Southern California has been experiencing wave after wave of rain storms this past week, complete with high winds, thunder, lightning, and lots of rain. It doesn't take long for innate nettle seeds in our sandy soil to come alive as a vibrant green carpet in our backyard Domaine de Manion vineyard.

This is a point in time where the vineyard is beautiful in its simplicity. Unabashed beautiful bare structure, magnified by repetition of vine after vine exposing groomed cordon arms and last year's upward shoots held high. It is close to the last moment of calm and dormancy before this year's vineyard activities commence.

Soon, my husband John, and yours truly will begin spur pruning each vine along its cordon arms. These all-important cordon arms, host fruit spurs with inevitable buds ready to swell into tiny new shoots. This process begins the onset of this year's awakening of our vineyard.

It is an exciting time for us, considering the many unknowns, and anticipation of our third harvest this coming fall. It is a time to reflect on last year, and this year ahead, both years converging briefly at the same time. What will the weather be like this year? Will it be especially advantageous to our vineyard? Will it be a special year for our grapes? Will we harvest a higher grape yield this year? Will it be a late harvest? Will there be a surprise?

What differences will we see as our vineyard is another year older, and as grape growers we are another year wiser? Will our many footsteps amongst the grapevines this year, translate into producing a great syrah grape, and in turn a great syrah wine? Ah, only time will tell.

Please share if you have experienced the winter beauty of a vineyard. Please comment if you have helped friends in their winter vineyard.

Please welcome new sponsors, TomatoFest and BioBag!

As gardeners we all know without healthy soil, there will be no beautiful healthy garden. It's just that simple. What better way to ensure healthy soil then backyard composting. Don't laugh, but there is something magical about backyard composting. It is something akin to the "sum is greater than the parts", or two separate delicious ingredients will never compare as well alone, as when complemented and combined together as one.

As I have mentioned before, backyard composting can be paralleled to making a vegetarian recipe. It is equal parts of layered greens and browns, add water to keep moist, and turn frequently to aerate. For more detailed information, please go to VGG related post, How To Compost In Your Backyard.

Here are examples of but not limited to, what is regularly in my compost bin. I add egg shells from my beautiful eggs my hens have laid. I add raked leaves from our trees that I cherish in our garden. I add my spent coffee grinds and recycled coffee filter from the aromatic French Roast coffee I enjoy drinking each morning. I add fresh grass clippings from our lawn. I add sweet potato peels and green bean tips from an evening meal preparation. I add my chicken manure as an extra bonus.

Ten Ways Compost Benefits Your Soil and Ultimately Your Garden: -It improves the soil structure by causing mineral particles in your soil to naturally clump together. -It improves soil ability to hold moisture, and means less watering. -It improves soil aeration and the ability to carry oxygen to your plant's roots. -It acts as an anchor to hold in soil nutrients, and not allow them to wash away with ground water. -It increases the number of beneficial microorganisms and worms in your soil. -It has the ability to neutralize acidic soils and acidifies alkaline soils, this is big. -It has the ability to consume harmful fungi spores, if present. -It introduces trace elements often hard to add, and in proper amounts to your soil. -It kills harmful pathogens in the soil, which keeps your plants and garden healthy. -It creates a healthy environment for healthy plants to thrive, and inhibits weed growth.

Your compost is a custom mixture, an interesting by-product of your life. All of these ingredients throughly combined become an organic rich humus with incredible benefits to your soil, garden, plants, trees, and yard.

Besides the many advantageous perks of adding compost to your soil, composting benefits your pocketbook, and piece of mind. Please share if you compost now. Please comment on what got you started composting? What benefits have you seen in your garden since composting?

For those of you in the San Diego area, there are "Free Composting Workshops" offered this spring through Solana Center for Environmental Innovation. Pre-register online at Solana Center for Environmental Innovation or (tel) (760) 436-7986 x222

It's January now, but fast forward to the month of August. Wouldn't you love to harvest a basket of tomato beauties for yourself this summer. That means you should be selecting your favorite tomato seeds now, and preparing to start your seedlings for this spring.

Your gardening friends, Gary Ibsen and Dagma Lacey, tomato heirloom seed experts at TomatoFest, have extended their Annual Heirloom Tomato Sale going on now through January 18, 2010, TomatoFest Seeds On Sale. You too, can have Julia Child and Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red heirloom tomatoes gracing your garden this year. Check it out.

Weidner's Gardens is hosting a "Fruit Tree Pruning Workshop" this Saturday, January 16, 2010.

