Tag / San Francisco

Today was another spectacular Indian summer day in San Francisco. For one thing, we visited the new deYoung museum “sneak preview” in Golden Gate Park. The crowds obviously agreed that this is a truly an amazing building, and a grand new feather in the City’s already featherful cap. The only downside was that the rest of the City chose this beautiful day to visit the deYoung…soooooo the parking in GGP was horrendous. The silver lining? We got to catch glimpses of the Blue Angels performing for a Fleet Week crowd as we walked to the museum.

So, what’s up with the snow? Well, even though I spent the waning hours of the day in our garden (pictured), I am fixated on a fascinating factoid from a recent Examiner article. (For the record, I fixed the drip irrigation system this weekend.)

About a week and a half ago, San Francisco hosted a truly “only in SF” event. In X Game fashion, some extreme skiers turned the Fillmore Street hill in Pacific Heights into a ski jump (photos below). I love it! Oh of course it got a few snotty types in a huff, but what a great idea. Anyhow, it generated quite a bit of local press, including an article that answered one of my age-old questions: has it ever snowed in San Francisco?

Well, the answer surprised me. Turns out that we have had measurable snow 10 times in the last 150 years. To quote the Examiner: “Snowfall in San Francisco is rare, but there have been a handful of storms during the last 150 years. There was even a white Christmas in 1856.”

1856 – Dec. 25 – 2.5″

1868 – Jan. 12 – 2.0″

1882 – Dec. 31 – 3.5″

1884 – Feb. 07 – 1.5″

1887 – Feb. 05 – 3.7″

1888 – Jan. 16 – 0.1″

1896 – Mar. 03 – 1.0″

1932 – Dec. 11 – 0.8″

1952 – Jan. 15 – 0.3″

1976 – Feb. 05 – 1.0″

I normally don’t post pictures from other places, but I didn’t attend this event. So for posterity, here is a photo from the San Francisco Chronicle. It is amazing what humans can do 🙂

Our friends Brian and Allison visited this weekend. Funny–no matter how many visitors come to town, we always find new things to do. This weekend, we did some wine tasting (six wineries in Napa…some old favorites and some new), we ate sipped lattes at the Warming Hut, saw some of our amazing fog from a distance (from the Sausalito marina), and even dropped by the Castro Street Fair. Only in San Francisco could you have that variety.

Safe travels home, Brian and Allison. Come back soon.

Today, Jeff and I finished adding a new succulent bed to our garden. We planted 40 varieties of succulents and over 50 individual plants. The idea was 1. to create some visual interest in front of our compost bins–not to hide them, but to distract from them–and 2. to find a place for all the cool succulents we keep finding. At first, Jeff thought we could get away with a few small planters here and there, but when we started looking at the succulents, we found so many cool varieties that we couldn’t decide. Soooooo, we bought one of each 🙂 The results are stunning. And this new bed will also serve as a visual edge to our new back yard terrace. More picture soon on that development, we hope. But first, some pictures of the garden from start to finish.

We started this idea as a place to put some excess dirt as we were moving stuff around the back yard. So, I began a kidney-shaped pile, covered with a weed inhibiting tarp, and topped it with “cactus soil”. We planted in this special soil, and then used small pebbles to create a covering. Very nice coloration that compliments the succulents well.

Our supplies (rocks, weed tarp and border) all came from Broodmor Landscape Supply in South San Francisco. The succulents came from Floorcraft Nursery (San Francisco) and Target–yes, Target had a really nice selection of succulents.

Total time to create this new feature? Two weekends.