Holiday roundup: Blizzard creates a temporary community of travelers; an enchanted garden also cultivates people

The Alabama Hotel in Basom, N.Y., hosted more than 100 people in the storm. (Photo by Joe Bradt)

When the big blizzard closed the New York State Thruway (I-90) west of Batavia, some travelers headed north on NY 77 and found refuge in the hamlet of Alabama, specifically the Alabama Hotel. "The restaurant was founded in 1840 as a hotel/bar, but it hadn't welcomed overnight visits for decades," Tracey Drury reports for Buffalo Business First. Owner Joe Bradt told CNN some thought from online searches that the inn had rooms to rent, but they had to stay in its 70-seat dining room. Bradt said the guests "came together; they were cooking, they were washing disches, they were busing tables; it was a sight like no other."

The youngest daughter of Donna Reed, who plays Jimmy Stewart's wife in "It's a Wonderful Life," has made it her mission to ensure that small-town theaters can show the classic 1946 film, which was more difficult this year, Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post reports.

The Post's Sydney Page has another nice holiday feature, about a 100-year-old woman in an assisted-living facility in Lexington, Va., who makes custom jackets by hand and gives them away!

Woodlake, California (Google map)

At the foot of the Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, Calif., "where square acre after square acre of industrial farmland is planted in precise rows, an unusual garden grows and climbs and spirals, writes Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times. "Papaya, bananas, jujube, three types of guava — fruits that speak of faraway homelands — flourish at the 13-acre Woodlake Botanical Garden . . . No chemicals are used here. Visitors are welcome to pick any fruit they see and to sit in spots so deeply shaded they stay cool in the summer heat and dry in the rains that don’t come often enough." And there's a flock of pelicans in Bravo Lake, in one of many nice photos by Tomas Ovalle. But Manuel and Olga Jimenez also cultivate people. Nice story.