There was no dawn today. I woke up with the first tinges of gray to the night sky (4:20 a.m., just like at home), but there was no sun to herald night turning to day. Beth and I figured, separately, that it was going to be a dreary, cool and cloudy day. Greg said something about the marine layer and how it burns off at 10 a.m, on the dot. I ignored him and pulled on a fleece sweatshirt I’d borrowed.
Sure enough, though, by 10 a.m. the sun was blazing, and the weather had turned to that famously California weather: clear, cool-yet-warm, dry (no humidity at all), and light breezes. The trees/flowers/shrubs here are used to persistent drought, so you don’t get the feeling that plants are thirsty as much as you get a feeling that they’re tough.
We went into town today for a little culture and commerce. Historic Solvang is one of five communities that make up the vibrant Santa Ynez Valley. With a population just over 5,000, Solvang depends on a vibrant tourist trade. It’s Friday, the beginning of a weekend. If today was any indicator, I’d say little Solvang is doing quite nicely. By the time we left town, the traffic and sidewalks were humming.
Solvang was founded in 1911 by a group of Danish educators. The architecture of many of the buildings follows traditional Danish style (exposed timbers). There is a copy of the famous Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, as well as a bust of and museum dedicated to the Danish fable writer Hans Christian Andersen.
The Santa Ynez Valley was originally inhabited by the Chumash tribe. With its rugged terrain, Chumash are, predictably, a rugged lot.
I had lunch at the Mustard Seed—excellent—and did a bit of commerce (a nice skirt and some shorts), then met up with Beth and John at the windmill, a full sized replica version.
Afterwards, we shopped for dinner fixings. We’d checked Greg’s garden before we left: tons of Swiss chard, a cucumber, some tomatoes along with some peppercorns from the pepper tree (really!!), and lemons from his lemon tree. We got a chicken to roast and a loaf of bread.
Back at the house I helped Greg try to figure out which horse needed to be Kit’s first friend in California. They have a yearling filly out of Gale’s mare Heidi, who won the lottery. She’s being pretty sweet to Kit, so we decided to try Kit alongside Heidi, very clearly the boss mare of this herd. Heidi was cruel—charging and lunging at Kit from her side of the fence—so we left Kit with the youngster (Heidi’s foal) and put Heidi and Greg’s big gelding Gavinda in separate pastures. We figured that Kit and Heidi would work it out, eventually, by virtue of being side by side. Greg fed them on each side of the fence about twenty feet apart. Heidi was still sort of nasty but her frustration is abating as dark draws near and she comes to realize that Kit is her only friend in the whole wide world. It’s likely to move Kit’s stock up without having to lift a finger.
Heidi is Gale’s first-flight field hunter with Santa Ynez (a fancy warmblood mare), and Gavinda is the horse Greg had ridden up until this point. They’ll now have three hunters going (hopefully) so they can invite a friend, or have enough horses to hunt twice a week.
Tomorrow I’m going to get on Kit for Greg—he has a lesson set with Beth for Sunday morning—and make sure she remembers her schooling from back home. We depart before 9:00 a.m. for me to take Beth and John to the pier and shore in Santa Barbara, before I head off to pick up the furniture that’s shipping back east. I’ll join them in the evening for dinner on the pier (excellent seafood).
To be continued….
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August 5, 2010