“Simple French Comfort Food” Cooking Class

March 2024 started off with a bang, with a full class for the “Simple French Comfort Food” cooking class. The blustery day started out with a little rain, so a nice warm fire and a comforting menu was perfect. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and made delicious recipes that culminated in a relaxing lunch, à table. All my students were an inspiration for me. Merci!

À Table For A Relaxing Lunch With Recipes Completed

Winter Storms Brought Spectacular Sunsets

Welcome winter rains brought spectacular sunsets. The mature trees have been trimmed. The garden pathways replenished with fresh mulch. The flowerbeds manicured. The vineyard and roses pruned and poised for another growing season. The potager has been planted.

The garden and vineyard are waiting for longer days and warmer temperatures. I am hopeful all this wonderful winter rain will promise a spectacular showing in spring.

Olivenhain Garden Club Visiting March 2024. Thank You For The Photo By Olivenhain Garden Club

In mid-March, The Olivenhain Garden Club came for a garden tour and a glimpse of spring emerging. Just like your favorite perennial, this club, and many other lovely garden clubs have been here before for a visit, and have seen the garden and Domaine de Manion evolve over the years.

The Olivenhain Garden Club comments and compliments were so nice. They didn’t go hungry, I prepared a few different charcuterie boards and platters for them.

One Of The Charcuterie Boards. A Little Something For Everyone

“Meet The Masters” Check-In And Book Signing For Gabriela Salazar

Mid-March was The Village Garden Club of La Jolla’s “Meet the Masters” 2024 event with program speaker, fabulous Gabriela Salazar, an internationally recognized floral artist and grower out of Mexico. She wowed us with her flower philosophy and technique in flower arranging.

It was a huge, fun, successful event. I helped, along with many dutiful ladies checking guests in, and giving them their table seating. It was a pleasure to be on this committee with my fellow members. Hats off to The Village Garden Club of La Jolla!

As March continued to unfold, spring was emerging, slowly but surely. First, narcissus bulbs appeared in the lawn, next Cherokee rose started to bloom, and then wisteria came to life in purple pendulum display. Early spring was here!

Naturalized Narcissus Bulbs Transition Winter Into Spring

Cherokee Rose Beginning To Bloom White

Wisteria Over the Shed Heralds In Spring

March 2024 started off with a bang, and is ending with a bang, Easter! March has had momentum with a nice energy, perhaps it will continue throughout the year. I wish all of you a beautiful spring!

Vintage Hen And Chick Remind Us Easter Is Here

Bon Appétit, Bon Weekend, and Happy Easter…Bonnie

Tickets Are Going Fast!

The truly incredible Village Garden Club of La Jolla is bringing internationally renowned floral designer and floral farmer, Gabriela Salazar to San Diego for a very special luncheon event, speaking program, and floral demonstration all rolled into one. Tickets are still available, and are open to the public. Please see above for reservation details, and who to contact for more information. You won’t want to miss the magic of Gabriela Salazar!

Wonderful Ingredients for Truffle-Tomato Bisque

If you love “Simple French Comfort Food” and want to add some carefully curated recipes to your repertoire, please sign for the upcoming Saturday, March 2, 2024 culinary experience at Domaine de Manion. Spend a day in France, learn new tasty recipes, and enjoy a relaxing lunch. For more details please visit: Simple French Comfort Food Culinary Experience

Newly Planted Arugula, Carrots, Fava Beans, Lettuce, Kale, Onions, Peas, and Swiss Chard

January, and the new year 2024 has been very productive and busy for us at Domaine de Manion. I have had our massive pine trees trimmed, refreshed and mulched all of our pathways with the chipped trimmings, pruned all of the roses, redesigned a flowerbed, and started the winter potager. That is just the garden and landscape.

Inside the house, I have reorganized my closet, linen closet, and kitchen. Donated clothes, shoes, belts and odds ‘n ends. Refreshed this, and refreshed that. It is a great feeling to start the year off this way!

With that said, this year I am venturing on to new projects and places—which means I will still be writing my posts, but maybe not as regularly as every Friday. I am not going away, but devoting a little more time for travel, events, cooking classes, and surprises! Please keep your comments and interest coming. I always enjoy hearing from all of you. Please stay tuned, and please share this blog with friends and loved ones that you think might enjoy it for a “Taste of French Country Living.” One can sign up for this newsletter on my homepage at Bonnie Jo Manion.

Bon Appétit et Bon Weekend….Bonnie

Every year I bring out this vintage sleigh to decorate and place by my front door. Year to year the vignette and decorations vary. My holiday decorations and style are generally simple and rustic, and often using greens from my garden.

Making This Vignette:

Find an interesting piece for a base, such as this weather-worn sleigh. Choose a piece that is novel, whimsical, and might bring on a smile.

Use a focal piece or showstopper. I chose a 10” beautiful red poinsettia plant inspired from a recent tour at Weidner’s Gardens, organized by one of my garden clubs, The Village Garden Club of La Jolla.

Wrap the plant in simple burlap.

Cut Blue Juniper greens and Little Gem Magnolia pieces from my garden, arranging them on the sleigh. Look for greens, foliage, berries, pine cones in your garden, or possibly from a neighbor or friend.

Add another smaller interesting piece. In this vignette, an interesting pine cone from another part of California.

