Left Coast Cowboys

Photo by Flickrite Kelly Sue DeConnick

If you are familiar with this San Francisco favorite, you know there is no definitive recipe other than starting with the catch of the day — whatever that may be. And tomatoes. Then you could add sausage. Or not. And serve it on rice. Or spaghetti. Or as a soup. In other words, Cioppino is a grab-bag, just like this post. I’m hoping, if I throw in all the bits and pieces, nuggets and chunks I’ve been collecting over the past few days, it will all turn out beautiful and tasty. We’ll see.

First up: I’m having a blast with the Wine Country Wildflowers field guide I told you about in yesterday’s post. That’s the one that wisely categorizes things by color. I see a blue flower and I just flip to the blue chapter and scan through the glossy pictures until I find a match. The book also wisely puts the common name in big bold letters and the Latin names in little subordinate italics. Don’t get me wrong, I love Latin. Took years of it. But it just seems to take the fun out of flowers. Say I told you I had some nice stands of Liliacae, Mimmulus guttatus and Cynoglossum grande. You might yawn. If I told you they were Diogenes Lantern, Sticky Monkey Flower and Hound’s Tongue. Well, now you’ve got the picture.

Behold the Hound's Tongue. Named, I'm assuming, for the leaves.

See the resemblance?

Yes, I’m forming a Chapter of The Campaign for Real Plant Names. And I’m appointing myself President. Consider Henderson’s Shooting Star. I don’t know who Henderson is, but I love his flower. Apparently so did California Natives. They roasted the leaves and roots for dinner.

My wildflower book calls this "a perky little charmer". Its other name is just as descriptive: Mosquito Bills.

Thus ends the teaching portion of our program and we move to the question period. Where I ask the questions and, hopefully, you give me answers. You’ve probably guessed that the topic is going to be my misadventures with vegetables. So Question One: how do you tell when carrots are ready for harvest? Do I dig them up to check? If they aren’t ready, do I replant them? How do carrots feel about this?

I uncovered a little bit just for a peek. They aren't very orange. Not ready?

Similar question with Fava Beans, which I’m growing, not for beans, but as a nitrogen fixer and green manure. All my gardening books say they’ve “fixed” when the nodules on the roots turn pink. So, I pulled one up. Not ready.

I quickly replanted it, but I think my Fava will like this as little as the carrot did. There must be a better way.

Next question: how does anyone grow bulbs outdoors? Mine are dug up and chomped down by varmints as soon as I put them in the ground. That’s with a fenced raised bed covered with netting. And two terriers on patrol.

The remains of the feast.

Okay, bored with showing my ignorance. How about a quick check of this week’s highlights at Two Terrier Vineyards?

John the Baptist found the tracks of a Bobcat and a baby Bobcat. So I guess Bob the Bobcat will have to be rechristened Roberta. I rushed to take a picture of the track, but two terriers stomped all over the site before I could focus.

Cats walk with retracted claws. So I think this is the right print. It was the only one without toenail marks.

The Barn Swallows are getting set to build nests in the eaves of the barn. One little bird dude decided there was an evil interloper living in my wing mirrors.

I had to park 100 yards away before this little guy decided we were out of his personal space.

On a culinary note, I finally tried the American Bison meat that Sonoma Market has been pushing. Yeah, yeah, lower cholesterol, less fat. But what got me to buy was their great new slogan. And I’m always a sucker for a good tagline.

Buffalo: The Meat Americans were meant to eat.

The verdict: delicious! Especially when served with Sonoma produce (obviously not my own.)

So that’s it. Everything’s in the pot and hopefully coalesced into some sort of post.

Now be vewy, vewy quiet. We're hunting varmints.

Terriers have so many uses. My macro lens is having trouble focussing. So I grabbed two of my favorite short focus subjects for experimentation. Terriers have such long noses that, if they will cooperate, you can focus on the end of their noses and at F-stop 1.8, your focus is blurry by the middle of the nose.

But, unfortunately, photos of the dogs are a sensitive subject. It just points out that, despite both dogs being descended from long lines of dog show champions, only Lucy has the correct conformation. Little Oscar? He’s all over the map. His most noticeable flaw are his ears. He’s actually not supposed to look like very small, yappy German Shepherd.

No his ears are supposed to be perfect little foldy triangles like Lucy's in this glamour shot.

I don’t even want to tell you all the regimens the breeder ordered us to go through to make his ears behave. One of them involved gluing a headband contraption to his head and folding and gluing his ears over it. Since there wasn’t much chance either Oscar or Lucy were going to be show dogs, that plan was abandoned pretty quickly. Good thing, too, it turns out there is a genetic code for sticky-up ears. And we all know how much luck you have fighting genetics.

