Calabash

I woke up this morning to watch a pink blush outline the dawn shadowed hills. By the time we set out on our walk with Ozzie, clouds had moved in, we could feel the occasional drop of water and smell the ozone in the air. By the time we met Dana and walked back to her house, we were all wet enough to require towels and qualifying the brief downpour as the first rain if the season.

Our neighbor gave us tickets for an event called Calabash, a fund raiser for Food For Thought, an organization which provides food, love and acceptance for 800 people who live with HIV and other serious illnesses in Sonoma County. The Food Bank is surrounded by a working garden which provides seasonal produce, herbs and flowers for clients' grocery orders and a lunch program. We toured the garden and the orchard, tasted cheeses from Redwood Hill Cheeses, which feature pictures of fetching goats on all the labels

For today's party, artists from Sonoma County embellish gourds of all shapes and sizes, and donate them for a silent auction. We wandered around in the warm sun which had come out, banishing the dark clouds and replacing them with fluffy white ones, sipping wine donated by wineries all over the county and enjoying little bites of everything from figs with cheese to seviche with avocado, scallops, salmon and shrimp,  gazpacho and a massive salad made with lettuces from the garden.

I decided that of all the gourd offerings, my very favorites,  were the gourd hats worn by a number of the volunteers .