The Red Barn

It's still autumn here in the Sonoma Valley, my favorite time of year when the air is chilly but the houses are warm and the trees and the vines, not the hills, are on fire with red and yellow leaves.

 The Red Barn always comes to mind this time of year because the flowers, both dried and living, which they grow to make beautiful wreaths* and arrangements perfectly reflect the season....Thanksgiving and the harvest and all we have to be grateful for...NOT Santas and glitter and lights and baubles. There is definitely a place for those things, but not yet.  

The Red. Arm is only open on Saturday, and they only sell what they have available, which today was Romanesco broccoli ,(almost blip worthy by itself),  delicata squash (you can slice them into beautiful little scalloped rings, and roast and eat them, skins and all), shallots, and lovely sweet cippollini onions. I think a nice soup will be on the menu tomorrow. Tonight Will is home from school for Thanksgiving and we're going over to Dana and Jim's to have dinner with them.

We still have last year's wreath on the porch, well dried now, so I bought an arrangement of chrysanthemums and statice to which I added amaranthus from our own garden when we got home. I knew there was a reason why I kept this amazing red plant with clusters of seeds (one version of amaranths is called Love Lies a' Bleeding') where it sprang up rather inappropriately in our garden. I thought the birds would like this ancient grain which looks a bit like millet, only red, but they've showed no interest in it. 

On the way home we stopped off at VJB for our quarterly wine club bottles of dolcetto and chardonnay. Their selection of Italian deli style food could not be resisted, so we sat on the patio in the sun and had panninis and roasted red paper salad. Unlike the Red Barn, VJB is fully decorated for Christmas, but clearly they jumped the gun because all the poinsettias that are in the sun are very faded and don't look like they're going to make it until Christmas. That's how I feel if I start thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving....