Marshes.
#california #wildliferefuge #marshland (at Bodega Bay, California)
Late afternoon.
#california (at Bodega Bay, California)
Marshes.
#california #marshland #wildliferefuge (at Bodega Bay, California)
Just a day overripe
Early Girls their given name
each tender bottom etched with a cross
a flagellation performed
with a tomato knife.
Washed and waiting
to be blanched and iced
and crushed by hand,
the flesh fragrant of warm rain and earth and mineral.
Hot juices singe fingers,
acids sting kitchen cuts,
like a honeybee
trapped between a flip-flop and a foot.
Pulpy seeds spew and spray and splatter
an old linen housedress
pockmarked with the blood and guts
of previous projects,
sacrificed at my alter and relegated to the deep freeze.
A true fruit,
the apple of my eye
sealed tight with a single basil leaf,
a hopeful dash of verdancy
to awaken
clay pots in wintertime.
Corona beans and pancetta and onion and smoked peppers
and old wine
buried deep in dying ash
reclaimed anxiously at dawn
from an oven still warm and smoky.
Barefoot in the gray morning chill,
recalling languid days of summer gardens
and pleasure myself in the sunshine.
Succulent.
#california #succulents #summerroadtrip (at Abalone Point)
Early light.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
Citrus.
#california #meyerlemon
Small rocky islands dot California’s coastline, home to conifers and seabirds and sea monsters.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad, California)
During duck season at the early part of the 1900s, members of the Humboldt Fish and Game Club at McBride Ranch would convene for a good dinner together the evening prior to the next day’s shoot. Come first light, the hunters were paired off and hunkered into blinds in the marshes, cold, wet and hung-over, to wait for ducks to fly overhead.
Today, the property is wildlife refuge.
#california #humboldt #wildliferefuge (at Humboldt Wildlife Refuge)
Fishing boats at rest.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad, California)
Stillness.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
Bok choy.
#california #vegetables #nyeranchfarm (at Westport, California)
The day’s last waves.
#california #summerroadtrip #humboldt (at Trinidad, California)
Rocky coastline.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad, California)
A quiet morning on the harbor.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
End of day at the edge of the Pacific.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
Tipped off from a read-lead about a local smokehouse, we bought cans of their albacore tuna, hand packed and sashimi grade. “95% re-order rate,” boomed the deaf old man behind the counter, his sales technique that of an angry battering ram. We returned to the cottage just before sunset, retrieving the key from the chipped cement lighthouse on the front steps. Hungry, tired and cranky, day was made night while searching for our previously beaten path from the beach. With gulps from a Westmalle beer cooling our moods, the tuna was mixed with lemon mayo, green chopped bits, and piled thick on toasted grainy bread, the leaning tower crowned with thick tomato slices and a ruff of lettuce. Transporting our sup to the picnic table on the porch, I yanked the cork from a decades-old Calera Pinot Noir, opened the night prior but left mostly unfinished. While twilight dimpled the still harbor, sparrows frantically dove the cliffs below searching for supper, the barking from a gang of seals echoing against rocky hills. The old man was right. We’d be returning for more. #california #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
Fog pulling off the harbor.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad Head, California)
Dahlia.
#california #humboldt #summerroadtrip (at Trinidad, California)
Not a soul in sight.
#california #summerroadtrip (at Abalone Point)