Left Coast Cowboys

Yes, we are doing our part here on the Sonoma home front. Our enemy is insidious, all but invisible and skilled in taking advantage of our own resources to further his evil plans. Of course, I’m talking about non-Native plant invaders who are encroaching on our little piece of Sonoma paradise. But our defenses are marshalled. At the risk of a pun, I’ll add that we have a Plan. Yes, we are doing our share.

For those of you who have shown up a bit late, let me give you the lay of the land, as it were. When we purchased this land, it had been virtually undeveloped — except maybe for migrating Miwok Indians who used our seasonal creek as a highway (we’ve found their acorn grinding stones and arrowheads.) Some rusty barbed wire at the edge of the property showed that someone at some time pastured some cattle out here. But elderly locals all tell us this area was always “the back of beyond”. Younger Sonoma residents say this was where they came to drink, smoke pot and make out. The result is a forty acre patch of Sonoma that is almost entirely undisturbed. That means a wide variety of native vegetation and animals — even including a stand of 500 year old Redwood trees that, by all rights, probably shouldn’t even be this far from the coast, and an increasing population of threatened Tree Frogs, who have now grown in significant enough numbers to comprise a veritable Amphibian Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Why We Fight: Checker Lily, Mission Bells or Fritillaria affinis

Why We Fight: Milk Maids or Cardamine californica.

Why We Fight: Indian Warriors or Pedicularis densiflora

Of course, we want to preserve it all. Seems easy. But it’s frightening how fast you can compromise a pristine environment, even if you think you are in preservation mode. First mistake, when the vineyard was put in three or four years ago, we allowed hay bales and straw “snakes” to be brought in for erosion control. Big mistake. Apparently, if you aren’t a careful buyer, these things can harbor all sorts of alien seeds and invasive plants that then take over. And they’ve started their march down the swales and water drainage areas. Apparently we should have specified rice bales, which are not native, but can’t possibly survive in Sonoma once the weather heats up. Next mistake, allowing mustard to be planted as a fallow season crop in the vineyards. Apparently, this plant multiplies faster than Aliens. We now need to plan our strategy for eradicating the mustard.

We're doing it for the critters. Although deer aren't endangered, they've got a clean, well-lighted place to graze here.

I should digress here for a John the Baptist Nature Lesson. Again, if you are showing up late, John the Baptist is our trails man, plant guru and freelance forest spirit. With his trusty lieutenants, Louis and Jesus, he speaks for the plants. Many readers of this blog have written, after reading about our efforts, to ask “Why do you make it sound like Natives are so weak they can’t survive as well as invasive species?” I put that question to John, and here’s his answer: “Natives exist in their landscape in a balance. They have enemies and predators and plants that keep them from overpopulating. Certain non-Natives have no native enemies and they just run wild, choking out all the Native plants.”

So we’ve brought out the Big Guns for the Armageddon of the Vineyards. This year is Blitzkreig. We’re even resorting to selective spraying of Round-Up to kill back some of the invasives that already have a foothold. The marketing information says that this particular formulation dissolves into inert ingredients in three months and doesn’t affect the groundwater. John says he doesn’t believe a thing Monsanto says. But, you’ll see the measure of desperation here. Unfortunately, this is John’s Guantanamo and he’s willing to sanction extreme measures to even the odds. Tell it to Dick Cheney, John!

John the Baptist and Jesus armed for chemical warfare on invasives.

Oscar does his bit with more natural herbicides.

Even shy Lucy Terrier got into the act by killing a gopher...which she promptly gave to her new boyfriend, Jesus.

After this year’s Shock and Awe, we’re hoping that we’ll only have about a 5% recurrance next year. With quick burning and pulling before germination, we should be able to reduce the non-natives in the year after next to about 1% ressurgance. And so it goes.

We're keeping Sonoma safe for Wavyleaf Ceanothus.

Neil Young told us that “Rust Never Sleeps”. Ditto for non-Natives. But we’re at the barricades and we won’t be stopped. With a British husband, it’s now appropriate to misquote Winston Churchill:

“We shall fight in the swales. We shall fight at the creekside. We shall fight in the vineyards. We will never surrender.”

