Abandoned Water Tower

The porch project has become a bit all consuming.

The good news is that we moved our trusty yellow umbrella onto the porch and it does the trick very nicely. It has certainly been put to the test as the temperature was approaching 100º today. 

The bad news is that OilMan hurt his back moving the very heavy base of the  trusty yellow umbrella and has taken to his bed of pain. I'm afraid I'm not a very sympathetic nursemaid as I kept telling him I would help him move stuff but he insisted on doing it himself. The trusty yellow umbrella was just the final straw....

I decided it was high time I got out of the house so I drove down Highway 12 through the vineyards looking for an interesting picture. There are water towers like this all over the place. Most of them have been converted to some other use, but this one seems to be biding its time. When I pulled off onto the side lane I was struck by the dead tree in front of it. These are pretty common around here too.  

There is a headline article in the paper today about a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who bulldozed a protected wetland and filled in a stream bed in Mendocino County to plant a vineyard. (The paper used the word 'build' with respect to the vineyard). He made no attempt to obtain permits for bulldozing the land, filling a stream or diverting water from local sources. 

He has been fined $3.7 million by North Coast water regulators. We take our water and our vineyards seriously here in wine country. There are rules....