Time to talk of other things ...

 Lent Explained Credit: SVD Missions The word Lent is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words " lencten ", meaning Spring, furthermore " lenctentid ", not only means " Springtide " but also was the word for March , the month in which the majority of Lent falls. The more primitive ecclesiastical name was “ quadragesima ” in Latin, also “ tessaracoste ” in Greek, which translates to  “ forty days ” . The season of Lent lasts 46 days from Ash Wednesday until the evening before Easter Sunday. If the six Sundays, exempt from lenten restrictions, are excluded from the count, Lent lasts forty days. In the Bible, the number forty is typically indicative of a time of testing, trial, penance, purification, and renewal. For example, forty days was the length of Jesus’ time of trial in the desert in preparation for his public ministry to proclaim the Gospel (Mk 1:12-15) culminating with his passion, death and resurrection. Credit: Transformedbylight.blog The Lenten season

 What is Pancake or Shrove Tuesday? Credit: christianity.com Pancake Day , or Shrove Tuesday , is the traditional social celebration day before the start of Lent – the 6 weeks of penance and fasting leading up to Easter – a period when Christians give up luxuries as part of fasting and penance to remember when Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to fast and pray.  Dating back to the late Middle Ages, Shrove Tuesday was the last day of what is traditionally called " Shrovetide ," the week preceding the beginning of Lent, a time of fasting and penance. The preparation for Lent included the confessing of sin and the reception of absolution. At this time, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: " We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, chees

Walk through Eden Rift Vineyards in Hollister, California   2019 Eden Rift Estate Chardonnay Today four of us participated in the 2024 Valentine's walk-through at the charming grounds of Eden Rift Vineyards.  The 2024 Eden Rift Vineyard Valentine Walk The property originally known as Pietra Santa , has some of the original 1849 Pinot Noir grapevines which thrive in the unique blend of limestone, dolomite and quartz that any vigneron (someone who cultivates a vineyard for winemaking) worth his salt would literally kill for.  The new name ' Eden Rift Vineyards ' given by the current estate owner Christian Pillsbury is a nod to John Steinbeck's romantic description of The Garden of Eden personified when he said, " I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness, and a kind of invitation so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.

 Growing onions in your garden A variety of onions from the garden Introduction : From my experience, growing Onions  ( Allium cepa ) has been pretty straightforward once you understand a few nuances - alliums in general need full sunlight, loamy soil rich in compost, moist soil but no standing water ... best of all very few pests affect alliums making them easy to grow. If you need more details keep reading ... For beginners instead of starting from seed, use onion sets of your preferred variety from a nursery. Onion sets are tiny onions that mature in about 14 weeks but for best results, make sure the sets are not dried or stressed. But growing from seeds is fairly easy, remember it is a cool-season crop that requires the soil to be at least 50°F to germinate. You can also start seedlings indoors about 6 weeks before transplanting to the garden.  All you need to know when growing onions 1.  In NorCal you can plant intermediate-day and long-day cultivars.  Growing onions requires abun

The Macabre World of Figs and   Parasitic Pollinating Wasps Credit: Bon Appetit (no pun intended!) The lifecycle of the fig wasp reads like a macabre horror tale, yet it is often cited as a premier example of mutualism (the scientific name for plants that trade insect development for seed production). BBC Video by David Attenborough (not for the faint-hearted) Sometime back, I came across the intriguing snippet from the second episode of the BBC TV Natural History series Perfect Plant by the eminent British biologist and natural historian, Sir David Frederick Attenborough detailing the unique mutualism of figs and wasps - this prompted me to take a closer look at this unique relationship. Fig trees ( Ficus, Moraceae ) are tropical plants with numerous species around the world - so it might come as a surprise that all fig trees are pollinated by minuscule host-specific parasitic wasps of the family Agaonidae , each uniquely attached to one and only one type of fig, yet so small and i