Kermit the Frog had it right. It’s not easy being Green. It’s even harder being Native. Tell it to Sitting Bull. That doesn’t stop us from fighting the good fight here at Two Terrier Vineyards. We are blessed with a unique piece of land. Unique mostly because it was neglected for probably hundreds of years. While we have evidence — grinding stones and arrowheads — to proved that Miwok and other local Indians used this as thruway, it seems most later inhabitants left it alone. There is some ancient barbed wire on the outer perimeter of our land that would indicate the sometime presence of cattle, but the oldest Sonoma residents I’ve spoken with all say this particular plot was always “the back of beyond”. What is truly unique about our little 40 acres of Heaven is that it seems to be a bit of an ecological anomaly. We’re too far East for Giant Pacific Salamanders and too hot for Redwoods, but we seem to have both in abundance. John the Baptist was telling me that naturalists say the Giant Pacific Salamander is so reclusive that it’s a coup to find one after a week of searching. John and Louis have seen up to fifteen in a day in our creek. I’ve even found one at the exact moment that I actually had a camera handy with the right lens attached. I can’t tell you what a “blue moon” moment that is. So we must have a unique Giant Pacific Salamander refuge going on here.

A Pacific Giant Salamander caught swimming in our seasonal creek. Apparently, one of many.

A few of our Redwoods. Or perhaps Ents from Lord of the Rings.

Those Redwoods, of course, frequent visitors to this site will know are special treasures here. They shouldn’t actually be this far into the hot climes of Sonoma County. Yet here they are in a little gully leading to our seasonal creek. Several good stands of them that are estimated to be over 500 years old.

Which is what brings me to the subject of mustard. When you have a unique environment such as ours, you can’t imagine how hard it is to keep it pure. Our “landscaping” efforts (and the quotation marks around landscaping are meant to be completely ironic) have been confined to restoring native habitat. With a few notable misteps.

Here's the offending Mustard. (Terrier shown for scale.)

That would be the Mustard. It’s everywhere. It’s the look of off-season wine country. A plant that fixes nitrogen in fallow vineyards, then gets plowed in  as green manure. It was actually brought here by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1500s. But it’s not Native.

And that makes it beneath contempt for our Native Storm Troopers, John the Baptist and Louis. Think of them as the Native Americans who took over Alcatraz in the late 60s.

I try to talk to them about the heritage of mustard in California Wine Country and they are having none of it. They are Ghost Dancers. Bring back the old ways. When I pass John and Louis on the property I can hear the hiss through clenched teeth: “Mustard. SSS. Damn. Mustard.” See, what we should have planted are Lupines. Apparently, they fix nitrogen just as efficiently. But they are Native. And Natives are as vulnerable as the Sioux were to Smallpox and Measles. You let those infected interlopers in and it’s all over.

Baby Lupines. John the Baptist and Louis say that's what I should have planted in the vineyards.

So it doesn’t matter how traditional Mustard has become. Your protestations that it’s pretty will never drown out the hissing of John and Louis, “Mustard! Damn Mustard!”

That means an emergency call to our Vineyard Manager. If there is anything that should be in ironic quotation marks, it’s Vineyard Manager. Disabuse yourself of any notion of an effete guy in a a beret. Our Vineyard Manager is named Clarence. He wears overalls and a cowboy hat. He’s a farmer. But he’s Old Skool Sonoma. And that means a guy who plants Mustard in the fallow season. So I’ve got to call him up and tell him Crazy Horse’s Love Children have told me that Mustard must die. Or at least be cut down and plowed under before it can seed.

I can imagine how Clarence is going to laugh at this one. It’s  going to be like the second war on the frontier. But my money’s on John and Louis.

I think we are looking at revisionist history here. This will be the stand-off where the Native Americans win.

Addendum: Don’t know a California Native from a hole in the ground? John the Baptist is recommending this book:

John and his wife, who know the author, swear by this book.

Best thing about it? It categorizes plants by something we amateurs can all get behind: color!

Why don't horticulturists realize that this is the easiest way for us amateurs to spot plants?

I won’t say we’ve done everything right here at Two Terrier Vineyards. But we were blessed to be able to get hold of the ecological version of a blank slate. Then careful budgeting and perhaps a lack of ambition kept us from making irreparable mistakes. Our idea of landscaping was not so much planting things as building stuff out of the thousands of rocks that covered the property. Luckily, by the time we got done having retaining walls, stairs, a bocce court, an amphitheater and other things built, we had learned enough about this unique plot of land mostly to leave well enough alone. One of the exciting things about our land is that it’s never been developed, so it’s never been exposed to the meddling of traditional landscapers. In fact, the area was the scene of a pretty devastating fire about thirty years ago and, in the aftermath, was covered with an almost impenetrable covering of mesquite and weeds. That kept out most of the invasive species that people around here have traditionally planted. Things like Eucalyptus, Himalayan Blackberry and non-native grasses. Not that we didn’t plant some non-natives like Rhone grapes, olives and lavender, but at least they aren’t invasive. In fact, it’s hard enough to keep them healthy that there’s no fear they are going to crowd out the locals.

