One of the delights of living in Greensboro is the temperate climate. While our summers tend to the hotter than some (or hotter than Hell on some days) our brief, usually mild winters make up for them.

After having borne the shock of a Southern girl who moved to Boston years ago, experienced winters that seemed to start mid-September, continue through the holidays, past what should have been Spring and then finally took leave around July, Greensboro is Home, Sweet Home every year about this time.

While snow blowers and salt trucks and parkas and barren landscapes are being experienced by vast parts of the country, we’ll be seeing crocuses emerge any day now around here. (Sorry, ya’ll from other regions, but it’s true.)

As I type this, mid-morning in early February, the temperature is 61 degrees outside. And the photos above were shot at Bicentennial Garden on my way to work.

Birds singing, trees budding, the Carolina/Duke basketball game tonight – spring is just about here.

So, this week’s poll question is: What’s the 1st sign of spring for you?

‘Home’ means many things to us, as noted in a previous post. One of the most universal is that home means nurturing, an important part of which is food. And whether meals are eaten in a formal dining room with Scarlatti playing in the background or out of take out boxes while sitting in front of reruns of Seinfeld, our meals are an integral part of our home life.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know that I am fortunate to be married to a man who, literally, can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan (and never ever let you forget he’s man. But that’s a topic of another post…)

He’s a good cook.

The plate shown above is something he threw together for me one afternoon as I sat at our breakfast bar, tapping away on the computer. The combination of tomatoes, avocado and spicy beef sauteed with onions was just right.

I cook as well, but not the more exotic dishes of my husband’s native Colombia. And he doesn’t do more American meals I cook. We have a nice rhythm to our culinary routines. It works.

Which brings us to the question for this week’s poll: Who does most of the cooking in you home?

Look to the right on this page and you’ll see the poll. Take it. And before you know, it’ll be dinner time!

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

One of the things I take most seriously when working with home buyers is trying to ask them – after all the details about how old the heating system is in a house, whether the big screen television will fit in the den, what the property taxes are and how on earth they’ll ever cover over those tangerine colored walls in the living room  – will this house feel like home when you walk in the door?

“Home” has always been where we feel best. Safest, most peaceful. And where, as Robert Frost told us, “when you have to go there, they have to take you in”.

Of course, getting away from home can have its restorative qualities as well. My Old Fella and I go to a great place in the mountains every year and do almost nothing. And for the week we’re there, it’s grand.

But home is the place we’re happy to return to. It’s where the sticking doors and familiar sounds and the dopey animals and 20,000 home cooked meals have been.  I always try to ask my clients to imagine pulling into the driveway every day and whether they’ll be glad to get there.

That’s what it’s all about.

So this week’s poll question is: What feels like home?

You may not know it from this photo, but the boots belong to a man who owns his own business, read the entire FAA manual on his own before passing the written test for his private pilot certificate (in English, which is his second language, mind you) has raised three successful children and kept a seriously unbalanced woman on track for over 28 years.

The man belongs to the cat.

Here he is just trying to get some work done on his computer while putting up his feet after a long day. It was there that he got pinned down and remained until released.

We have a happy home. In addition to the aforementioned progeny, there’s my 85 year old mother who lives with us, two large dogs and a another cat who has some sort of social anxiety disorder.

And we all get along pretty well.

But Luna – she who must be obeyed – really is the most spoiled and self assured creature ever to inhabit the place.

For the record, it was not I who spoiled her. That’s a poll for another day.

At any rate, this leads to today’s question:  Who runs your house?

Not a very earth-shattering topic this week. But the earth’s been shattered enough recently. I needed a breather.

That’s what numbers looked like during The Great Depression. Most of us, thankfully, were not around during those truly miserable times. But many of our parents or grandparents were. Listen to some of the stories. It’ll make you feel much better about our current state of affairs.

Things were bad, man. Bad.

Famous Dorothea Lange photo. They really had just sold their tent for food.

Poor meant having just sold your family’s tent to buy food. Not like now when poor means having to scale back to basic cable.

Granted, being flip about the struggles some folks today are experiencing is not right. There are real hardships and if one feels totally miserable that misery isn’t mitigated by the fact that someone else’s total misery was experienced differently.

But we must remember that things – as awful as they were during The Great Depression – got better. And they’ll get better from where we are now.

But when? Many of us would like to know. We can deal with ‘the bottom’ if we just knew where the sucker is.

So, today’s poll is: When do you think things will improve?

Take the poll. Maybe we’ll see that more of us look forward with happy anticipation rather than dread. And that in itself may make the rest of us feel better.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

Treadmills at the Bryan Family YMCA in Greensboro, NC

Arghh. January is coming. And we know what that means.

Resolutions.

We all know that resolutions are about as effective as those no-sew mending glues advertised on infomercials.

But it always just seems right to try for a fresh start with the beginning of each new year.

And has there been another year in recent history that we wanted to be rid of more then 2008?

So, this week’s poll asks “What goals do you hope to reach in 2009?”

Choose as many answers as you wish.

And fear not the implements of modern torture you might find when you venture into the gym.

I’m sure the walls are thick enough to muffle your cries and cursing.

This was what the fridge looked like AFTER a full day's worth of eating.

We are a fortunate family, and on so many levels. And we were all able to be together this past weekend as our newly married daughter came with her husband for a pre-Christmas visit, our older son took the train from Raleigh and traveled into the lovely Depot in Greensboro and our youngest is home for break after his first semester at college.

And we are doing okay throughout this frightful economic time. We all have jobs (except for Mr. College Student. His job is … college), we have roofs over our heads, we’re healthy, and we have food in the fridge.

Lots of food.

Too much food.

Buñuelos cooking in a cast iron dutch oven

We did it again this year and over bought and over cooked for the gastric needs of the family. Celebration is great.  But this was almost obscene.

It happens every December. The yummy treats baked by our daughter who has just started her own baking business, the great foods prepared by my Colombian husband (arepas, buñuelos, Sudado de Papas, arroz con aliños, beans, patacones. Ahhh patacones…..)

One gallon of my husband's fantastic salsa

But even as the jeans are swapped out for elastic waist pants and we swear we’ll be ill if we take one more mouthful of anything, there is something so great about our holiday rituals.

This leads to this week’s poll: How do you approach the indulgences of the holiday season?

Take the poll. It won’t burn many calories, but it might be the only thing you do this month that won’t impact your carb count.

“Where shall we go today?” was a regular question.

“Liberty Oak for some soup and a glass of wine?”

“Fisher’s Grille for a Reuben sandwich?”

“How about Ganache for a Ceasar Salad?”

But now I bring my lunch as well as some healthy snacks in a cool old stainless steel lunch kit that’s been around our house for years.

And I like it just fine.

Oh, I still have lunch out. Just not nearly as often. But there’s something satifying – as well as helpful with portion control – about packing my lunch and making the most out of last night’s left overs.

It got to wondering how many others are forgoing lunching out for lunching in?

So, that’s this week’s poll. Are you an “innie” or an “outie”?