Vineyard Shadows

…The wine story, continued…

This is the little vineyard of Roussane, Marsanne and Viognier grapes in front of the Sebastopol Farmhouse. We enjoyed watching the grapes develop, especially since we had no responsibility for their care. Carmine managed the vines, made decisions about the irrigation, pest control, bird netting, brix levels and picking. If we were there, we would help with the harvest. Kelly and Maureen's house was next to ours, and had a larger planting of pinot and syrah in front of it. These are some pinots ripening on the vine.

Life in Berkeley was becoming more congested and frustrating. The foggy Berkeley weather kept me from my wish to eat outside. Our house was charming but dark, and had no space around---we looked directly into our neighbor's kitchen from our television room.

We used our weekends at the Farmhouse to hunt for a new permanent Sonoma County home. We were quite happy with with our dual house life, and not willing to sell our Berkeley house unless and until we found the "perfect place". The search was further complicated by the fact that OilMan hated house hunting and often had to be wheedled into looking at yet another property I liked house hunting better than he did, but we looked at an awful lot of really horrible places, and even I was beginning to lose interest.

Then we met Cindy, who I think understood what we wanted, perhaps even better than we did. She quickly disabused us of the notion that our "dream house" was a rural property out in the middle of nowhere, and ultimately showed us a house on her street.
We walked in the front door and within five minutes were in total agreement that this was "the" house. Two days later, our offer was accepted, and a month after that we had sold the Berkley house and were moving.

With a new home a mere 25 minutes away from Sebastopol and the Farmhouse, we regretfully gave our notice. It was harder to leave it than to leave our Berkeley home of 45 years, and we still miss it, but we didn't have to say goodbye to Kelly and Maureen, or, as it turns out, their grapes.

To Be Continued….

The vineyard and the beautiful Heritage oak tree in front of the Farmhouse provided the picture for the Mono Monday challenge:Shadows. Thanks to Skeena for hosting this month.