The Valley Blossoms
The calendar won’t confirm it, but Spring has arrived in the Valley. The signs are everywhere. Daytime temperatures have been rising, reaching the high ’60s and low ’70s. Grasses in front yards and fields have greened up. Flowers — poppies, irises, daffodils — have emerged and started showing off their colorful blooms. And then there’s the Blossom Trail.
On this Wednesday, Sharon and I drove part of this 60-mile route that rolls along numerous rural roads, through orchards that display their best and brightest hues this time of year. The trail showcases orchards chock-full of blooming fruit and nut trees in the southeast part of Fresno County.
At its best — now through the first week of March — sightseers marvel over the many thousands of trees festooned with the pink blossoms of peaches or nectarines or apricots, vying for attention alongside the white sprays of almond, plum, apple, orange and lemon trees. And if you’re lucky — the sky is clear enough to let you see the snow-capped Sierra, just a few miles distant.
The Blossom Trail’s peak of color comes and goes fast. If you wait too long, the blooms will have fallen, creating, at times, a solid white or pink ground cover. It’s quite a spectacular sight.
Spring arrived around these parts after a winter that seemed to last about 10 minutes. A month ago — on the Friday when we arrived at the Airbnb in Clovis where we’re staying for a few months — it was raining. It kept raining for several more days, and then it stopped and has not resumed.
The weather experts say little or no precipitation is expected for the next few weeks. The drought experts say that, yes, we’re back in one of “those periods” around California. That likely means water rationing in the cities and more wildfires in the mountains.
But the rain we did have turned our temporary rural neighborhood into a walker’s (that’s me) and photographer’s (that’s Sharon) delight. Our neighborhood consists of homes built on two-to-five acre parcels. That leaves plenty of room for lawns, and some of our neighbors have them — big-time, and beautiful.
And that space also leaves lots of room for animals, and our neighbors have them in abundance. On my daily walks, I encounter everything from horses to goats to donkeys to chickens to turkeys to, of course, the usual cats and dogs.
None of them live in small pens. All roam quite happily and freely in giant front yards or back yards. The other day, I was walking by the group of six or seven goats that live up the street. One of them saw me and approached the fence next to the street. The others followed.
I petted them, and quickly discovered the goats were not at all interested in my touch — they had wanted food. Finding none, they wandered away in disgust. Oh, well. Goat fur is not especially soft, anyway.
One particular donkey that lives on the next street over brays at me every morning. I don’t take it personally. Nor am I at all disappointed when a particular group of seven or eight turkeys — always traveling together — crosses the road in front of me without acknowledging my presence.
I have made friends with Denny the Cat. Denny belongs to our Airbnb’s owner. He is short-haired, with gray fur everywhere except for his white chin and chest. Denny always meows and meanders over to me when I come out the front door, and always wants petting. His fur feels much better than the goats’, and so far, Denny has not demanded food from me.
We’ve spent our first weeks back in the Valley — after an absence of several years — by re-establishing the routines we had followed when we lived here before. We’re both going to our previous hair-cutting salons. (Well, Sharon’s going to her former salon in Fresno. I’m back at my old Supercuts in Clovis. That is definitely not a salon.)
We’re grocery-shopping at the same places we did before, because we liked Sprouts and Trader Joe’s and Save Mart back then, and we still like them. Yes, we wear masks — as does everyone else we’ve seen inside, thank goodness — and sometimes we double-mask. Even after we eventually get our coronavirus shots, we’ll take the same precautions.
And, of course, we’ve spent several warm, sunny afternoons driving up to Madera County, where we’re building a home in a new foothill “village” development. At least, we’ll soon start building the home. Up to now, we’ve been back and forth, to and from, the developer’s office, signing this and that — lots of this and plenty of that –and reassuring them, with tax returns and bank statements, that we are who we say we are, and that we can afford their home-building services.
Construction should begin in a few weeks, and it will take four to six months.
No matter when our house is finished, we plan to return to the Midwest — to Ames, Iowa — one more time this summer. Yes, we’ve enjoyed our treks there over the past few years — and we were so fortunate to have bought a condo near Old Town that we renovated and turned into our ideal summer place.
But as the years have gone by, it’s become more difficult for us to make the long drive across-country each summer. So this year’s trek likely will be our last. We plan to sell our place in Ames and concentrate our future trips to the Pacific Northwest in the summer — and to Disney World, where we enjoy spending a few winter weeks each year. Yes, we fly to Disney World.
For now, we’re biding our time around these parts — enjoying our warm days and cool nights, and trying as hard as we can to stay away from people until we both can get vaccinated against the coronavirus. I’ve had my first shot, but Sharon is still too young to have been able to register for the shots. Yes, I “robbed the cradle,” didn’t I? Funny thing is — our age difference didn’t seem quite as much Way Back When.
And, yes, this is a lovely time to be back in the Valley — even if the calendar cannot confirm that Spring has arrived. Those of us who live here know the truth.