Guest Blog—William Rein

On the first day of the APGA “Sideways Santa Barbara Tour” in June, our group visited three more or less “public” gardens.  We ended on Saturday evening with a leisurely dinner on the terrace of Madame Ganna Walska’s home at Lotusland.  Then we boarded the bus and headed south along the coast to Ventura, the beach town, where we were to stay the night in a motel two blocks from the ocean.  I was excited to see a California surfer’s town and looking forward to a first-hand look at a Southern California beach so I could compare it to New Jersey beaches.  The latter get little national or international attention, especially considering the visitors they receive and salt water taffy that’s consumed there.

Ventura
I arrived at sunset and took a walk around the back of our motel to check out “the mission,” something pointed out by our tour leader.  Turns out it was the historic San Buenaventura Mission—the namesake of the town.   Mass was taking place and the sound of Catholic hymns sung in Spanish emanated from open doors.  In the courtyard a young priest and a few families with children were socializing, enjoying the gentle evening air.  Having expected the usual knick-knack shops of shore resort towns back home, this was a pleasant surprise.  Although a block away there were a few busy bars, the mission church and Spanish-style public courtyard next to our motel, along with the palm trees and dry air, reminded me I was far from home.

The next morning I awoke early to get out by 6 AM and see if I could fit in a Mass at the mission and walk along the beachfront. I was way too early for church—the  sign said the first service wasn’t until 7:30, and we were to board the bus by 8 AM.  So I walked to the local shopping center (VON’s—the supermarket chain whose name appears on grocery bags in the comic strip “Opus”).  I photographed the mountains in the rising sun and enjoyed the peace you get if you venture out that early anywhere on a Sunday morning.  Heading due west a few blocks toward the beach, I encountered the large underpass of Highway 101 which cuts through the length of Ventura, dividing it from the coast.  I don’t recall the pop music group America mentioning this indignity in their song “Ventura Highway” but then again, maybe they’re singing about a different road.

A large paved pedestrian and bicyclist path runs along the beach (I can’t get used to those hardscape “promenades” when a boardwalk seems so much more appropriate).  I also find it disorienting that the sun is rising to my left when the ocean is to my right.  First thing I note about the beach is (1) it’s full of big rocks and driftwood, and (2) it’s really not that wide at all.  This surprises me, since although I’d heard California sands weren’t as white and soft as ours back home, I didn’t think it would be more like what I’d seen in New England. (I’m later told Ventura is known more for surfing than sunbathing.)  The mass of palm trees that run in a long patch to the north completes the exotic picture.  Stopping a couple of times to take photos of the misty coast to the south as it juts out into the Pacific, including a shot of a small wave coming in, I wandered up to a very long fishing pier and walked out over the Pacific ocean.  A bunch of early bird fishers had already established themselves.  Ventura certainly has its own beauty, with the ocean and the mountains so close together, but it has none of the feel (like that strong breeze and smell of sea air) that returns every time I cross a causeway and salt marsh bay when heading to the Jersey shore.

Lompoc – “Valley of the Flowers”
I chose this pre-conference tour especially for the chance to see Lompoc, since I work for Burpee. I recall the references to their Floradale Farm in the catalogs I received as a teenager, and the picture of David Burpee standing in a field of his prized marigolds.  After heading north on 101, back past Santa Barbara and into the Santa Ynez mountains, we turn inland somewhere east of Point Conception and passed locales with exotic names like “Refugio Beach” and “Gaviota” (place names I heard again a week or so after returning home, when the forest fires exploded). As we enter the Lompoc Valley, huge fields of dazzling pastel sweet peas announce that we’ve come to a horticultural Shangri-La. We step off the bus into a surprisingly constant and cool breeze.  Given the intense California sun and heat I encountered in Pasadena and Santa Barbara (as well as the sultry summer back home in Pa.), this breeze was a positive force for my mood. It also provides uniquely ideal conditions for flower and cool-season vegetable seed production.  (Soon this Lompoc weather phenomenon punished my fellow travelers who dressed more for an east coast summer’s day!)

After inspecting sweet peas, overwhelmingly fragrant sweet alyssum and yellow marigolds, we re-boarded and drove to a field of flowering artichokes being harvested as cut flowers.  A street sign immediately catches my eye—we’re parked on Floradale Avenue!  This must be the old home of Burpee’s west coast operations!  We wander across the road to more sweet peas, and a few rows of tall orange marigolds.  The hills here are much greener than anywhere else we’ve been. Then, another stop for more fragrance and color – this time from stock, which, like sweet pea, is unusual to those of us from more humid and hot summer climes, where such cool-season beauties fade fast from the scene and would never make a successful summer field crop.  We continue to fields of larkspur just beginning to bloom, and delphiniums not yet in bloom.  I preserve memories of this completely foreign experience on film for future California dreaming.

Having received a luxurious dose of flowers and freshly scented air, we headed to a local supermarket to pick up lunch to take to our next stop, La Purisima Mission, near Lompoc. I had no idea what I’d see in an old California mission site that promised some horticultural themes.  It’s out in the hot, dry, grassy hills. I was hoping for some shade. Arriving at the mission, we lunch under a grove of low but wide-spreading, craggy-limbed California live oaks (Quercus agrifolia) with a few California black walnut trees (other than in stature not too different from our eastern species). Mission staff and volunteers give us an extensive history.  Turns out La Purisima is short for “Mision La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima” (that is, “Mission of the Immaculate Conception of Most Holy Mary”. Founded by Franciscan Missionaries in 1787 to convert the local Chumash Indians, La Purisima was the 11th of 21 Franciscan missions in California. (This finally makes sense of place names like “Santa Barbara”, “San Buenaventura” and all the other “San” and “Santa” cities and towns in California.)  After experiencing a big earthquake and flooding rain in December 1812 (“El Ano de los Temblores”), the original mission moved to the current location (apparently further from the fault line and the floodplain).  We strolled through demonstration gardens of herbs and vegetables.  There were established specimens of the California bay laurel tree (Umbellaria) and a Lyonothamnus, a not-obvious member of the Rose family. In the trees along the streambed I spotted some poison oak (anything related to poison ivy can’t hide from me, Mr. Sensitivity-to-Toxicodendron).  Near the gardens is a Chumash hut with its traditional cover of tule (pronounced “tooly”), a local wetland reed.

From this outpost of early nineteenth century life, we headed east to the Santa Rita Hills of Lompoc, not far from the flower fields, where the temperate maritime breezes continue down the valley unobstructed, “caressing the vines” of Sanford Winery.  We disembarked for a taste of their wines (Pinot and Chardonnay seem to be their claims to fame) followed by a white tablecloth dinner on the porch overlooking the picturesque vineyard and hills.  It was used in scenes for the film “Sideways” and, hence, is why our pre-conference tour is subtitled as such.  Although I haven’t seen the movie, I can attest that the site is indeed worthy of film (in my case, slide film).  The wines were nice, too, but I’m not a fancier of the grape. The tasting just helped make the evening more “fun”. We’re told Pinot and Chardonnay grapes benefit from the “strong winds, morning fog, and cool temperatures” found here, as well as the local soils, which are less clayey and possess more calcium than the grape growing regions of the east. But for me it was the colors, the cool, and of course the food, that were beneficial, indeed.

 

 

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