Add a colorful bow, if your vignette needs a pop. I didn’t want to take away from the color and beauty of the poinsettia, so I didn’t add a bow.

Make sure everything in your vignette can tolerate being outdoor for a period of time.

Enjoy what you have created. If you make a vignette, I would love to hear about it!

Bon Appétit et Bon Weekend…Bonnie

Carolyne Roehm Signing Books After Her Presentation

The Prado at Balboa Park was the perfect setting for a rare San Diego visit last week by one of America’s most important tastemakers, Carolyne Roehm.  Roehm has been a part of American design culture for decades with career chapters in fashion, gardening, entertaining, publishing, and decorative arts.

Currently traveling the country promoting her latest book, Carolyne Roehm at Home in the Garden, The Village Garden Club of La Jolla was pleased to present Carolyne Roehm as this year’s “Meet the Master” grand event.  

“Meet the Masters” was inspired by one of the club’s founders, Adrienne Green, and is held yearly in her honor. Each year The Village Garden Club of La Jolla brings world-class floral designers to San Diego to speak and demonstrate their master floral creations. This educational event is a gift to the club’s members, the greater San Diego Community, and beyond.

Beautiful, stunningly statuesque, and dressed in a bone-colored monochromatic pant suit, Roehm spoke to over 230 devoted luncheon attendees in a warm and charming manner about her 33 years of personally creating and refining the pastoral lands, gardens, and ponds on her historic 1765 property in Connecticut called Weatherstone.

Roehm shared her incredible life’s ups and downs, paralleling her Weatherstone property’s ups and downs, often using metaphors between life and a garden.  One common thread throughout her life has been her love affair with flowers, and “a garden is a canvas for making colors, textures, and shapes.” Her passion for flowers is what drives her garden philosophy. She carries her garden palette, what she is planting, tying it through to her table, dishes, and what works best with what.

Roehm ended her presentation with one of her favorite quotes from Frank Lloyd Wright, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.  It will never fail you.”

A timely article from One King's Lane visits Carolyne Roehm at her Weatherstone home. For more information, visit Carolyne Roehm.

Entrance to The Prado, Balboa Park

This past spring, the Village Garden Club of La Jolla brought Englishman Shane Connolly to San Diego for it's fifth "Meet the Masters 2012" program. This program is an annual garden club highlight, and it's keynote speakers are generally the highest caliber of internationally acclaimed floral designers.

In April of 2011, Shane Connolly led the floral design team for the marriage of Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton. Remember the surprise tree-lined aisle inside Westminster Abbey. Connolly has designed floral creations for the royal family for over twenty years. Known for his sustainability interests and natural approach to floral design, his clientele is worldwide.

During his time in the San Diego area, while demonstrating his floral design, Connolly  spoke freely on his unique approach to floral design. Connolly has a broad foundation as an artist and a musician. His first professional field was psychology, and his floral design career blossomed unexpectedly from friends urging him to try it.

Connolly is proficient in the symbolic language of flowers and this knowledge only enhances his floral designs.  Connolly's sustainability interest and natural approach to floral design is simply refreshing. Connolly was also eager to tease his enthusiastic audience with tiny snippets about Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding.

Connolly demonstrated and spoke his way through numerous floral designs at his formal presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, on Thursday, March 8, 2012. The following day, he toured, created a massive floral design, and enjoyed a social lunch at Lani Freymiller's North County private garden with a distinguished group of 35 LJVGC members.

Freymiller, a retired grade school teacher, is an artist in her own right with an impeccable eye. She has designed her breath-taking garden slowly over a period of nearly 40 years, and has received countless accolades and recognition. Perhaps the grandest compliment yet, is her local garden receiving this royal treatment.

Touring through Freymiller's stunning garden, Connolly choose sprays of Cherokee Rose, Tuscan Blue Rosemary, Pearl Acacia, Mock Orange, Rue, Silver Waves Camellia and many others. He also shared best pruning practices, such as prune from the trunk always, and prune first errant growth at the bottom of plants. In time, he had his desired mixture of garden cuttings to create his grand garden floral design. His container of choice naturally was a vintage tub.

Connolly charmed everyone, as he continued to share his design tips and philosophy. Freymiller was a gracious and  extraordinary hostess,  warmly sharing her beautiful garden. This special day will be fondly remembered by those attending for a very long time.

Connolly's Tips for Timeless Artisan Floral Decorations & Sustainability:

-- "Use a few seasonal flowers simply, with the prime objective of showing them off and emphasizing their individual characteristics."

-- "Designs live on after being created."

-- "Group things together, it is more like they grow in the garden."

-- "Use chicken wire, instead of an oasis. Put flowers in water."

-- "Let  flowers tell you where it wants to be in the arrangement. Lovely to let flowers do what they want to do."

-- "When you've done something, walk away from it. You can angst too much over flowers, and take their soul."

-- "Conditioning of things is most important, and the condition of things."

-- "I like shades of color. Don't dilute color with green."

-- "I like things that look like they were grown in someone's garden."

-- "I like using two same containers in different sizes."

-- "When doing an arrangement, tougher things go in first."

-- "You want  a physical balance, as well as a visual balance." Antithesis  of arrangements is to make a shape. Asymmetrical looks artful."

-- "The love of garden dictates your designs."

--"I think everyone should get their hands in some mud."