I thought this Houndstongue was an invasive species, but John assures me this is one of the good guys.

Our main “landscaping” has involved cutting back brush and Mesquite just for accessibility. And to keep the whole place from going up like a torch during California’s dry summer since typical California scrub plants have more oil content than the Exxon Valdez. Once we cleared the Mesquite, it was amazing how many California natives rushed in to occupy the space and how fast. I can modestly say that Two Terrier Vineyards is almost like a California Native Botanical Garden. We’ve got Checker Lilies and native Lupines, at least five different types of native Oaks, Madrones, Manzanitas and some wonderful hardy native grasses. Not that it hasn’t been a battle. I tell you, going native is a constant struggle, not the least against our own ignorance.

The pristine native creek -- with redwoods -- that we need to protect.

Case in point: Andy loved the look of the mustard that covers fallow vineyards throughout Napa and Sonoma and asked our vineyard manager to plant some. Which brought our trails guy, John the Baptist, to the point of a massive coronary. Seems mustard is not native and is very invasive. We should have planted some sort of native Lupine to put nitrogen back in the soil. Or at least Fava beans which don’t spread and crowd out the natives. So the next chore here is to plow under the mustard before it gets a foothold.

Our particular concern is protecting the unique ecosystem that is our seasonal creek. That would be the REAL creek, not the glorified drainage ditch that I told you about here. In the former, we have a gully deep enough and, until we bought the land, remote enough that it is home to a stand of 500 year old Redwoods that are vestiges of the Redwood forests that used to cover Sonoma when it was wetter, junglier and dinosaurs roamed the Earth. John the Baptist has impressed on us the urgency of keeping this area pristine. And we’re heeding his warning. Since mustard and other invasives wash down toward that creek, this called for desperate measures.

John the Baptist has morphed from gentle forest spirit to fiery Old Testament Prophet scorching the unworthy with the Lord’s fire. In 2010, that translates to a propane fueled flame-thrower thingy that’s smiting the interlopers before they can invade the pristine wilderness. Don’t like Biblical imagery? How about Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four? Flame on, Johnny, flame on!

John the Baptist smiting weeds with the Lord's Fury.

Think that’s the end of it? Not hardly. We had straw bales brought in for flood control a few years ago. Seems, if you don’t specify a certain kind, you get bales filled with seeds, especially of the invasive kind. So a particularly invasive thistle seed has been leaching out of those bales and working its way down the hill. Now, luckily, to be stopped by John and his fiery weapon of destruction.

Landscaping, to misquote Pat Benatar, is a battlefield. Luckily, we’ve got John the Baptist and his crew doing the Lord’s Work.

Earlier this week, I braved a rare break in our winter storms to get up to Sonoma and check the progress that John the Baptist and Louis have made in our trails and vulnerable flood areas. After last year’s storms, the rains that filled our seasonal creek, in addition to a number of felled trees, caused massive erosion. John and Louis swore it wouldn’t happen again. They’ve been busy for weeks with straw bales and logs and rocks to shore up banks, build run-off channels and divert rainwater from flood-prone areas. After bushwhacking down our most vulnerable trail, I have to say, there’s nothing Mother Nature can throw at us that John and Louis haven’t built defenses against. Not that Mother Nature would want to thwart John and Louis. She’s never looked this good in our neck of the woods. And every lady of a certain age certainly appreciates a little cosmetic help.

For instance, look at this lovely sylvan scene. Untouched Nature at its best, no? NO. This area has had more work by experts than Cher’s face. But the results are equally impressive.

Artful arranging of rocks, wire-screened underwater breakwaters and felled trees have resulted in this beautifully channeled waterway.

C'mon. This is like a Hollywood set. Don't you just expect Jeremiah Johnson to ride through here?

Last year, this whole bank eroded. This year, a John and Louis waterfall is channeling the runoff.

As always, I learned tons of things on a John and Louis Nature Walk. For instance, did you know that this foam is perfectly natural? Some sort of protein stirred up when the water is running quickly.

And here I was worried someone was polluting my creek with Joy dishwashing detergent.

John even located a piece of petrified Redwood.

Which I was so excited to see that I couldn't properly focus my camera. Note to self: rephotograph this at a later date.

And let's give Mother Nature a little credit for dressing things up with lovely mosses and ferns.

John and Louis also pointed out some really cool plants that are starting to sprout. But it was too wet to take out my notebook, so I promptly forgot what they are. But I’m assured they are very special.

Hopefully John or another reader will leave a comment identifying this plant. Update: as you can see from the comments, John the Baptist weighed in identifying this as Golden back fern (Pityrogramma).

