Dogs are great guests.

Tummy is just waiting for someone to play.

They’ll kiss you the moment they meet you. They’ll let you rub their bellies even if they don’t know you.
And they mind MUCH better than most little kids. Rare is the two year old human who responds to “sit, stay!”

And dogs NEVER talk back.

In Napa Valley dogs aren’t welcome at most lodging places. But since the Beazley House B&B has such great gardens and one Golden Retriever greeter named Tummy it’s a natural fit.

People know how to travel with their dogs. They come prepared with a traveling den (their car), favorite toys and food, even their bed. Heck, what’s not to like: dogs are with their favorite people in the whole world.  And they got to GO!

Once they get to the Beazley House they’re greeted warmly by humans and hound alike. There are wonderful smells in the garden, treats offered and a there’s a bowl to borrow. Their humans are given a copy of “Fido Friendly” magazine. Life is good.

After a copy of the house rules are signed, it’s off to explore the place! The really smart humans allow time to check out the gardens, greet new friends and get used to new surroundings.

Pooches may bring their own robes.

Their room is sparkling clean. After all, their humans have paid an extra $30 per day to assure it stays that way. Beazley housekeepers make sure there are no doggy smells (nor strange human for that matter) to offend. And the innkeeper humans have even supplied a huge towel in case feet get muddy.

They will never be left alone in the room. Breakfast can be brought to their human’s room, or they can dine with them in the gardens or living room.

And at dinner time the Beazley House has found Dog Friendly restaurants with outside patios or there’s always the familiarity of their rolling den.

Dogs and Wine tasting naturally go together.

Barking neighbors aren’t a problem because only well behaved pooches are allowed at the Beazley House.

Because dog owners are used to traveling with their pooches, they naturally know just how much company everyone will enjoy.

While pooches aren’t allowed in the Beazley House dining room, they are encouraged at the Friday night wine tastings. There’s nothing like a cold nose to remind your fellow travelers what goes with wine: petting.

And if food happens to fall, clean up is quick business.

Lastly dogs are very discrete. They’ll never tell what their owners look like in their spa tubs…they’ll just laugh among themselves.

We live in an age when flying Robots not only have missiles but Google Robots control what gets read in the first place. And there are Robot Spiders too.

Right now, my competition is better at using this new cyber army than I am. Our numbers show it. Sometimes we don’t even show up on the playing field anymore.

Today I have to know how to use “key words” which you, dear readers, have searched on. No matter that these words don’t pertain to anything I’m trying to write about.  They must appear.

So if I want to tell you Spring has already sprung in Napa Valley, I better say it with lots of references to the Napa Valley Wine Country in California where Brittany Spears may appear naked in a room at the Beazley House Bed and Breakfast inn. It could happen. It just hasn’t.
I’d know.

Uma Thurman was at the Beazley House once. She was attending a wedding shower for then husband Ethan Hawke’s sister. There was a lot to see of Uma, she was past 8 months pregnant.
Because I was out walking the dogs I missed her.

I never forgave the dogs.

But that was before Blogs, Google and Robot spiders, so who cares!

What’s important now are links, too. Like to our website and our specials. That’s a no-brainer. I get that. See? I can not only TELL you we’re a Dog Friendly inn. I can show you.

In my past life I was taught how to write for humans. That’s so yesterday, so “Before Google”.  To be honest that was BEFORE computers, much less the Internet and Google. People today respond to images.

After all, a picture is worth…

Who says you can’t teach an old Blog new tricks?

Back when they started counting  the centuries after the birth of Jesus they hadn’t learned about the number “ZERO.”

This has caused more than a little confusion, because if you don’t start with the “Century Zero” you start with a First Century, before you’ve HAD a FIRST Century.

The Romans were running things then and they only used “Roman numerals” I,II,III, IV, V, etc.  They didn’t really care (yet) about the birth of a Jewish radical in Judea. They numbered their years according to their Emperors’ reigns.

I told you it was confusing.

All this history is related to let you know it’s not your fault if you are confused about the end of 2009 being the BEGINNING of a new decade. It might help if you remember it started with the year 2000. Count THAT year on your right hand and by the time you run out of fingers on your left you’ve completed 10, thus a decade.

