Remember our "get me out of the desert" day last Sunday? Nana's friend Nancy from Florida wrote to us: "Now I know how the settlers got to the west coast.......WIVES SAYING, "GET ME OUT OF THE DESERT!!"
When we left the campground this morning, we stopped at a local fruit stand. (Remember, we're in the 'fruit basket' of America) Nana went nuts! No, no - she went fruity! Peaches, nectarines, kiwis, strawberries, blueberries, pears, oranges. She passed on lemons, mangoes, grapefruit, avocados, apricots, artichokes, cherries, and nuts. Poppa got a jar of home cured olives. Everything locally grown. Poppa asked the guy at the fruit stand about the season for peaches. He said the farmer, who's last name is Morrow and first name might be Jesse, specializes in 'grafting'. He will graft half a dozen different kinds of peaches onto his trees and harvest the different kinds from May to October. He may be related to the "Jesse Morrow Mountain" controversy here (Google it). A Mexican company, Cemex, wants to strip mine a local mountain for gravel to mix with cement and build an asphalt plant. Local opposition says it will put a truck on the road every 2 minutes, use 1,000,000 gallons of water a week, and add to air and water pollution.
Today we drove 74 miles to Coarsegold, California, which will be our southern entrance to Yosemite National Park. Coarsegold has an annual Tarantula Festival (can't give you the web site right now, but you can Google it.) They're not supposed to come out until October, so it will probably be a disappointment for Nana not to see a bunch of them (heh-heh-heh).
On the way here, we stopped at the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno. ( www.undergroundgardens.com ) Baldassare Forestiere (hey, Rich and Tony - did I pronounce that correctly?) emigrated from Sicily to America around 1901. (His grandniece gave us the tour, which gave us nice insights into family dynamics and kept Nana's interest.) After working in Boston digging for the subway, he came to Fresno and bought 80 acres to grow citrus fruit. Then he found out two things:
- there's a layer of "hardpan", like cement, in the ground, and in Fresno it is 36" thick!
- summer time temperatures in Fresno are 100 to 120 degrees.
He dug through the hardpan and created rooms underground in which to live and to grow trees. Skylights through the hardpan brought light to the trees. Some trees are now 100 years old! And when I say 'rooms', I don't just mean little cave stuff! He had a driveway that came underground to a ballroom! On our tour, it was 68 degrees 'down there', while it was 94 degrees up on the street. Here are a few pictures. (The dark vs. light made it hard to get good photos).
The picture below is his bathroom. He had a tank of water up above on the ground that would get heated from the sun and give him a warm bath.
He did grafting too:
The dining room below here used to have a glass ceiling with water and fish above it, so you could watch the fish while eating:
This is the driveway that cars could use to get to the ballroom:
Poppa admitted that Baldassare was smart, talented, hard working, and persistent. But he did ask Nana what the DSM-IV would have to say about him (whatever that means.)
Tomorrow we go to Yosemite!
Posted from Nana's iPad
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