Friends Bob and Jan were up in the Paso Robles Wine region and staying at the guest house at Bianchi Winery where the tender new growth is out.
It became a good reason for a visit and dinner in the guest house.
The weather also provided marvelous hospitality. Dry, mid 80's, cooling breeze.
On the east side, that portion of the Paso appellation east of the 101, the greening and budding is on.
Jan does business with Bianchi and knows the product well which added to the charm of the evening's menu.
The Paso region was in its spring glory.
As the sun began its descent, Bob went to work with the beef and mushrooms while the roast chicken I had been minding, was ready for viewing.
Diane from Bianchi and a friend of Jan's and Chuck joined us. Sadly we were having such great time I failed to get pictures of Bob's superb rendering of Hearst Steaks, or the salad, or Lana's homemade bread and Thai Noodles. Suffice it to say it was a splendid spring afternoon and evening in Wine Country.
They are comparing it to the California Gold Rush-the search for meteor pieces and ironically near the original California gold fields.
$1000 a gram is apparently the going price and according to a great LA Times articlethe mood and vibe up around Lotus Park and El Dorado County is reminiscent of the Gold Rush indeed. Prospectors, hunters, investors, hustlers are all scouring over the countryside and jamming bars and motels. The 4-5 Billion year old meteor pieces are obviously rare and thus highly in demand. The plot thickens.
DAY BOOK
HILL SIDE GARDENING
Our home on a ridge doesn't afford much flat space for the kind of Indiana gardening we used to enjoy. So, we borrowed a page from those who do hill side terrace gardening and have created a bit of flat space.
Lana is doing remarkable work in replacing ice plant with other succulent plantings on the slope.
With the loan of a good old Midwestern Roto Tiller from our Indiana ex pat friend Mike Griffin, we've "flattened" a bit of the hilltop. We tilled the slope until we had enough plowed soil to smooth out and level.
Knudson writes about the little known Wildlife Services
branch of the Department of Agriculture. The Wildlife Services branch is a killing service funded with an annual budget of $72.5 Million.
As Knudson writes
"Sometimes wild animals must be destroyed-from bears that ransack mountain cabins to geese swirling over an airport runway. But because lethal control stirs strong emotions, Wildlife services prefers to operate in the shadows."
In my view, it is the information about the manner in which they "operate in the shadows" that is, in the least, troubling if not damning. Animals that should not be destroyed, are. Policies and operating procedures are violated, information is hidden or often covered up and humans have been injured as well. Link above for an eye opening and well done journalistic effort. As one of the sources in the piece is quoted "99% of Americans don't have a clue about this agency."
Those of you who have followed this blog may recall one of our areas of interest since moving to the far west is watching this area of human and wildlife interaction.
There are a lot of ways to get it done, but we offer up a
WEEKENDER :) video sent to me by my eldest who has been
a wilderness guide, canoeist and helicopter/rafting leader.
This is something I hope Kristin is not thinking about doing,
but it does offer some thrills. Hang on for this one.
Now we'll offer up a less harrowing way to interact with the elements. Here's a taste of what many of us Central Coasters have been doing, watching for whales.
IT'S A NEW TRACK RECORD
It was always exciting when the late Tom Carnegie, track announcer at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, boomed those words. The phrase was so famous in Indianapolis it became a kind of buzz word cliche for any manner of "record setting" activity. Today the Friday Lunch Flash Mob set
a "new track record." We had FIVE picnic tables.
Kind of amazing when we recall it started with about five or six sitting up on the deck. Big kids like to have fun too!
Scientists and meteorite hunters are scouring over Lotus Park California in El Dorado County. They are looking for debris of a minivan sized meteorite that exploded Sunday night over the Sierra foothills.
The blast had what is said to be one-third the force of the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Recovered pieces are reported to be 4-5 billion years old. It is a trove for scientists and maybe writers too.
Remember all of those B grade Sci Fi movies of our Boomer youth? They always seemed to play out some place in California. (Of course we grew to understand that is because it was close to the studios and cheaper to film)
Still, there may be a plot brewing as the search for
meteorite pieces continue.
DAY BOOK
SPRING BOUQUET
Iris grew well in Indiana, but this is the first year we've had an Iris bloom here.
The federal charges against a former BP engineer, alleging he deleted 300 text messages which seemed to indicate the leak of the Deepwater Horizon was worse than the company was saying is important for many reasons.
The impact on the case is obvious. What is says about personal responsibility in a corporate crisis is another subtext and so too is the disposition of all those texts and tweets that millions send through the ether every day. When is a message yours, and when does it belong to others, your employer or a federal prosecutor?
When I was an investigative reporter all our work got a legal review before broadcast. One of our attorneys advised that once we cleared legal and broadcast the program, all our notes relevant to the investigation should be destroyed, putting them beyond the reach of a subpoena, should litigation result, as it would occasionally. It made you think. Some times I dumped notes, other times I kept critical files. Later of course those files became debris for later staff people to discard, though many of my files are in curated collection at an historical society. I'm sure the statute of limitations has run on all of that work by now.
SPEAKING OF WORK
Here are a few seconds of watching a fisherman work,
after the catch of the day has been hauled off the boat.
All those years and countless great nights are history and prelude for the New Painted Sky, located in the old Creamery
in historic Harmony California, about 5 miles south of Cambria on the Pacific Coast Highway 1.
Concerts at the Painted Sky are intimate affairs, like a house concert. Artists who are in the studio often put aside a night to entertain small and appreciative crowds. It has become an institution for California and other musicians and for the music lovers of the Central Coast.
You may recall the circumstances by which producer, sound engineer Steve Krimmel and music fans lost the old location for antique storage.A point of view here.
It is still a work in progress, but Steve has the sound about where he wants it. The touring of a sensational young group of guitarists The New West Guitar Group
provided the context for a the launch of the new Painted Sky, in Harmony.
Your intrepid blogger/correspondent, armed with iPhone provides about a minute's look at the dawning of a new