Whew! And we’re just STARTING this brand new Decade!It’s GOTTA be better than the last one, right?

It’s promising by the look of the changes in old town Napa.

Last Century (1998 to be exact), we started a flood control project which has caused a construction boom which has changed the face of our sleepy downtown. Builders have constructed new bridges, renovated the Opera House, added river front promenades and new landmarks.  There is finally a “there” here, speaking of new Napa.

Over 20 wine tasting rooms have opened. They feature wines which used to be only available to wine snobs. These are boutique wines from tiny wineries who spend all their money MAKING their wines, not distributing it.  Now, without getting in your car (if you stay with us!) you can taste 60-plus wineries and do it all for fraction what it would have cost you in years past.

The restaurant scene has changed the most. There are over 20 Zagat rated restaurants covering the full gourmet gamut, literally from A to Z. There’s Allegria, a place I call all American: Italian cuisine, California style, prepared by Hispanic Chefs with owners from Istanbul, Turkey. All American! The “Z” is represented by ZuZu’s a Spanish Tapas restaurant. Here you can share small plates (they’re finally on to how couples eat!) tasting the full variety of this delicious cuisine.

New restaurants are opening seemingly weekly: Places where you can sample Thai, Indian, gourmet Vegetarian as well as Italian and California style.

With the opening of the OxBow Public Market , Napa joins such foodie cities as San Francisco and Seattle, but Napa Valley style. Before you had to go the the Ferry Building in the City or Pike’s Market in Seattle to get fresh, gourmet regional food.

No more! At the OxBow (named after a bend in the Napa river), you can taste wine, buy aged cheese, fresh veggies, ethnic cuisine, fresh bakery treats, premium beef and fish and maybe the best burgers from Taylor’s Refresher.

Silo’s is Napa’s answer to a nightclub scene with live music matched across town by Uva Trattoria.  For even bigger stars there’s the Napa Valley Opera House, which has hosted Wynton Marsales, Judy Collins, Robin Williams and even Shakespeare.

All this within walking distance of the Beazley House.

Let the fun begin!

As years go, and especially in the context of the DECADE, 2009 was a good year for us all.

Talking in terms of the view from, say low earth orbit, we elected a man who may just be the best President in our lifetimes.  And in the context of the decade, Barack Obama comes to us not a second too soon. Having endured the abject horror of our European friends when we visited England during Bush II’s reign we basked in the brilliance of our collective choice this year.

I’m speaking of our 35^th anniversary sojourn which took us back to England (we’re nearly British subjects we’ve been there so often!) and to Rome, cruising the Med and ending up in Venice. Truly a trip of a lifetime…both in experiences and the paying for.

Actually our timing was quite good. We still had good credit, the Euro was down and the Pound Sterling less than 1 and ½ times the $. Added to this was my obsessive preplanning which paid off in a little gem of a Roman hotel called the San Francesco, a “bargain rate” on the Windstar line (far less than a night in ICU), and Obritz.com cheater rate in Venice. Hey, we spent our 25^th WORKING at the inn…which I vowed I wouldn’t repeat. Carol was amazed I could actually put it all together and she actually LOVED Rome. A non swimmer (ask the kids about taking her to the Water Slide)

Carol was less thrilled about the cruise, but admitted she couldn’t have seen places we sailed to any other way. We both love Venice and even found good food this time, and of course got lost.

To judge by all the Asians, Europeans and various teens we were in lines with in Italy, there is no Recession. The Recession is a California (or US) problem. Maybe it doesn’t exist if you don’t loose your job, your home or your health insurance. Or maybe it’s just our lodging industry, GM, Chrysler, the US Banking complex and the collective hangover from the Bush bash.

If I’ve gotten carried away by relating too much about our trip, it’s because most of the rest of our 2009 pretty much sucked. Sissy died and the cats didn’t.

Okay, WE are healthy. We haven’t gotten Swine Flu, a dread disease, gone Postal at Trader Joes or turned to online Poker to pay the bills, but “things is tough,” as Larry the Cableguy says.

We’re working 100% harder for 20% less revenue. One of our employees is out for months with a broken arm. People keep asking if they can get a discount on our already 40% discounted rooms.

