The Bay Area has been in the midst of Super Bowl madness the last few weeks. Downtown San Francisco streets are shut down for the “Super Bowl City” and the horrendous Bay Area traffic is even worse than it’s normally very bad. Not being a football fan or caring about the game, I had a lovely weekend staying put and avoiding crossing into Super Bowl-cisco! Yesterday Bodhi and I did some work in the garden.  My garden is my happy space and I’ve been excited to get back out there, after a rainy January. With all the rain, the ground is nice and soft so perfect for gardening. I’m on weekend two of my latest garden project to put in a new garden bed and plant some fruit trees. My little digger dog loves to be in the thick of things. If only I could train his digging on the right spots! Saturday night I met a friend for a movie, to catch up on the pre-Oscar nominees. On Sunday, I went to the San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm  with my friend Phil for a Dharma talk and a Japanese tea ceremony presentation. I love Green Gulch. It’s a really beautiful and contemplative place. The gardens are gorgeous and peaceful and there’s just a feeling of intense calm when you arrive. As it turned out, this weekend there was a children’s program, so the place was overrun by kids, which was a bit of a surprise and definitely added some noise to the normal quiet zen atmosphere but it turned out to be quite nice.  It reminded me of my childhood church where we had a special children’s sermon. It was amazing to see the little ones in the Zendo listening intently to the Zen priest and taking in his very kid friendly talk on why monsters and fears and worries we all have are nothing to be afraid of. Lessons that even we grown ups can benefit from. I’m glad that I can add Green Gulch as one more kid-friendly and fun place to bring my kids! Over lunch, we took a nice walk and since Green Gulch is just next to Muir Beach, we made our way over to The Pelican Inn, a super cute British style pub, for lunch. While I love Green Gulch, I don’t love the spartan zen food—especially when The Pelican Inn is right there! It was an all around great super bowl weekend!