Mountaintop Vineyard

You could be forgiven for wondering how all those tiny trucks (one of them is bright yellow) got up there, and we are stumped every time we drive up to Hood Mountain regional Park which is less than a mile as the crow flies behind our house. There is no visible road, and the ridge drops steeply to the creek on one side and into a ravine on the other.

In the car it is about three twisty miles on Los Alamos Road which runs behind our house and turns into a single track as it nears the top. It is quite a vibrant, if bucolic ecosystem, scattered with farmhouses and a few artists' studios, volcanic outcroppings of rock and herds of grazing cattle. A farmer had stopped his tractor by a gate to check on the well being of a calf so newly born it was still wet! I scanned the cows standing about but none of them was paying the slightest attention to the wee thing and none of them  looked as if she had just given birth!

This vineyard clinging to the mountain top is always well tended.There was more and more backlash to vineyards intruding so high into the watershed, but  since the fires, vines, which don't burn readily and saved a lot of winery buildings from burning, have improved their cred. One can only hope the the terroir   makes the grapes worth the effort it must be to produce them. 

From the parking lot we walked down to the Santa Rosa Creek* which makes its way down the hill past our house. One of the things I love about Santa Rosa is that it has many creeks, most of which have not been sent underground as they flow through the town. Some of them are 'seasonal' which means they dry out in the summer and some of them flood the roads if they get high enough to overflow their banks but they give the town some character.

It's still a little early for the wildflowers, but we did see some nice shooting stars. They remind me more of birds than stars but I like their delicacy and detail.

We were peeling off our sweatshirts by the time we came back down the hill but grew hot under the collar again when we reached Wildwood Trail to find it jammed with cars trolling up and down our narrow winding road, parking in non existent parking places and looking for places to turn around. A house down the street stages occasional 'estate sales' without taking the least bit of responsibility for attracting hordes of cars to a place that can't accommodate them and without warning the residents.

We are cooking Easter dinner for Dana and Jim and the boys today since Will has to go back to school tomorrow. OilMan was dispatched to the store to look for some chocolate bunnies for the boys, but became so enraged when he had to negotiate a traffic jam caused by a truck towing a trailer trying to turn around that he came back sans bunnies. I made some chocolate chip cookies and an orange/almond cake instead.