not basketball

It finally dawned on me why today was a particularly lovely and uncrowded day to learn about heirloom tomatoes from wildboar farm and to hike in Sonoma County Sugarloaf Ridge Park. We were not watching basketball. Walking down the sidewalk in the town of Sonoma at the end of a busy day I overheard a woman telling her husband that Butler was in the final four. Logging into facebook this evening a high school friend commented that she was going to grudgingly root for Duke. From these two scraps of information I expect that the final game is Butler vs. Duke. We shall see...

Meanwhile, we spent the day learning about heirloom tomatoes from a local grower and hybridizer, finding such interesting varieties as Berkeley Pink Tie-dye. Chuck and Felicia came to the class to learn more about how to grow great tomatoes. We shall see if the advice improves our tomato crop this year. We have so many small plants that we will need to host a tomato festival in September.









After "class" we went with friends Craig and Millie to Sonoma County to hike in one of the state parks, hoping to see birds and wildflowers. We saw turkeys taunting us because they seemed to know that they were in a protected zone and no spring turkey hunting season applied to them.

There were some early wildflowers, but they seemed a bit confused by the weather that has been very warm, then freezing, now wet, and finally a day of sun.









Views from the Sugarloaf Peak trail are stunning. In such an intensely farmed region, there were only a couple of hillside vineyards visible from the trail, and none from this view looking over the Sonoma Valley north of Kenwood.












There were wildflowers and lichens:


















I was struck by the color contrast of the madrones and manzanitas in this greenscape. Ireland must be as lush and green as this landscape. But clinging to the hills are also these richly colored California natives.

Please forgive the formatting anomalies. "Scribefire" and blogger are both being difficult.

Hang Gliding Yosemite

Here's a unique perspective on Yosemite -- half dome, Yosemite Falls, panoramic views, and hang gliders.

Hang Gliding Yosemite

(This image courtesy of wikimedia)

Now I get it - the hang-gliding thing...
Click the link above to see a really neat video.

Banana slugs and fungi

Just for a little truth in labeling, this post includes banana slugs and fungi. There are also waterfalls, redwood trees and undulations.

Yesterday we had a spring walk in the woods at Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Note that the trail description says that the elevation is 200-400 feet. Seems easy enough, although the trail is labeled "strenuous". It turns out that the 2-400 foot elevation change happens about 12 times in the 12 mile loop we took. These turned out to be "undulations" or extremely large sine waves. Otherwise, a delightful day in the redwoods hunting fungi, banana slugs and waterfalls. We went to the Berry Falls, Golden Falls and Silver Falls - here's a copy of the official park map.


Berry Falls

---

Along the way we found lots of fungi sprouting from downed trees and vegetable detritus. Colors ranged from virulent green to pink and dayglow yellow/orange. I'm sure they all have names.


Chuck, Felicia, Francois, John and I were the group. By about the half-way mark, my bum hip began to give trouble - so our return trip was a rather leisurely stroll for the seasoned hikers of the group.

We lunched at the base of the first (and highest elevation) falls of the group on West Berry Creek. John, having hiked the trail several times, did not reveal the delights in store. Especially the rappelling down the face of one of the falls. I asked, "is there another way down?" and John's one word answer - "No." Hmmm... 6 miles up a creek with an airplane cable to hold on to to get down. I guess I'd rather do that than try to walk back around...

We were truly stumped a few miles down the return trail where a pair of redwood trees had fallen across the path giving a chest high by 200 foot long barricade. Up and over, or down into the canyon to go around? We tried several methods and all emerged on the other side of the barrier.

The UC Santa Cruz mascot was thundering through the mosses...



...and fallen and fire scarred trees gave contrasting texture and color to the wet green canopy of the forest.


On the way home to Napa, exhausted and hungry (at least the hungry part was true of all of us) we stopped in Albany/Berkeley for the best pizza in the Bay area - Zachary's.