11:00am - 1:00pm Master Gardener, John Marsh, will discuss and demonstrate "Fruit Tree Pruning". 1:00pm - 2:00pm VintageGardenGal, Bonnie Jo Manion, will speak on "Fruit Tree Espalier Basics."

Weidner's Gardens has a nice selection of bare root fruit trees, citrus trees, blueberry bushes, and much more currently in stock. Check out their website for their business hours. Weidner's Gardens, 695 Normandy Road, Encinitas, CA, 92024, (tel) (760) 436-2194.

I can't say enough about the effectiveness of combating gophers "the green way" with bulbs. I owe my good friends at Easy To Grow Bulbs for the "aha" moment, when I learned that planting any type of jonquil, paperwhite, or daffodil bulb, in a somewhat strategic mass planting in your yard and garden will effectively deter gophers in a very green and very beautiful organic way. It is a gopher solution that is simple and appealing.

Last year I wrote about the benefit of planting bulbs to deter gophers around my chicken coop in the related VGG post, Narcissus Bulbs Naturally Deter Gophers, and how effective it has been. I also planted bulbs around the perimeter of my potager to deter any gopher invasion, as shown in the photo above.

Jonquil, paperwhite, and daffodil bulbs once planted in the ground send out a year-round message to deter gophers, rabbits, and even deer in their immediate area. These particular bulbs send out a "toxic fragrance" or odor that animals sense even without biting into a bulb. However, if these bulbs are bitten into, they have the capability to burn a gopher's tender mouth and cheek tissues. The result is a natural tendency for gophers to move away from the area where you have planted your bulbs, hence limiting their food source, and population. It takes a little while, but it really works.

I love this green solution because it is humane to wildlife, your bulbs look fantastic when blooming, and they bloom year after year. Your initial investment is your time involved planting your bulbs, and a generous amount of bulbs planted in your gopher problem-related area. Plant your bulbs one after another in a line 3"-4" apart, or planted randomly throughout a flower bed amongst your other plants. Once your bulbs bloom, cut them back after they are spent and dried. You won't see them for the rest of the year, yet they are sending out their gopher-deterrent message year-round.

Please share how you combat gophers in your garden and yard. Do you have any other green solutions for gophers?

Wishing Everyone The Best 2010! What better way to start the New Year, writing about newly laid eggs, a symbol of fertility and new life through the ages.

My French Marans hens have started laying their beautiful chocolate eggs once again, only six days after the winter solstice, December 21, which marks the commencement of longer daylight. The increased daylight often measured in increased minutes of daylight, signals chickens in general to begin laying.

If you let your hens follow their instincts, and don't add supplemental light in their coop to keep them laying, they will take a natural break or molt in the fall to winter, and begin laying once again with the natural stimulation of incremental increased daylight. This can vary by a hen's age and breed. When a hen does start laying once again, after a break, her eggs might be smaller at first in size.

In a previous post here at VGG, Discovering The French Marans Chicken Breed, I write in detail about the French Maran breed, and how they actually secrete a dark chocolate tint to their eggs aided by a unique mucous gland in the last moments of laying their eggs. This is the secret of their deep chocolate color, and what is unique to their breed. In the photo above, you can see the first egg is two-toned, as my French Marans hen, Coco, turned on her mucous gland, as she commences to begin laying her first egg, after her fall/winter break. The second laid egg is fully tinted dark chocolate, and it appears that her egg-laying process is in place. It is yet another example of how beautiful mother nature is.

For more information on the French Marans Chicken Breed please go to Marans Chicken Club USA. See "Diggin' These Links", on my home page- left side bar, for more chicken-related links I've assembled especially for you.

Are your hens starting to lay since the winter solstice? Do you have any "egg stories" to share?

Announcing for all of you that live in the Encinitas area, Weidner's Gardens is hosting a "Fruit Tree Workshop" on Saturday, January 16, 2009.  Come see their fabulous bare root fruit tree selection for the season, and learn a few tips. See below for details. Hope to see you there!

11:00-1pm, Master Gardener, John Marsh, will  speak on "Pruning Your Fruit Trees."

1:00-2:00pm, VintageGardenGal, Bonnie Jo Manion, will speak on the "Basics of Espaliered Fruit Trees."

Weidner's Gardens, 695 Normandy Rd., Encinitas, CA 92024, (tel) (760) 436-2194, www.weidners.com, Saturday, January 16, 2009, Hours are 9:00am - 4:30pm

My husband, John, wanted two things out of our remodel, a garage and a wine-making room. Just kidding. Part of our remodel involves a stand alone barn which will house a two-car garage, wine-making room, and a guest apartment upstairs. Our architect, Bill Bocken, was very clever to cloak all of this into a barn. Our trees and landscaping soften the barn, and immediately give the barn a presence as if it has been on our property for a long time.

The two large openings you see in the above photo will be actual sliding barn doors, which will look west to our garden, vineyard, and the ocean horizon. Our barn will be multi-use and functional for a variety of activities. It will be a working barn.

On a recent trip back to the Chicago area, traveling south and west into the farm heartland, I was captured by the beauty of the many working family farms and open land of rich earth. Trees were carefully planted around the family home and center of the farm for protection. You could often see the original barn of the farm homestead abandoned for safety reasons, but sometimes still standing and making an aesthetic impression on the landscape.

There is a great green movement to recycle precious floors, beams, and materials from these abandoned barns and buildings, rather than have them lost to landfill and further decay. Theses materials can live on, be re-purposed and enjoyed for anther 100 years.

Some barns, like this white barn in the photo below, still function and thrive today. This former dairy barn is part of an 1830's farmstead in Woodstock, Illinois, majestically morphed into an ideal setting for a garden antique business, Kimball & Bean.

It is nearly impossible to photograph with true justice this incredible barn. I wasn't able to capture and show you the massive length of this barn, or that it is two stories high. Hopefully, I was able to show you its charm and enduring presence.

If you are ever near the community of Woodstock, Illinois, take the time to visit their picturesque town square and Kimball & Bean Garden Antiques, a few miles outside of town. My husband and I hope to recreate some of the charm and enduring presence with our own barn, that we saw in the barns in the Midwest farm heartland.

Did you visit or have a barn growing up? Please share, if you know of a barn now that has been saved and reinvented for something wonderful? Please comment on why you think barns are so wonderful.

For a special treat on Christmas morning, serve your friends and family Cranberry-Vanilla Coffeecake, from a recipe by Melissa Roberts in Gourmet magazine, December 2008. It proved to be so popular, I actually made it a few times throughout last year's holiday season.

This recipe packs a bundle. It is incredibly easy to make, and can even be made a day ahead. It is festive and flavorful for the holidays. In the middle of this coffeecake is a surprise tart cranberry filling, and its garnish on top is sifted powdered sugar, which is reminiscent of snowflakes. Underlying it all, is fresh vanilla bean flavored sugar. This flavor combination is hard to beat.

Cranberry Vanilla Coffeecake works well by itself and perhaps with a piping hot cup of fresh cinnamon coffee to accompany it, or maybe you would like to include it as part of an entire Christmas Brunch menu. Enjoy! Happy Holidays everyone!

At your next holiday gathering, entertain with a warmed punch bowl of Spicy Wassail, recipe from The Sage Cottage Cookbook, 2nd: Celebrations, Recipes, and Herb Gardening Tips for Every Month of the Year. Author Dorry Baird Norris suggests finding an inexpensive basket with a flat bottom that fits your Crock Pot snug, cut an exacting hole on one side for the cord, plug into a nearby electrical outlet,  presto you have the perfect serving vessel to keep your tasty holiday wassail warm.

Don't forget to embellish around your basket edge, as my dear and clever friends did in the photo above. Fresh winter greens, pine needles, and pinecones further entice guests to sample. My friends also suggest this "Crock Pot warming and styling technique" for soups, warm appetizers, and mulled wines. Author Dorry Baird Norris recommends a nice variation on her recipe for a more Christmasy drink, simply replace the recipe's cider with cranberry juice.

Spicy Wassail Bowl Makes 25 6-ounce servings by Author Dorry Baird Norris

1 gallon apple cider 1/3 cup dark brown sugar 1 12-ounce can undiluted frozen orange juice concentrate 1 12-ounce can undiluted frozen lemonade concentrate 1 tablespoon whole cloves 1 tablespoon allspice berries 4 cinnamon sticks (Never substitute ground cinnamon for cinnamon sticks in drinks because it does not blend in.) 1 teaspoon ground mace 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Combine cider, brown sugar, orange juice, and lemonade in a large pan. Tie cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mace and nutmeg in cheesecloth or muslin and add to cider. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove spice bag and serve hot.

Surrounding yourself with friends and family over the holidays is very special, especially when you share with them a cup of warmed Spicy Wassail. Please pass on the good cheer!

Please comment on what you like to serve to guests around the holidays. What are some of your holiday traditions you would like to share.