Oscar says, "I reject Society's narrow definition of beauty."

"Wanna make something of it?" (It's not for nothing he was named after Oscar de la Hoya.)

And that short focus nose trick?

Oscar's still the perfect model for that!

Just got a note from the city informing us that we are being cited for owning an illegal dog. Seems little Oscar de la Hoya the Terrier has not had his license renewed on time.

Poor Oscar. Just another illegal immigrant in San Francisco with a Hispanic name.

This latest news just adds insult to his most recent injury. We’ve Oscar-proofed all the drains in Sonoma to stop him from chasing critters down them and getting stuck.

Oscar contemplates a terrier-proofed drain.

This post was supposed to be about more winemaking technique. Or maybe about my latest adventures in cooking and canning with the produce I’ve grown. Instead young Oscar got stung on the nose by a wasp and precipitated a tour of Sonoma’s veterinary clinics in search of a place that would take him on an emergency basis.

It all started as I chatted with John the Baptist and we plotted our usual strategy to capture Oscar so he didn’t run out the gate in an attempt to follow John home. (John, as loyal readers will know, is a huge favorite with everyone. But no one more than Oscar.) Suddenly Oscar came running in and jumped in my lap. That’s not normal behavior. Usually, when it’s still light, he has to be bribed in with squeeky toys and food. Oscar’s not going to give up a moment of playtime in Sonoma. He knows stepping into the barn means someone is going to lock the doors and maybe take off to town without him.

But now here was Oscar looking like one of those big-eyed Keane paintings. Then we noticed his nose visibly swelling and a puncture mark down by his nostril. We quickly checked him over to see if there was a second puncture, which might have meant a rattlesnake bite. Luckily we didn’t see one, but the swelling seemed to be getting bigger by the minute.

Here's Oscar's expanding nose.

Because the swelling followed the contours of the black stripe along his muzzle, it looked even worse.

Just for reference, Lucy shows what a normal, non-stung muzzle looks like.

Now Oscar's nose was getting alarmingly large. And it was itchy too.

Luckily, Good Dr. Rosner at the Sonoma Veterinary Clinic was able to get Oscar in immediately. After a couple of injections, the extraction of a half inch stinger and an hour’s observation and Oscar was released into my custody.

But it's still not a pretty sight.

It's going to be a long night.

So this post was supposed to be about the lovely walk from the barn to the crush pad that I’ll be taking three times a day now that we’ve had a first harvest and I need to do thrice daily punch downs and readings. I was going to amaze you with beautiful photographs of woodlands, flowers and vistas. You would almost be able to smell the fragrance of Sonoma in Autumn. See what I mean in the photo above of the road past the vineyards? Gorgeous.

Then Oscar came along for the walk. And like most terriers, he can be a game changer.

But first let’s set the scene. One of the best parts of the walk is the Insectarium. This is an extensive planting, all along the upper vineyard, of native plants that attract beneficial birds and bees. As in those good guys who pollinate the grapes or eat all the nasty vine-eating bugs . The trick is to arrange for year-round color (or a year-round buffet if you are looking at it from the insect/bird point of view). Not as easy as you would think in a place where the fierce summer sun burns everything to a crisp by July. But our landscape expert has managed to find a great collection of natives that are indeed providing color all year.

Look at these pretty plants! I love the way some of them bend over like a flower waterfall.

How about this one that just burst into bloom?

I even know the name of this one. It's Echinacea.

The interesting thing about our native plants is that they don’t have sweet, flowery smells like those you’d associate with flowers growing in more temperate and rainy climates. Here in semi-arid Sonoma, our flowers and plants have sort of a peppery, spicy smell.

But wait, what’s that whiff I’m getting? It’s not peppery or spicy. It’s distinctly rotten and horrible. And it’s coming from the area of our harvested lavender.

It's Oscar holding some large, furry, decidedly dead thing.

It's the head and full backbone of a baby deer. And Oscar is not going to share with Lucy.

But he will share with me. At least he'll share the aroma of his "kill", as he waits patiently for me to open the gates.

Behold the Mighty Hunter. Or is it The Day of the Jackal?

Quick. Think nice thoughts. Don't think about Bambi. Hey, look at the view!

Take some readings. Think wine. Think nice thoughts.

Then walk back to the barn through the flowers. Behind a terrier. And the wafting smell of carrion.