My book Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021 is about to be released, so I contracted with Janna Waldinger of Art & Clarity to take some photos. This is one of my favorites. Each day some of my dear animals walk with me. (Here, Petunia, the goat, and HIjo, the llama.) For almost 30… Read more »
Writing Group, July 23
We—this group of women I have written with for 39 years— start writing at 2:47 pm, when I usually nap. Not sure how this will go! This morning I read a journal entry from 30 years ago.. 30 years ago today, the writers’ group met at my Valley View Court condo. Cincinnati, my standard poodle… Read more »
Napa County: “Another Beautiful Violence?”
Last week I returned from a rafting trip on the San Juan River in the Four Corners area of Utah. We floated through steep canyons on thick brown water for seven days, immersed in beauty. From the sunrise to sunset, the kaleidoscope of golden to deep pink-red cliffs guided us, their petroglyphs and pictograms offering… Read more »
Sweet Fruits
Fruits of Eden: Field Notes: Napa Valley 1991-2021, to be published by Dancing Raven Press, an imprint of Analytical Psychology Press, includes photographs bearing witness to my daily walks these last 30 years on our ranch. I have walked our trails almost every day with our small herd of goats and dogs. In the early years, my… Read more »
Sheep, Grass Management, and Happy Events
I like to think it was an omen. Just as we arrived to meet Christopher, the shepherd who had brought over one hundred sheep to the pulled vineyard waist-high in cayuse oats, vetch, and various perennials, I spotted a tiny black lamb. It stood with its mother apart from the herd at one end of… Read more »
Phase One of Implementing Our Forest Management Plan
My friend Norma says the forest looks like a painting with its lithe, dark trunks of oak and madrone silhouetted against the sunlight. The crew has thinned out young bay laurel and the bushy, tall stands of poison oak and invasive Himalayan blackberries. Yes, I always thought of the forest as verdant, but the over-the-top… Read more »
His Last Song
Many years ago, my friend Karlyn gave Donald a saxophone that had been her father’s during the Big Band era. Her father had played with Spike Jones when they were in college. That beautiful instrument has a historical lineage, which I am sure Donald felt. Donald had it restored at a small shop in a… Read more »
Tending Trees
When I spoke with Charlie Toledo last week about the forest on our ranch, she said she was always concerned about the overgrowth. First People would have kept the forest thinned with cultural burning so the stream would be accessible to deer and coyotes, so there would be reeds for baskets and the acorns, healthy. … Read more »
Nature’s Inescapable Demands
It takes two inches of rain to awaken the annual grass seeds in the savanna, and we definitely got two inches of rain last week. It started slowly, with 0.6″ on the first day followed by 1.5″ on the second. I was overjoyed. The dryness of the drought chokes the land. We were all suffering…. Read more »
We Protect What We Love
I have worked before with Dyane Sherwood, the publisher of Fruits of Eden: Napa Valley 1991-2021 (which is currently being typeset. Dancing Raven Press, an imprint of Analytical Psychology Press). I know her propensity to mix visual imagery with the written word, a process quite different from the written word alone. “Take pictures of the… Read more »
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