Up and Down

Fall comes to our valley.

The weather is stunning right now on the Central California Coast -- beautiful warm days (and a few days of real heat each week!) -- and lots and lots to harvest. In addition to the normal yumminess from our garden, we have the most divine apples this year. Wow. What a year for pommes!

Aside from the earliest apples, the Gravensteins, I have no idea what kind we are growing -- they were all here when we came to the ranch -- so I have given them nicknames: Two Tone, Big Red, Goldilocks, Emerald Eye (which I suspect might be Granny Smiths), Freckles, Last One and Latecomer. They are all spectacularly, outrageously tasty this year, but we love, love, love Goldilocks. She's crisp and thin-skinned, with a fresh honeyed sweetness. Last One, which is not really the last apple tree to ripen -- that would be Latecomer -- used to give us a whole mess of tiny, baby-sized fruit but this year, her babies are super-sized. And to see little Jackson, the terrier, running around with a grapefruit-sized apple in his mouth is just too comical.

Even the crabapples are huge.

Naturally, I am eating too many apples. At least I think I am when I notice that my pee is smelling like apple juice these days.

But when the ranch makes me this happy, it also makes me terribly sad.

I get angry at mankind's stupidity. Thinking about nukes and fracking and people who don't give a hoot makes my stomach hurt. Now, many locals are vocally protesting PG&E's proposed seismic tests because they will irrevocably disrupt marine life. My heart is with them, but a nuclear accident will wipe us all out, so let's direct our attention to the Real Problem.

The Election Circus is tiring and irritating to someone who has no suffrage in this country.

Even cooking is not the same.

"Why is it taking me so long to make dinner these days?" I'd bitch at myself, knowing full well that it's because I am making nearly everything from scratch. I just don't trust food manufacturers anymore. Eat out? Are you kidding?!

I've fallen back in love with our ranch, our land, and it's tearing me apart to think we will soon leave for our fall-winter stay in Mexico.

It all feels worse than bi-polar disorder. Better eat another apple!