And Timothy Geithner won’t return my calls anymore when I’m checking on our bailout.

But we got love.

Our family is growing up around us with astonishing rapidity. Spencer (11) in his 6^th year at Napa’s Language Academy is continually recognized for his brilliance. Sidney (6) is blazing his own trail there. He’s on the “Watch List” but is doing better now that he realizes they AREN’T speaking Japanese, but Spanish which he’s understanding if refusing to speak. Pheenix (17 going on 27 and living in Sparks) has started appearing in magazines as a model.

Scott has helped us with overnight innkeeping duty and has started what may become a career as a Plumber. He seems much happier than we’ve seen him in years.

We hope you’ll join us in kissing the passing year goodbye and wishing us all a Merry Christmas.

Love to you all,
Jim & Carol

Even Mr. B&B got into the spirit. He soon lost the hat, though.

Christmas comes but once a year.

Too bad it has to come in December.

I come by these sentiments genetically. My father had what the family called “His Christmas Look.”

This look resembled what one might expect from a victim of peptic ulcers.

He wasn’t a Scrouge, not in the true Dicken’s form. He didn’t exactly hate Christmas. More likely he just dreaded it. My father was a worrier and he always worried about money the most. I fear I’ve inherited his outlook.

December is that month that all the money flows OUT: Property Taxes, the Biggest Transient Occupancy Tax bill, Inn Insurance, payroll, Mortgage. Very little flows in because Napa is a couples’ destination, not a family destination. Christmas is a FAMILY holiday. We live on reserves. Not unlike bears, but without the benefit of hibernating.

You, our dear guests help with this seasonal financial disorder: you come back to cheer us up. And you buy gift certificates. And this year you’re buying our wonderful sheets.

You can’t imagine what a joy it is to be given as a gift, and because of your generosity we are part of that giving.

By Christmas the onerous bills have been paid. The annual  Holiday tour has kicked out the winter blues, replacing them with beautiful lights and cherished decorations.

As the Christmas carols waft through the inn mingling with the scent of Hot Mulled wine and Chocolate Chip Cookies even my spirits are lifted.

My father wasn’t an innkeeper, not until the last chapter of his life. By then his feelings for Christmas were too ingrained to change.

I have been an innkeeper nearly half of my adult life now.

While I can’t say I like Christmas (I’m much more of a “Thanksgiving kind of guy”) each year after I’ve seen Dicken’s classic Christmas Carol and Frank Zappa’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” I’m innoculated with the Holiday Spirit.

And I’m ready to welcome you all with a warm smile and Hot Mulled Wine.

Hey, even Scrouge smiled on Christmas!

Mother Nature is a hard ole girl.
If she determines it’s time to send the killing frost to begin Winter’s Slumber, bundle up baby.

No matter if you’re a beloved Begonia or a pretty Princess Plant, you’re gonna freeze…maybe even to death.

It’s not that Mother Nature hates flowers, she just has a schedule to keep. And if you can’t take the frosts of Winter you’re gone. Down to your roots or back to your core.

She’ll do it quick, she’s not sadistic. Over night, under a starry sky she’ll drop the temperature like an icy blanket smothering all that’s tender.
And she’ll do it with style.

In the morning she’ll leave behind a beautiful white wonderland hiding the death in a white shroud of her finest frosty crystals. It takes your breath away, such cold calculus sent to set things in seasonal motion. We are reminded that nothing lasts. That the only constant is change. We are made to understand that it is Mother Nature in charge and she has a plan.

Oh we can try to save a beloved Princess Plant by hiding her under a protective sheet, but it’s about like hiding under the covers from the bogeyman, and about as effective.

All we can hope for is that, come Spring, Mother Nature will choose to bestow the kiss of life on our Sleeping Princesses and the cycle of life will begin again.

Until then we light the long nights with pretty lights, warm wine and roaring fires.

The killing time will be over soon.

We will see Spring signs shortly.

Just about end of January.

Ahhhh, Winter in Napa!