And this plant, too. Update: Reader Maybelline correctly identified this as a Maidenhair fern. John the Baptist confirms it.

I’d planned to start a Two Terrier Nature Series on this blog, identifying and showcasing our many native plants. But I realize I’m going to have to do a lot better than this. Note to self: carry pens and notebook at all times.

In the meantime, bring on the rain! We’re ready.

As buccolic as I make Sonoma out to be, I’m not trying to say it doesn’t have crime or problems. It just seems we have a different kind of crime than the gritty urban crime I’m used to reading about in San Francisco and Oakland. Maybe I’m not clued in to the seamy underbelly of Sonoma, although I do try to keep up. The Crime Report in the Sonoma Index-Tribune is one of the first sections I turn to. That’s where I find gems like the big Saturday night crime spree we had a few months ago when a local deejay showed up drunk and/or high at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, proceeded to get into an argument with the owner, smashed one thousand dollars worth of turntables, then ran down the street to Sonoma’s only sushi restaurant and, for good measure, punched the owner in the face. We were all talking about that one for weeks. Last Friday night, three taggers were caught in the act of defacing the feedstore and, in Tuesday’s edition, the crime was still being hashed out on the front page.

Nearly a week after the "crime", this incident is still making the front page of The Sonoma Index-Tribune.

Yes, we have our own brand of crime. It seems to be largely victimless, mostly alcohol-fueled and quickly nipped in the bud by the excellent Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. When I say we have a Sheriff’s Department, I really mean it. These guys are cast much more in the Wyatt Earp mold than they conform to any donut-eating stereotype. Years ago, before we had fencing, we had an ATV stolen. Within days, the Sheriffs had rounded up the usual suspects, recovered the vehicle, gotten a confession, led them in front of the Hangin’ Judge and organized restitution. You don’t mess with Western Justice.

So it was shocking and saddening to find out early this morning that we’d been hit by criminals. Although, thankfully, it seemed to be The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Since we wrapped up the harvest and got all our wines in barrels, I’ve been in San Francisco most of the time between Thanksgiving and New Years. That’s too many nights with lights out and, I guess, too much of a temptation.

Hey Evil Doers, don't you know this place is guarded by Attack Terriers?

Not to mention the Mountain Lion who hangs out just behind the building you burgled.

Apparently, about dawn the perps crept over from the nearby State Park and started jimmying open the windows to the garage/workroom. What they didn’t count on were John the Baptist and his right-hand man Louis. Especially as we race to get the drains and hillsides ready for our torrential winter rains, John and Louis are up here most days. And despite their Saintly names, you don’t want to meet John or Louis if you are wrong-doing. As near as we can tell, the two of them came roaring through the gate in John’s old muscle car, blasting Johnny Cash, just as the perps had wriggled their way into the garage. Apparently that was frightening enough that the perps threw themselves back out the window after doing not much more than tipping over some cans of paint.

It was probably the Johnny Cash that did it.

Although Louis says he and John had the windows down and were engaged in their usual trash talking. As John the Baptist says: “We’re not Librarians.”

In any case, the perps fled down the trail under the Mountain Lion’s sometime lair. Which could have been the cause of some beautiful Instant Karma. However, Joaquin (or Joaquinetta, as John, who’s seen her, claims she’s female) wasn’t in da house at this moment. Pity.

Although it seemed the crime-in-progress was thwarted, I drove up from San Francisco to survey the damage. Reaching back to everything I’ve learned from devotion to three franchises of Law & Order, I determined that the criminals were a disorganized pack of punks. They clearly weren’t competent enough to mount a quick, efficient operation that nabbed items of the most value in the shortest amount of time. Of course, that would assume that there HAD been anything of value for them to grab. Other than an old Ford truck with two flat tires and one dead battery, the garage mostly holds Andy’s large collection of bits and pieces of lumber. Judging from the way he hoards it and won’t let a bit of it be discarded, burned or used, he thinks it’s worth its weight in gold. I’m not sure what it would actually fetch on the open market. Or how, indeed, you would get it down a trail and past a Mountain Lion.

So I’m giving a sigh of relief that everything is intact and we don’t seem to have been targeted by Master Criminals. But that isn’t stopping John and Louis from debating whether they should stockpile weapons and spend a few nights up here. Fair warning: their trigger fingers are itchy.

I don't think you want to be looking at John and Louis down the barrel of a rifle, do ya PUNK?

Let’s just hope, for the sake of Criminal Sonoma, that they don’t deputize the Mountain Lion.

UPDATE

We just found out one of the criminals signed his name in the dust on the garage door.

File this under: Too Stupid for Words

Careful Fool. My posse -- Louis, Juan and John the Baptist -- are looking for you.