I love fall in the Napa Valley, especially traveling around and watching all the leaves in the vineyards change colors. I pulled off Highway 29 the other day and took a walk through a vineyard that had blood red leaves, all in perfect shape. I then found some yellow- and burgundy-colored leaves and just studied them for a while. What beauty. Last weekend leaves were turning and falling everywhere from maples, elms, the popular trees, and many others, all shedding. As I sat in my car under my carport (which has an aluminum extension roof over my boat), I listened as the many redwood pine cone pods fell and landed on the roof with a tapping wound. They then slide down to the ground to help provide a cushion of protein for the next year.

I've never seen crows play before. They usually consort en masse in one of the tall pine trees skirting my house, chirping with gravely voices in subdued conversation with one another. Sometimes I see them pecking for bugs in the horse pasture, or flying at dusk -- a mysterious, if not sinister scene of dark airborne creatures disappearing into a purpling sky.

Napa Valley Fly Fishermen Club