Up until now, let’s just say I’d pretty much lost faith in the promises officials and construction guys make.
Our experience was more of the disappointing, disillusioning kind. Public officials and their bureaucrats weren’t necessarily BAD people. Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to actually BELIEVE them. Especially when they made promises and those assurances involved the phrase “done by Christmas.”
Ever notice how everything will always be “done by Christmas?”
The war will be over. The troops will be home.
The run-away will return. The money will come.

Well, sometimes, it turns out, promises are kept. Take our sidewalks, curbs & gutters and street trees and even our mangled landscape bark…all done. Back in place. Cleaned up. Planted. Swept. Hell, even the inevitable scratchings in wet cement. As promised. Okay, not the graffiti, but you’ll see what I mean.

The 375 people who tromped through the property for the annual B&B Holiday Tour hadn’t a clue that just 24 hours before we were a construction site.

Gone were the huge machines, parked somewhere else. Out of the scene were the mounds of blue base rock. Away were the hundreds of “No Parking” barriers. Left behind were just a manageable few, easily collected and put out of sight. Heck, they don’t work on weekends so parking in the “construction zone”…well there ISN’T a construction zone now. Not at the Beazley House.

Sure, First Street still resembles a Third World byway. And yes there are barriers across and down the street. But OUR little piece of the project is done.

For now.

As promised.

And BEFORE Christmas.

As we near the end of a THREE year construction project to “underground” the utilities on First Street, I’m struck by how much “construction looks like destruction.

First come the no parking baricades, quickly followed by trenches. Next are the armies of workers in their beeping machines. Then there’s the seemingly endless digging up and hauling away. Ending in wet cement and cooling asphalt.Oh right, we shouldn’t forget the cutting down and grinding up of statley street trees.

It’s been like when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden: a lot of shouting and shoving and sound and fury. All so we can have streets as smooth as glass, shaded by uniform street trees and abutted by federally approved sidewalks (with ramps!).  And oh yes, not a power pole in sight!

Dear guests, as you read this they’re  done with all the “heavy lifting” and our sidewalks are poured.  One of the two stumps which used to be grown trees has been ground down to, well the ground. It and “Mr.Stubby” the second former Liquid Amber will be replaced by a “large specimen” boxed Red Oak.

In exchange for our mature Silver Leaf Maple (80 to 90 years old) and our 25 year old Liquid Amber we will get  relative youngsters, stout but alive and ready to thrive.    That’s the promise.

We haven’t seen any of these specimen, but they will probably go in after a while.

You see it can’t be long because this will all be over by Christmas. That’s the promise…

and we’ve just had our THANKSGIVING!

Come to think of it,they’ve PROMISED US it would all be tidied up here by next Saturday the FIFTH of December. That’s the day 375 people will be touring our inn on the Annual Napa B&B Holiday Tour.

They promised.

Autumn is my favorite season.

She returns like a long-lost lover: cool at first, but warming to the touch and more beautiful than I remember.

Her true colors are just starting to show; bright yellows, deepening into burnished gold with hints here and there of passionate red.

The harvest is well underway and the perfume of ripening grapes permeates parts of the valley. The talk is of a very good vintage.

We’re trying to keep up on who’s crushing, but it’s hard because there’s no central data base. We check frequently with our friends and send guests accordingly.

Our own gardens are splendid in Autumn. Mature flowers and shrubs show off their beauty shamelessly, knowing after December, Winter will be just around the corner.

Nilda and Gloria have outdone themselves this year. Never before have we had such variety and color.

The Begonias pictured here are 5 feet tall! They share the private garden of the Garden Room with a Japanese Maple which has tripled in size over the last two years.

Our Hydrangias have faded to lovely lavender shades before deepening to their fall reds.

Because we enjoy a “Marine climate” due to our proximity to San Francisco Bay, our Fall is both gentle and long. October is its beginning with leaves just starting to turn.

November will bring shorter days and even cooler nights and those trees which haven’t turned color will be in full fall regalia.

Our vineyards will be bare of grapes, but not leaves. Here the show will be in full form with yellows and oranges and the ocassional red.

Frequently the rains will have begun, quickly turning our hills from “California Gold” to lovely shades of green.

November gives way to a December which is Winter in name alone. The temperatures are still mild and even our roses continue to bloom.

No wonder Autumn comes back. She knows she’s always welcome and can stay as long as she’d like.

Just like you.