A Nice Day in March

The sunny days we've been having called for a wildflower walk.  Three friends from work and myself drove up to Moore Creek Park near Lake Berryessa.

Indeed, the hills were alive

Lots of vetch, and lots of butterflies

Mourning Cloak

                                                 

Delphinium nudicaule

A field of lupine and a Dudleya succulent

Sanicula bipinnatifida (Purple Sanicle)

This dog ran up to us from down the trail and he and Thomas hit it off!

We noticed caterpillars on the monkeyflower shrubs.  I believe they are Variable Checkerspot butterfly larva.  I have been growing this type of monkeyflower from seed and recently planted a dozen or so around the house, so with any luck, maybe they will be nibbled by these beautiful little creatures one day!

type of clarkia perhaps?

some type of bindweed / wild morning glory

An elegantly arching manzanita

and a very large and sprawling specimen, wow

Who spilled blue paint?

I call this one "West Side Story Standoff" in honor of my wonderful mother who has watched the new West Side Story 4 times in 2 months.  We watched it in Pat and John O'Connor's home theater, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

                                         

Snacking in a very comfortable oak tree. 

Iris

Mule's Ear

Surprise!

 Any experienced gardener around here knows that you can't trust a warm and sunny February to remain that way.  After many flowers were starting to open up early we were hit with a 3-Year Low Temperature of 24 degrees, including a brief sort of snow-hail the afternoon of February 22nd!

A video of the soft hail (like little pea-sized snowballs) at the nursery:

Sage, one of the two nursery cats, waits patiently for entry to the greenhouse:

Charlotte and I have been focusing on nutrition lately.  We've been getting especially excited for these new bean varieties and recipes we have been trying out from an heirloom bean seller that is headquartered right here in Napa, Rancho Gordo Beans.  Charlotte got me their cookbook as a gift last year.  I have infinite respect for the bean as a cornerstone of nutrition.  They really are a gift, and they make my body feel like it is functioning at optimum power, and they're delicious!

"Ayocote morado" aka purple runner beans cooked and cooled and dressed up with shaved carrot, radish, cilantro, pumpkin seeds and I-forget-what-else-but-it-was-amaaazing!  The beans had a rich meaty flavor.  I drank the excess broth, which was like an incredible hearty beef broth.

"Royal Corona" beans were the size of my thumb, just about!  We cooked these a bit longer and then marinated them in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, etc.  Creamy and rich, these were a delightful and filling snack or meal!

"King City Pink" beans are touted for their use as a basic pot bean, creating excellent broth.  Supposedly they "helped put King City on the map" and were a very popular variety from the 1930's through to the end of WWII.  John Steinbeck even mentions them in Tortilla Flat!  We made these with just the basic treatment, cooked in a pot with carrot, onion, garlic, and celery - perfection.

"Finally, she called Danny's friends into her kitchen and explained that it was beans that they needed. The fire of their passion renewed, that night, four shadowy figures snuck past the sleeping guard and into the Western Warehouse Company. They emerged shortly afterwards struggling through the shadows under the tremendous weight of four one hundred pound sacks of pink beans.” -from Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Another fun culinary treat was cooking this rainbow trout that my mom's partner, Mark, caught at San Pablo Dam.  He gutted and scaled it.  But this was my first experience cutting a fresh fish.  I removed the head and tail and did my best to evenly splay it open in two halves so that the vertebrae would mostly come out easy.  Charlotte made her great roasted carrots as a side.

Around two and a half pounds.

View from beneath the Pyrex.  We dressed it up with lemon and orange slices, rosemary, sage, and garlic.  It turned out great with a nice citrus flavor.

It is March 7th now, and the weather has warmed back up again.  Some plants sustained some damage in the freeze, but I don't think we had many plant losses at the house.  It has been interesting observing various plants' responses to such a shift in temperature, going from 70's to 20's, there were a lot of aborted flowers, and some borderline-deciduous plants that looked like they might make it through winter without shedding their leaves had to change their plans.  But I am happy to know that most of our garden could handle it just fine.

Here is one winter bloomer that I have really enjoyed since planting it as a little 4-inch pot that was getting thrown away at work, probably around my first year at the job.  I planted four, initially, and two didn't make it, but our two remaining specimens are as tall as me now!  Black Sage (Salvia mellifera) is, apparently, California's most common sage (I am surprised to read that just now), inhabiting the Southern coast of the state and providing food for hummingbirds and bees, as well as quail and other birds that eat its seeds.  It is a wonderfully handsome shrub, with an interesting and eye-pleasing branching structure.  And it is one of our first flowers of the season!

Salvia mellifera

That's all for now!

Warm mid-winter

January and February were warm... too warm...

The plums burst into bloom.  These are just a "wild plum" my great-aunt and uncle had on the property forever.

A thoroughly dry February (not good!) made for some pretty nice yardworking days.  The "waddle" fence along the new road is now mostly done!  We started making it last winter, utilizing the wood from our property (mostly acacias,  a fast-growing and invasive tree, which bears the common name "waddle") to create a visual block.  When a colony of acacias get going for a couple of decades, as they did at this property, it is quite a project to keep it in check.  But finding a use for the wood made the chore into an even more rewarding process!  We saw this type of fence on a show about living a traditional English farm life.  Acacias are an Australian native, so I think the Britain-Australia connection is at play in the nickname.

