WALK #7

Saw a row of olive trees that reminded me of our first experience with an olive tree in Napa Valley. We'd moved here to a property that bore a huge olive tree by its entrance. Our kind neighbor said that if we harvested its olives, we could add ours to his olive harvest since he made olive oil as well as wine. "A good way to get a few bottles of your own 'estate olive oil'," he said.

So one morning my husband and I brought a ladder and crates to the olive tree and proceeded to pluck its olives. Trucks of vineyard workers sometimes drove by our entrance and we soon noticed that they all seemed to be laughing at us. Later, we noticed the traffic to be heavier than seemed usual and, yes, they were all laughing at us as we "harvested" our olives.

We later learned what we should have realized had we been using common sense--you can't harvest olives from trees by individually plucking them! (Think about it!) You harvest by placing a tarp under the olive trees and shaking them so that the olives fall on the tarp!

Oh, and we also later learned that we perhaps created half a bottle's worth with our olive "harvest," though our neighbor diplomatically gave us a few bottles...

Yet another story in our "City Slickers Chronicles."

A Lesson from Harvesting Olives

Sometimes, solutions arise

by shaking

things

rather than behaving

methodically and

carefully