Picnic in the Vineyards

 

Last Friday the Geek and I met with our friends P and B for a lovely picnic in the vineyards. We had thought about that for quite some time and finally we could settle on a date that worked for all of us. We chose to go to Navarro Vineyards in the beautiful Anderson Valley.

Navarro Vineyards is a family owned small winery that has been making wine since 1974. Most of their wines is not available in stores, but can be  purchased directly in their tasting room or through their website. We have been drinking their wines for several years now and we have yet to find a wine of theirs that we don't like. The winery is located in Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, away from the crowded Wine Country hype in Sonoma and Napa Counties. This results in no tasting fee, more affordable wines and less crowds, so reservations are not required. There is ample space to sit and sip some wine or have a decent picnic with a bottle or two of their wine that can be purchased in the tasting room.

We had our picnic right at the edge of the vineyards under the wisteria cover.

Our table was covered with a lot of tasty food that the four of us had brought from home.

I had baked a whole wheat bread, which was delicious with red pepper aioli and smoked ham.

You can see that we had a wonderful time!

Let's see what kind of drinks we can find for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday: a bottle of Rosé of Grenache, a bottle of Pinot Gris, several re-usable bottles of water and grapefruit juice and a glass bottle of Gerolsteiner sparkling water (I simply refuse to buy sparkling water in plastic bottles which leaves only German and French sparkling water). The food we had included meatballs, smoked salmon, several cheeses, bread, red pepper aioli, tuna bowl, chocolate and vanilla pudding, blueberries, peaches and tomatoes from my garden. It was a feast!

Navarro not only has vineyards, but also beautiful gardens with mainly drought-tolerant or native plants. I found some inspiration for my garden. Roses right next to a vineyard is something you see often here.

We stayed in the vineyards for three and a half hours. We decided to drive back along the coast, via Highway 1 - THE ONE, as my husband would say. It certainly is THE ONE for us - one of the most beautiful roads that hugs the California Coast in an often spectacular way.

We stopped at Point Arena Lighthouse, at 115 ft (35 m) the tallest lighthouse on the west coast of the US. It is also the closest location in the lower 48 to Hawai'i at a distance of about 2,350 miles (3780 km) (you always wanted to know that, right?). The first Point Arena Lighthouse was constructed in 1870, but was damaged in the Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906. The current lighthouse that is built to withstand earthquakes began operation on September 15, 1908. It features a 1st Order Fresnel Lens (built in France) that is made up of 258 hand-ground glass prisms. These prisms are all focused toward three sets of double bulls eyes which gave the lighthouse its unique light "signature" of two flashes every six seconds (that was before the installation of an automated aircraft-type beacon on the tower balcony in June 1977). This is probably more information than you ever wanted...

This is a very windy, often cold location, but oh! so beautiful. I never get tired of it, and I have been here many times in the past 22 years. The geology is interesting and just like at Salt Point, I wish I knew more about it. The Coast Buckwheat (Eriogonum latifolium), a California native, is found in abundance here.

This is also close to where the infamous San Andreas Fault (the bad boy of 1906) dips into the ocean.

I leave you with a last picture of the lighthouse and the interesting fence that was built just a few years ago. Before that, there was a white picket fence. For this fence, older growth mica schist hand split flagstone material from the Mojave desert was used. From a distance it looks like wood, but as you apporach it looks more like a thick jagged stone wall.

May a light shine throughout your week.

The Rocking Horse

 

When Kaefer turned one year old, we gave her a rocking horse for her birthday. A couple weeks before, the Geek and I went to Rottenburg, a small city about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) away from Tübingen. We knew that there was an excellent shop that sold wooden toys and we wanted a solid, wooden rocking horse for our daughter. These toys aren't cheap, of course, but they are handmade and of superb quality. The horse was also heavy, and we (i.e. the Geek) had to carry it quite a way back to our car. (Most German cities and towns have pedestrian zones and you can't park your car in front of the store. We walk.) It was so worth it!

As soon as Kaefer could climb that horse, she was on it - and sometimes she did quite the daring "stunts", as you can see in the picture above. She was a fearless, daring little girl (she still is) who pretty often almost made my heart stop.

