A Little Opera Goes a Long Way

40 acres in six days.  Three girls.  

Mornings started at 5:30, and the world was a cool, serene, vastly green world, walking from row to row tucking vine tendrils into the wire infrastructure.  It's hard to believe that all of this green sprang up since we pruned the vineyard back in March...

Heavy dew clung to each leaf and the sun slowly climbed out of the mountain and started it's journey across the sky.

But by 9:00, the dew had been scorched from sight, and a blinding, green-white world replaced the cool green darkness of a few hours before.  I left my water bottle at the end of each row as I worked it, and put each foot in front of the other just to get back to that water.

I always forget how much I dread to be hot... rain and mist and snow and cool green must be in my blood.  How so many Scots moved to Africa as colonists is beyond me.  I guess it's the stubbornness.

Wishing I had boots, but thankful for jeans.  California thistles are the meanest.

A simple object like the old barn or a stand of trees became a landmark of hope, as each row brought us nearer to the end of that scorching green world.

For some reason, this was the song I listened to over and over and over and never tired of that week.

But at last, and sooner than seems possible, all things come to an end.  

That week came to an end, and what, for one week, had seemed like the one reality in the world, became just a memory of endless blazing green, putting one foot in front of the other, counting the minutes till the end of the row, the hours yet to go to the end of the block.  It seemed to have no end, there in the middle, but how quickly it went by.  

And there was still incredible beauty, even sharpened by the effort it took to have the eyes to see it.

A mid-week break found us at the Lakehouse, a place so dear to my heart. Relaxing was sweet.

Though I missed Algy horribly.   I kept trying to twist the lens of the poor little Olympus... and hitting the zoom button thinking it was the on/off switch! Spoiled...

 

We left at 2:00 in the morning Monday for the Oakland airport, and whizzed through security at 5:00.  A sigh of thankfulness - I really hate doing that.  Settled in front of our flight gate, I gave myself up to two hours of delicious people watching.  But first, I went and bought a cookie crumble frappuccino at the Starbucks kiosk for the three of us.  Our FIRST EVER Starbucks drink.

Yes, it was good.  Really, really good. :smile:  And people watching makes me happy.  An old Amish couple, the wife asleep on her husband's shoulder and their hands clasped.  A sparkly and fashionable mother, blonde, with pink and black luggage and a barbie pink outfit.  Her three little daughters were carbon copies of their mother, giggling, holding hands, smiling and whispering.  We saw them meet their grandmother in Kalispell, MT.  

Ellen and I were pretty sure their black and gold dining room must have hot pink enamel dishes on a white trestle table, and the kitchen definitely had a black-and-white checkered floor.  The house itself was pink, with white gingerbread trim, of course.

And then soaring above the clouds, above the earth, thrilling to the the tremendous beauty that hides so far away from the everyday world down below.  Going home.  Thrilling to the privilege of seeing this place with my own eyes.  

Thrilling, too, at the privilege of having eyes to see the everyday world I live in.  

It's anything but ordinary.