Betty Birney’s Blog

It’s December here in Southern California and as you can see, the world is bursting with red and green!

And gold, too, as our crop of Meyer lemons has started coming in. I’ll be able to go out and pick them for the next 9 months or so, even as the bush blooms again.

Yes, it is a little hard trying to figure out what season it is here … and to complicate things further, I’m writing a summer book about Humphrey. So while it’s snowing in the midwest and Christmas trees are in every shop window …  while the supermarket aisles blare “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” Humphrey is … well I won’t tell you where he is but there’s no snow there because it’s summer!

I once wrote a holiday TV movie called “Mary Christmas.” I wrote it in July. I had to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” a lot for inspiration. Not only that, when they shot it (years later but that’s another story), the scene where the snow falls was shot on one of the hottest days in July. Ah, Hollywood.

But even though the roses and lemons are blooming, so is a holiday favorite, also in our backyard.

Trust me – an arrangement of lemons and holly (with a little fresh blooming rosemary tucked in) always looks appealing on the table for the holidays!

(But don’t eat the holly.)