Field Blend

Sometimes I just have to ask myself, “Dude, where the heck are we living?”

A stray kitty won’t leave our back yard, Black Widow spiders love our front porch, Lemon Lady gave me a verbal beatdown, and there was an arrest for public intoxication on, no joke, Merlot Lane. “Sideways,” indeed.

It’s mid-October, and only now is the weather starting to get a bit cooler here in Oakley, CA. Not furnace weather; more like Henley-instead-of-a-polo-shirt weather: longer sleeves for the shorter days.

Our local daily newspaper features a wonderful columnist, Gary Bogue, who writes about pets and wildlife found in our neck of the woods — Kathy once had to stop the car while a rafter of wild turkeys (Paul Hellweg’s “The Insomniac’s Dictionary,” Chapter VI, “Collective Nouns for Animals”) crossed a major arterial road — and receives notes from folks who routinely find tarantulas at home, then take them back to nearby Mount Diablo. (Sorry for another diversion, but I’ve been meaning awhile to comment on a local nutjob, fresh off his methadone and new to salvation, who wanted to rename the local historic peak “Mount Reagan,” citing that “Diablo” is (d)evil. Locals, municipalities, counties, and ultimately, the feds, decided that this dude needs a hobby.) In a recent column, Mr. Bogue stated that, given 30 minutes, he could find a Black Widow in any backyard. NIMBY, we thought.

But then! Kathy goes out last week to investigate a strange noise; it turned out to be nothing. But when she takes off her garden clogs to come into the house, she spies a spider with the unmistakable red hourglass mark, in a web on our front porch. We’ve since noticed another Black Widow (apparently not a male, since he’d have been brunch by now). These two now have the names “Audrey’ and “Constance.” Check out Kathy’s Blair Witch-style photo of Audrey, above. Not only did she just want to snap the photo and get off the front porch ASAP, Kath no longer leaves her garden clogs outside.

Our second Halloween in Oakley is a week away, and we are trying to get a handle on the number of trick-or-treaters. In our White Center ‘hood near Seattle, we had, maybe, seven kids total in 8+ years. In Oakley last year, we were bombarded with hundreds! (And, man, we were scrambling for candy after we ran out of our original stash; half the candy we gave out last year was year-old Seattle traif I found in a closet.)

Last year, Kathy and I carved pumpkins, watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and then, as twilight loomed, sat outside in the front porch Adirondacks, cocktail in hand, to dispense treats. We were overwhelmed. Just when you think you’re done, another wave swells. And then there are the unavoidable teenagers, too old for this sort of thing, who don’t even attempt to dress up.

But, this year, Constance and Audrey are really going to figure in the front porch mix for us. We have more candy this time, but we have Black Widows, too. Just a heads-up, all you teenagers sans costume.

So, last Saturday morning, the scrub jays are squawking like crazy in our backyard redwood tree. Kathy goes out to investigate (sense a pattern here?), and up in the branches of the sequoia, is an adult tortoiseshell kitty. It’s talkative as heck, meowing at Kathy who is urging the little one to come down. Kitty’s not stuck in the tree at all: It works its way down the branches and follows Kath to the back door. Now, we have neighborhood cats that use our backyard as a shortcut, or to hang out staring up at our bird feeders. But they take off when a human approaches. This tortie meows at us, follows us around, then goes back to chill up in the tree!

Which is where Kitty was Sunday morning, after the first rain we’d had here in five months. Uh-oh. It wouldn’t leave our backyard. We gave it some kibble and water. Kathy posted a “Found” notice on Craigslist. And at evening feeding time for our two indoor cats, Kitty trotted right up to the screen door and meowed loudly and incessantly for food. As darkness fell, Kitty curled up on the broad arm of an Adirondack chair. It was heartbreaking.

Monday was more of the same. As Kathy got up in darkness to get ready for work, Kitty again raced from the tree to the door, yowling steadily through the glass. Later that morning, I phoned our vet for advice; Contra Costa County Animal Services could come out and take Kitty to their shelter. But they are closed Mondays. Kitty was still in our yard Tuesday, and, with no responses to our Craigslist post, Kathy and I spent all morning online trying to investigate “no-kill” animal organizations in our region. We finally agreed to give Animal Services a call after being assured that they work really hard to place adoptable animals, an adjective that fits this fluffball to a T. As long as Kitty gets a clean bill of health, there’s a great chance of finding that “forever home.” I kind of miss the little chatterbox already.

Hey remember Lemon Lady, the neighbor down the street with the huge, old lemon tree in her front yard? When I originally approached her months ago, offering to pay her for lemons, I actually thought she’d go all grandma on me and insist that I help myself for free. Instead her response was an immediate “$3 a bag, and don’t go haywire with the bag!”

Well, I guess I went haywire with the bag, because the last time I went to harvest, she lit into me for my plastic bag “splitting apart because it was too full.” As the saying goes, “If life hands you lemons, that’s a better deal than having to pick them yourself from the tree of a cranky neighbor.”

Harvest is in for this year, and our ancient Oakley-area vines are starting to shut down for the season. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no activity in the vineyard. The other day I was driving down Empire on my way to Target for a flu shot, when I spied a gent piloting a tractor by the side of the road in front of Rich Pato’s vines (which we’d just been talking about in the last couple of posts here). I took a flyer, parking the car on a side street and sprinting across four lanes of traffic, to chase down the tractor. I ended up exchanging pleasantries with Rich Pato himself. It’s always cool to match a vineyard with a wine label, and put a face to a name.

It’s also nice to match the cooler post-harvest nights with sweeter Late Harvest bottlings. We found a half-bottle of Cline’s 2006 Late Harvest Mourvèdre, made from a block of varietal fruit on their Big Break property here in our fair city. The Mourvèdre had an extra three weeks of hang time, to impart extra ripeness in the grapes. In the glass, it’s Port-like in its color, opacity and viscosity. There’s a deep nose of blueberry, with a hint of nuttiness. Unctuous but not cloying in the kisser, this LH balances an earthy sweetness with a bit of tannic grip, too.