Sat in my little shop working all morning, but I needed a break and wanted to be outside enjoying this spectacular day. I grabbed my pruning shears, blew out the candles, turned up the volume on Yo-Yo Ma to make the place look occupied… and made a run for the exit.
There is a now-defunct museum next door to the Marketplace where I have my shop. It was called COPIA: Center for Food, Wine and the Arts. Beautiful, enormous, modern building of glass and stone situated on an embankment atop the small Napa River. Julia Child had a namesake restaurant there. Lots of weird food-related exhibits, wine classes, and black-tie galas were held in the building. I taught classes and attended many seminars and dinners there over the past few years. The museum was supported by many of the local, prominent wineries. But their largess couldn’t help when COPIA closed its doors this winter with a $78 million deficit. The building is surrounded by incredible organic gardens, the entrances of which are now padlocked and posted with huge ‘No Trespassing’ signs.
I walked to the museum next door, kicked off my heels at the entrance to the gardens and scaled the fence. It was quiet and beautiful, but now neglected. The irrigation to all of the vegetable beds had long been turned off and all of the edible plants had gone back to seed. There were flowering weeds in all shades of color. Birds were playing everywhere and dozens of fat yellow butterflies touched on all of the tall fennel plants. I picked a few sunflowers, standing as tall as I, now in bare feet. I walked past beds and beds of lavender, in full bloom and humming with bees. Roses galore burst in the sunlight, scattering their spent petals on the walkway. There were dozens of fruit trees, heavy with plums, peaches, apples. I picked a peach, still warm from the sun. It was slightly hard and under-ripe, which are my favorite. The fuzz was stiff, and there wasn’t any cloying juice or dense sweetness, just the essence of the peach and its acids. I sat under the laden tree and ate several. I began to walk back to the fence to find my shoes and heard a rustle in the garden ahead of me. I was surprised, as I assumed I was completely alone on the many acres. In a shaded garden glen, I spotted a man crouching in front of an enormous turtle. Really, the largest turtle I had ever seen. The stooped man was feeding bright yellow flowers to the reptile, who had its head turned up to the man; its mouth wide open to the delicate treats, as if smiling. I felt as though I had fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. I asked him if the turtle lived in the gardens and if he was here tending to him. He laughed and said that he brings his turtle to the garden to feed him, as ‘Alex’ loved dandelion flowers and the now untended garden was full of them.
He began to rattle off the turtle’s origins, age, Latin names, etc. But by this time, I had already turned and was headed back down the warm gravelly path, sticky with peach fuzz and loaded with sunflowers.
Beautiful break.
Back to work…