Beautiful

Chocolate Flower . . . I fell in
love with this plant living in Santa Fe.
Yes! the flowers actually have
a slight smell of chocolate.

Last week Chris, Shasta and I drove to Tanis' lovely home and property to pick Pink Pearl apples. There were not nearly as many as last year but I brought home plenty for making applesauce. It has just been so been so dry there seems to be less fruit on all trees not just Tanis' fruit trees.

The Pink Pearl apples
piled into the sink
ready to be washed.

The beautifully colored 
apples now prepared for
cooking then "strained"
and put into pint jars.

Isn't this most gorgeous color?
Dwight and I use to enjoy
putting applesauce I 
had made the previous year
on hash browns . . .
this makes for a delicious,
light evening meal.

Recently Leigh and Steven enjoyed a few days away from their home in Seattle. The below is one of the pictures she sent me. I love the wheelbarrow sculpture and just could not resist sharing it with all of you.

Picture Leigh sent from their time spent at Suncadia

As I get up each morning to what feels like an empty house and deal with pervasive grief, I continue with my familiar routine which Shasta helps me to maintain. Reading the glorious array of emails is a useful activity. Yesterday I receive Susan's email with her regular newsy "post".

Perhaps you would enjoy reading as well? I remember when Dwight and I would go to have a delightful meal at The Shed, stopping off at Susan's Christmas Shop and browsing. There is so much miss about Santa Fe AND I am ever so grateful we had the time there that we did.

BEing out in my garden taking care of tasks is a wonderful way I am staying in touch with what feeds me. All the while I partake in a frequent

Welcome

Welcome to the college town in which we now live. Rohnert Park, the official home of Sonoma State University, is a very short drive from our house in Cotati. The above banner stretches across one of the many streets here in Cotati.

The college students are often seen eating in the eateries of downtown Cotati. Others are found working in them as well as in Olivers, the local grocery store.

And while the college students flood back to the area, I have just finished up with the Summer canning. On a recent foray to see Shasta's Auntie T a very large bucket of the Pink Pearl apples were picked from her tree. While several other buckets could have been filled one bucket seemed like what I could handle with the peeling and coring before the cooking and ladling into pint jars for sealing. We will so enjoy eating this beautiful apple sauce this Winter. And Tanis says "they make great holiday gifts".

Whole ripe Pink Pearl apples

Pink Pearl apples cut in half
which is such a stunning beautiful apple
especially for making sauce!

20 pints of totally natural pink applesauce
was reaped from one large bucket of whole apples

Yeah! the seasonal canning has been completed. My focus now is on completing sheet mulching. Today another load of woodchips arrived which will probably be enough to complete the entire yard. Stay tuned for the next post identifying all the native plants purchased for probably November planting. I am so excited looking forward to the fun of planting and creating another native habitat.

Another shout out for the birds . . . we have Goldfinches and Lesser Goldfinches coming to eat the nyger seed provided in one of the cylinder feeders. Both are in  daily quantities I have not seen at either MuRefuge or Santa Fe, New Mexico. However, in Santa Fe quite a few goldfinches did come to ravenously eat the Rocky Mountain penstemon seeds in the Fall. It was so fun watching them go up and down the dried flower stock eating the tiny black seeds. 

When plants are transplanted in a month or so, at least three of these stunningly beautiful plants will call PageRefuge home. I know . . . I know . . . I know I just said I was creating a native habitat! I just cannot resist planting a few of these for the finches. And a Desert Willow has already been planted on the West side of our house for its beautiful flowers and lovely foliage. Since the '80's when I first saw this blooming tree, it has held a special place for me. In Santa Fe I planted two and both flourished, blooming the season after they were put in the soil at San Felipe Circle.

While sheet mulching I thoroughly enjoy many a 

Accepting

Living here in the Sonoma “West County” its human inhabitants understand that gophers, in abundance, live here also. Our neighbors to the West had to replace their above ground swimming pool with a cement pad beneath when the gophers nibbled through the bottom of the pool. And when most perennials are planted at MuRefuge they are installed in gopher baskets.

Gopher baskets give young roots a chance to grow and feed the plant of which they are a part. However, they are temporary after years of sitting in damp soil. Even with many years of drought here the soil still does get damp from the intermittent rains. As the gopher baskets disintegrate and are incorporated into the surrounding soil, the apple trees seem to be the most susceptible to the gophers who apparently like the taste of their roots!

Accepting all that appears at one’s place of setting down roots is by no means easy. Accepting can be simple, however. As I surveyed  this Pink Pearl apple tree a few weeks ago, I noted the foliage was droopy and the little green apple were wizened. Since this is not the first apple tree to have lost its root system to the gophers, I wiggled the trunk: not too wiggly. But once the dead vegetation was removed not much soil needed to be removed from around the trunk before the entire trunk and what was left of the roots system could easily be pulled up from the soil. 

Remains of a 30 year old dwarf Pink Pearl apple tree.

As I set the trunk in the pile to be chipped, I was grateful for all the Pink Pearl apples this dwarf antique apple tree has given us over her many years. 

Pink Pearl apples picked and ready for applesauce making.

Pink Pearl apples almost all cored and chopped for applesauce.

Canned Pink Pearl applesauce ready for one of our previous Winter.

And I thought, “apple trees come and go just like humans.” Accepting is easy when one embraces cycles of birth, life and death.

This part of Sonoma County use to be mostly covered with apple trees; in fact the very property on which MuRefuge is located was a Gravenstein apple orchard. Most of this area was the same until the land was divided into much smaller parcels, like the six 3/4 acre parcels here at the West end of our road,  or ranging in size up to several acres.

To our delight the nearly 50 acres abutting the West most house on our gravel road has become Green Star Farm.  

Sonoma County has been an agriculture county since it was settled. The “old time” farmers, like the man who owned the old orchards on which MuRefuge is now located, are either dead or retiring. These farmers focused on farming without conscious thought of their practices, farming as they were taught by their parents, so now top soil essentially no longer exists and the nutrients of the soil long ago extracted. Soil regeneration is a hot topic now a day. The young and energetic 2 legged present day farmers are now carrying on the agricultural tradition and are focusing on caring for Mother Earth in ways so all living BEings, including the soil, can thrive.

As each of us considers ways to care for Mother Earth, may we