In the next picture you can see the other toy she loved - a Bobby Car. A Bobby Car is THE classic toy car for small children in Germany, produced by the company BIG in Fürth and Burghaslach in Germany. It is made of very strong plastic that is indestructible (these Bobby Cars keep forever) and can even carry an adult. Kaefer got the classic red one with a trailer. Here she transports the sheep the Geek and I had bought at Stonehenge in England while we were dating (because a sheep is exactly what one buys at an ancient site like Stonehenge, right?). The rocking horse and the Bobby Car made a good team.

My two sweeties riding into the sunset together - this is a very favorite photo of mine.

12 years later, a teenager by then, she still sits on that rocking horse. Today, it lives in our bedroom - I don't think we will ever get rid of it.

I'm sharing these sweet faces with Nicole's Friday Face Off.

In the Forest by the Lake

 

I love to walk around our lake, but when the days are hotter I prefer to hike through the forest next to the lake, away from the more popular paved trail right at the water. The forest is so much cooler with far less people. The trails are dirt trails which I prefer to paved trails anytime. The trail in the photo above leads up the hill and is lined with California buckeye (Aesculus californica)  and Western spice bush (Calycanthus occidentalis). From here you can take other trails that go deeper into the woods.

The solitude up here is wonderful! But eventually I have to leave the forest and get into a more typical dry landscape. Even though it's much hotter, I love this view of the Mayacamas Mountains in the distance.

This is where I saw a family of turkeys today - two females and three youngsters.

The forest has many wildflowers, but even here I still find some beautiful plants, like these Blow Wives (Achyrachaena mollis), a native and therefore well suited for this area.

Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) is a beautiful tree with a reddish bark that contains water and stays cool in the summer - quite handy in the summer heat.

 Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) looks like a fairy plant after its bloom when it's about to disperse its seed in the wind.

Eventually we arrive at the water. If you look really hard you can see an immature Black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) perching on the log in the bottom left.

Today I walked out on the peninsula because I had seen muskrats there and sometimes saw otters frolicking in the water. But I had no luck - instead I found this:

Plastic containers, old socks, a soda can, a food container, a napkin and a bit later I found a giant plastic soda container with plastic lid and straw. It made me incredibly mad. This is such a beautiful place that many people enjoy without leaving all their trash behind that is not only disgusting but can harm the local wildlife. Is it really too much to ask to pick up one's own trash and dispose it in a trash bin? Granted, there wasn't one right there, but is it so hard to carry it to the next available trash can? If they were able to bring it in, they can also take it out. I'm tired cleaning up after people who have absolutely no respect for nature and no regard for other people.

Okay, vent over.

Rain's theme at Thursday Art and Dinner Date is "heat wave". Although the last two weekends were very hot, so far we have been spared the incredible heat under which much of the country and Southern Europe have to suffer. But when it's really hot, I don't like to cook and prefer cool food.

Strawberries, peaches and nectarines mean "summer" for me and are great snack food on hot days.

Poké is great summer food for dinner (or lunch), there are so many ways to make it, and of course it always reminds me of Hawai'i. Caprese is a favorite, preferably with tomatoes and basil from the garden, followed by plum clafoutis for dessert (with plums from the neighbor's garden).

But the best, of course, is gelato!

Stay cool, everybody!

A Bleak Place

 

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We're still in County Laois in Ireland and just had our cream tea in Abbeyleix. Our next stop was the Donaghmore Famine Workhouse. Here families lived (and died) before, during and after the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852, also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or just the Famine, and outside of Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine. This and about 130 other workhouses operated as a means to provide relief for extremely poor people. They would do some work here in return for food and a roof above their heads. The living conditions in these workouses were very harsh since the aim was not to encourage people to stay there.  After the Great Famine it became a place for unmarried mothers, illegitimate children, orphans or mentally ill people - people that society wouldn't accept. Donaghmore Workhouse was opened in September 1853 and closed in September 1886.

This felt like entering the world described in the books by Charles Dickens. Not a place where you would like to end up.

The museum also houses an Agricultural Collection with a wide range of artefacts that had been donated by local people. It was quite the collection!

Can you imagine doing your ironing with these? I have to admit, I don't iron anymore, even with our modern irons.

After all this bleakness, let's bring this post to an end with something more joyful. There are bottles and kettles that would already get me into Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday, but my drink related contribution dates to last Saturday when my German class came over for our annual summer potluck get-together. As usual, I had made Erdbeerbowle ("drunk strawberries"), a typical German summer party drink. It was a very hot afternoon, but we sat in the cool shade of the big privet in my backyard. It was lovely to see everybody (we don't have class over the summer until the weekend after Labor Day).

Ah, summer...