Shrouded in Mystery

Fabulous homemade minestrone, salad and a lemon/raspberry tart were on the menu last night at friends' in Sebastopol. She has been contending with more scary health problems in the last year than anybody should have to face in a lifetime, yet she looks great, has time and energy to make delicious meals (after going to three markets in search of the right kind of beans) and tend to her husband and her menagerie, including chickens, dogs, cats, a parrot, the occasional sheep and birds that come to her bird feeder when she calls them. She insists that she felt great when she went to the doctor, only to be diagnosed with breast cancer and a life threatening heart defect. Her heart stopped for four minutes after the surgery that was done to correct that.

We were back in Sebastopol this morning for a walk through the regional park with Ozzie and our erstwhile landlords and good friends. They are both characters. She has a sharp wit, a difficult family in Montreal who demand her attention and a busy international marketing business.. He and his brother own an advertising agency, he collects vintage cars, "manly toys" like mootrcycles, and farm equipment, and is full of very funny stories about all kinds of well known people. He tries to get her to go out in his kayak with him and she tries to go to spas with her. They both divide their time between Sebastopol and San Francisco, and are joy to be with on those occasions when we manage to get together.

The house I chose to blip, On Vine Hill Road in Sebastopol, has always fascinated me. It stands tall against the sky, surrounded by vines, and is completely unadorned by any discernible sign of a curtain (although there should be a little old lady behind a lace one, twitching it aside to peer out from time to time) a flowerpot, a gate or a shrub to indicate real inhabitants. Every time I see it, my imagination begins to conjure up mysteries ranging from The Four Story Mistake, which I read as a child, to the Bates Motel and the house behind it in Psycho.