friday Polly’s sister Ginny and husband Bob came up from Joshua Tree with their son Thomas and his Korean wife Sunny. Sunny is learning English, and Thomas is learning Korean. What a way to start off a marriage! Polly’s two sisters who live in Fresno were there as well. Only one sister (who lives in Boston) was missing – and they talked to her on the phone. Polly is the matriarch of the Hale clan.

Saturday we drove down to Visalia and saw Dink Williams and his fabulous critters from old machine parts. Then it was on to Porterville for a look at his work on display at the Art Gallery there. We ended up buying a warthog. We also bought a couple of books at the nearby Used Book Store – something Bakersfield badly needs.

Of course, we were back in Bakersfield for the BCSS meeting and learned a bit on Tillandsia –mainly that Bakersfield is not the place to grow them! They grow as “air plants” without soil. Often they are attached to other plants as epiphytes.