this past president's day weekend, i ventured down to manteca to visit katy's (new roommate and past fellow craggy ranger) family and repay the favor of helping us move into our new apartment. what better way to celebrate our founding fathers' birthday by planting walnut trees (sorry, we didn't get to the lone cherry tree that was to be planted)!
the 1st step is to line up the trees so that every row is as straight as possible to make mowing and other upkeep easier as well as for general aesthetics. to do that, i had to stand with a pole marking where i thought was the appropriate spot, while katy drove the john deere gator around and gave me alignment directions.
once that is done, then katy's dad drills a hole with a bobcat and we get to the planting. a few scoops of black dirt, make sure the roots are layed out properly, a few shovelfuls of dirt, a few steps to get out the air bubbles, a few more scoops of black dirt on top of magic tea bags, and we're done! pretty easy, but wait, there's 64 more trees to go. luckily, along with this hard work, i was treated to some of the best meals, including true bacon, slow-roasted pork butt burritos, and grilled tri-tip.
katy's family also has many springer spaniels, one of whom just had puppies. i quickly found my favorite. you can see "winky" in the top left corner with the one eye that is covered half in white fur and half in brown fur.
it's leap day, so as a salaried worker who is not getting an extra 8 hours of pay, let's take a field trip to the sonoma county pruning championship! the main draw is the individual race where you're judged on speed and ability/finesse. however, there's also a "celebrity" contest with winemaker/vineyard manager teams representing some of the AVAs in sonoma county. our intrepid winemaker/vineyard manager team of megan and scott (in the photo below) were entered in to help russian river valley win it all in the relay pruning race. unfortunately, it was not meant to be...damn you, alexander valley! however, we did get some great action shots and one of the sweeping vista with the ritchie vineyard.
