At the old pump with my cousin, Sandy.
My ancestral home, which my great grandfather had built in the late 1800s after a year of a good corn crop, was situated on two, park-like acres. A man named Botoner built the East Lake style house with its five bedrooms, kitchen, dining room (always used as a living room), and parlor. The kitchen was… Read more »
A dear high school friend makes a Facebook dare: Post a picture of yourself in a mask. Her smiling eyes peer over her navy blue, star-studded mask, her head wrapped in a scarf. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy but her spirit sparkles. I scroll down. There are men and women, all of a certain age,… Read more »
We have been through emergencies before: floods, the earthquakes of 1989 and 2014; the devastating fires of recent years which burned whole towns, shrouding us in smoke for weeks. Now each late summer and fall we live with days of no electrical power as PG&E proactively turns off major power lines to avoid another fiery… Read more »
We planted Califonia poppies in our vineyard in 1999 after our Biodynamic consultant prescribed a list of wildflowers to seed between the rows. My son Casey and I mixed the various seed with sand in a wheelbarrow, some, like the poppy seed, as small as a period, some the size of a pearl. After stirring… Read more »
The following is one of a series from a trip we took this past month, beginning with the Portuguese Camino, then northern Italy, and ending with a cruise through the Greek Isles and Croatia. The month span of the trip not only gave me a vacation from the news but also brought home how much… Read more »
For many of us attending the downtown Napa Climate Strike yesterday, the event was energizing if also poignant. Such enthusiasm! I could hear cheering and chanting from several blocks away as I parked and walked down Main Street to Veterans Park, the beginning of the march. We’re students, united, we’ll never be divided! We’re students,… Read more »
My youngest son Casey made this quill fountain pen for me. The point of the pen slows my writing down, but I also like to think it brings something of the spirit of wild turkeys into the written word. Casey has always been unique in his pursuits. When he was still in the early years… Read more »
In two and a half weeks I fly to Lisbon and then on to Galacia, Spain, to join ten other women in walking the Portuguese Way Camino. The path has been traveled for centuries by pilgrims, a path weaving through myth and legend, fiction and fact. Preparation for this journey involves walking 4-10 miles a… Read more »
Jupiter
A Mountain Lion’s Death Last night or early this morning a landowner shot a 13 month old mountain lion cub, a lion that had recently been pushed away from its mother and was out hunting for himself. Only four nights before I had watched scientist Quinton Martins’ team trap this lion, sedate him, and then… Read more »
Sabien, aged 6, hanging lavender to dry last summer.
The biodynamic process has changed both Donald and me, weaving us into the land in a way that nothing else could have. Biodynamics is good farming, yes. You learn to watch the crops, to walk the land every day (“the best fertilizer is the farmer’s feet”).
© 2023 Patricia Damery.
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