Teddy helps slash!

Car's-eye view from the street.

My dad made this sweet little birdhouse kit which I assembled and put up on the east-facing wall of the house.  I am hoping it might attract an oak titmouse or a white nuthatch, both of which I have observed around the house.

We also finally got around to installing the bat box that Charlotte and I made for her dad, Hal, for his birthday back in October!  We are very pleased with how it turned out aesthetically and we did our best to adhere to the recommended dimensions and overall design.  I think it should be very accommodating for any prospective bat family.  Hal and Selene have seen bats in their yard before, so that is promising. 

To hang the bat box we had to drill four holes into stucco siding.  Sounds easy, right?  NOT!  😂  Charlotte and I took turns leaning with all our body weight into the electric drill.  Whew!

The weather was so mild that we even took the boat, Lady Goldenrod, out to Lake Sonoma with our friends Jake & Melina.  The lake was desolate on a weekday in February!  We cruised around and ate lunch and had a very pleasant day.

Fun reflection picture

Fun Charlotte picture :-)

Well that is all for now!

Winter Migration!

 We bid farewell to the Sonoma Coast and took flight for the southernmost tip of Baja California...

Highway 1 in Sonoma County.  From our trip to Cazadero.

Sunrise takeoff for Cabo San Lucas! ! !

After leaning over Charlotte's lap repeatedly, she was nice enough to trade me seats.  I was curious what Baja California would look like from above as well as from ground level.  It appeared extremely dry from the airplane.

I noticed this very peculiar little island on the Sea of Cortez east of the peninsula:

There were also some nice clouds over the shimmering sea.

We landed and of course the four of us promptly got pina coladas.  Charlotte's parents, Hal and Selene, were with us, and her brother, Daniel, who arranged the trip, was also on his way from L.A.  The private villa that he reserved for us for 3 nights was absolutely incredible and we wasted no time in chilling the heck out upon arrival!

It was incredible to just look at the dream homes that covered the hillside across the way.

We proceeded to spend the next three days relaxing together and basically living like kings and having the best time possible.  We were celebrating the conclusion of, to say the least, a terribly challenging year, so a few days with family and no worries in sight was a wonderful idea.

Of course, the local flora and fauna were exciting to see.  Like this Magnificent Frigatebird (Fragata magnifica) that seemed to fly high overhead every mid-morning.  If you zoom in you can see it's unique forked tail.  There were many of these large cacti as well.  Sort of similar to the Southwest's Saguaro cactus, however these are Pachycereus pringlei, commonly called Mexican Giant Cardon (cardon = thistle in Spanish) or Elephant Cactus.

Charlotte and I took a walk down to the beach and saw some impressive Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens).  Not a true succulent, Ocotillo is in the order Ericales, like Heather, Blueberries, and Manzanita are.

Some interesting rock formations at the beach.

💙 and happy faces 💙

We were told that Cabo gets about 10 days of rain per year.  It seemed like a pretty rough environment for survival... I wonder if the area could ever have been inhabited by humans without modern commerce and technology?  The plant life is appropriately resilient and adapted to a life in the blazing sun and rocky soil.

It was interesting to see the juxtaposition of such bone-dry landscape with human development.  There was a very large and lush-looking hotel down the beach a short ways.  Just out of the photo to the right is about where our villa was, up on the hillside.

Of course Charlotte befriended the local invertebrates.  We also saw these hummingbird-sized moths at sunset.  This one had a taste for hibiscus nectar.

A nectar of a different sort... "Tequila time" was any time.  But especially at sunset.

On our second night, Daniel took us to an exquisite tequila tasting at Clase Azul.  It was a private tasting in an unsuspecting little bar room and it included food pairings with each different tequila.  We were charmed by the young man and woman who guided us through the experience; they occasionally would do little synchronized gestures or words, and were overall just very friendly and fun.

Here is an example of what was served with each tequila.  The little bowl is ceviche with lime sorbet and a fried banana or plantain, and in the close right hand side of the picture is a fish-skin chicherone surrounded by an assortment of little flavor-dollops, one of which is "onion ash"... wow.

The tequila was really good as well.  I found the clear ones very pleasant and mellow.  The darker barrel-aged ones were a bit more intense, but good in their own way.

(We were forbidden from taking pictures during the tasting, but Daniel managed to sneakily snap a few... Charlotte and her brother share a passion for defying rules and regulations 😄 )

The next day we hung out by the pool and drank lots and lots of water:

This about sums it up!

Just swaying in the breeze and reading, aaahhh . . . . .

And occasionally surveying the horizon: a peculiar monument atop the cliff, and a large ship that looked like a container barge, but with no containers?

        

We did see some whale spouting and breeching out on the water, but I didn't get any pictures of it (it would have been a tricky thing to time... photography through binoculars is not easy).

We were so pampered at the villa, having all our meals prepared for us.  Here we are inspecting the local cuisine.  Charlotte insisted this was a green called "verdolagas"... Our server informed us it was spinach.  🤣

This is a lifestyle I could get used to.  We had a wonderful couple of days doing "nothing" in one sense, but doing a lot of feeling good and hanging out, soaking in the pool, joking, family bonding, exploring a new place together, and reflecting on the past year.  It was a lot of fun, and also my first time out of the States in 20 years!

🦐 Hallelujah! 🦐