"Love the Country Life"

I spent most of my life in the city, growing up in Buffalo, N.Y. and then moving to Southern California after high school. After college, we spent all our adult life in the city, running our business in San Diego. After selling the business, we decided to get out of the city and spend retirement in the country...the dream of a lifetime. So we bought a 20 acre ranch on the Central Coast of California.

It’s easy to take living in the country for granted, but compared to the city, here in the beautiful outdoors we are reminded daily of the ways that nature interacts with us. Last night as we lay in bed pondering the silence of the country, we could hear the patter of little feet running around in the attic. I have been spending an hour or so a day recently on mouse control, and spent today installing traps and poison pellets amid the insulation in the attic...bless their little hearts.

Waking up this morning the sun shone bright through our bedroom windows as we looked out over the brilliant hillsides. This morning was special as I woke up to see several deer and their babies in our backyard eating all of my wife's prize flowers...what beautiful animals they are. Morning brings our usual routine of fresh coffee while breathing the fresh mountain air. I then remove the cover we keep over the fish pond. The cover has to be installed every night to keep the raccoons from eating our goldfish. After that I clean the bat guano off the front porch. This morning, I plan to set traps for ground squirrels, who are tearing up the pasture and burrowing under the foundation of the barn. Those squirrels sure are cute little animals.

Today is lawn mowing day. After cleaning the wild turkey droppings off the grass, I plan to put gopher poison in the ten or so holes in the lawn, as the gopher burrows are slowly undercutting the back patio. And then it’s off to the south pasture to spray Roundup on the poison oak and try to get it under control.

We planted a small vineyard several years ago, since it was my dream to grow grapes and make wine. Two years ago was our first harvest of fruit from the vineyard. Unfortunately, before we could pick the fruit, it was all eaten by birds. Those Starlings sure are cute little things. This year we got smart and put netting over all the vines when the fruit started to get ripe...no more problem with birds.
But, surprise...the yellow jacket bees were able to fly through the netting. These pesky critters suck out the juice from each berry on the cluster. But the installation of several bee traps in the vineyard should take care of the problem, and we look forward to picking some fruit next year and finally making some wine.

Gosh...I love living in the country, what a beautiful way to have such intimate interaction with mother nature.