What happened to January?

Of the 31 days in January, I only spent six here at home in Tasmania. Unfortunately this meant I missed the summer festivals that Tassie does so well, like MOFO and the Cygnet Folk Festival. It also meant my summer gardening efforts were, well, pretty much zero or wasted. I came back to many kilos of broad beans that had to be picked, blanched and frozen immediately. Loads of snow peas. Tonnes of rhubarb. And after that, pretty much just weeds.

So where were we? I had work meetings in California in mid-January, so we managed to fit in 10 days holiday in San Francisco beforehand. It was my first visit to that lovely city and we stayed in an Airbnb right on the Powell-Hyde cable car line and two blocks from the famous Lombard Street. It was enough time to see almost all we wanted to: the Golden Gate Bridge of course, Sausalito, Alcatraz, a hike on Mt Tamalpais, Walt Disney Family Museum, wine tasting in the Napa Valley, hopping on and off historic cable cars and street cars. Then back home for five days and off to Singapore, again for work, but still managed to squeeze in a few sights. It has been great to be home for a few weeks, even though we were both knocked out by some horrible lurgy picked up on the flight back. So now the end of February is rushing up on us, and we are savouring the beautiful summer days and long evenings.