Birthday

Eastside Road, —

MY SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY, spent exactly as I chose: talked to an old friend for an hour; harvested most of the rest of the crabapples; spent an hour at the gym; picked up the violin from the repair shop; watched the news; went to dinner with friends.
But first, an unusual breakfast: a Crane melon, grown not on the Crane ranch but just up the road from us, and brought to us by our daughter from down the hill. My mother was a Crane, though the families diverged five generations before me; the melon branch is descended from my great-great-grandfather's brother's line. Still, they're local, and I'm a little loathe to eat one not actually grown on the Crane ranch, in spite of my liberal attitudes to intellectual property, not to mention the legitimacy of "owning" strains of living organisms.

The Crane melon is, as far as I'm concerned, the most delicious grown in our country. It's California's answer to the Charentais. This morning's was the best Crane melon I've tasted grown elsewhere than on the Crane ranch itself.

Dinner was a delicious Cobb salad with the Ashlanders, the three other couples with whom we spend a week every year in Ashland, seeing plays, eating and drinking and talking, and generally acting like retired and semi-retired intelligent adults. As you see: hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, avocado, ham, turkey, lettuce, salad dressing. A perfect party food, prefaced by cheese and crackers, followed by a very rich chocolate cake engineered for someone's birthday.

"Madame Preston", Louis Preston Vineyards, 2007  
Sauvignon blanc, Gryphus (Chile), 2008  
Rosé, Cabernet de Saumur "La Bretannieère", 2008