Petaluma Painted Lady

A return trip to Cottage Garden Nursery for a bigger pot took me down the main street of Petaluma. In many ways it hasn't changed since it was a shipping lane to San Francisco down the Petaluma River. The grand houses at the top of the hill are still there overlooking the park. The old grain elevators still line the Petaluma River although the barges of old have been replaced by trucks and an elegant marina.

The tall stone bank building with its marble entry still stands on a downtown corner, but now it is The Seed Bank, packets of heirloom seeds gardening books and potting benches having replaced banknotes and tellers' windows. The main street is lined with bakeries, excellent restaurants, antique stores and boutiques, but it hasn't really lost it's old-time feeling. We were surprised one evening when we emerged from one of the restaurants to find the streets crowded with the young and the hip on the way to the movie theatre and several popular watering holes.

Today a huge banner remains from when the city turned out for a confetti parade to welcome the hometown team back from the Little League World Series. They came in third but the little hometown couldn't have been prouder of it's Boys of Summer.

The garden project is taking shape although the battle with the gophers requires that everything be planted in wire baskets, pots or a raised beds. It costs more to keep the gophers out than it does to buy the plants. But OilMan loves playing The Great White Hunter with his traps and smoke bombs and strategies. He has also joined the ranks of good old boys at parties who gather to tell gopher stories...how they caught them and how the big one got away....

I'm off to chat with our neighbor over the rail fence, admiring each other's tomatoes and, in her case, tomatillos--a bit like a green tomato but with an elegant papery jacket. I'm hoping to trade a jar of apple chutney for a jar of tomatillo salsa.