Sometimes guests text me to ask what kind of apples are in the orchard (too many to list here!) or to ask where to go for Sunday scones and espresso (Wildflour!).
Sometimes they text to tell me they are leaving so I can run over and take group photos in front of the house or the pool or the chickens. Sometimes all three.
Sometimes they text what feels like poetry, little songs of love to the pace of nature. Here is one message I received on Thanksgiving evening:
I’m blown away by all the different golds of the trees. Simone lay on the steps by the honeysuckle mountain last night and looked at the stars until she was icy cold and then popped into the shower for a drought’s worth of time. It was heaven.
Thanksgiving morning, our gardener Sergio and his helper Eric showed up at 7 a.m., their regular time. There were plants to tend, trees to trim, fallen leaves to clear. I had made it clear there was no need for them to come work on a holiday, but 2020 has made the unusual the new normal, and this year working on a holiday where you are safer outside than congregating inside with traveling family members made sense. I was out feeding the chickens, and when I walked up to their truck, Sergio emerged into the still semi-darkness of early morning with hot coffee and a muffin. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, extending the Starbuck’s cup and bag to me.
He reached back into his truck and brought out a smaller cup and some sugar packs. “Here’s cream and sugar if you want them,” he said.
I wanted to burst into tears, but even more than that, I wanted to enjoy my treats.
“You’re the best,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
Sergio’s and Eric’s family are in Mexico. Mine is in Boston. My daughter is in Berkeley, but she is going to be with other family members this holiday, and we are not in the same pod, so it’s safer for me to spend the holiday apart from her this year. Last year we celebrated together with my family in Maine.
I have to say there was something so lovely about a quiet Thanskgiving: me, Sergio, Eric, the guests in the main house. We all just did our thing.
The sun was bright. The air was sweet.
And no turkeys made their bossy presence known that morning, striding across the yard as is their want, as if they own the place.
They must have had other things to do.