Today's adventures in SoCal

I've written before about the many facets of California and its amazing compartmentalization. In the Coachella Valley is the department of leisure and wealth: golf, tennis, shopping, plastic surgeons, beautiful homes, and gorgeous landscaping. All serviced by Mexican or Native Americans of course, those that Drumpf plans to kick out of the country. But that's a different story; this post is about some other aspects of this corner of Southern Cal.

Eight o'clock this morning (some of you know this is not my best time of day) saw us up and out and heading up Tahquitz Canyon. It's unusually hot his week for this time of year, so it had to be that early or not at all. Today's temperature hit 36C and yes, it's a "dry heat" but it's still 36C, or 97F if you're on that scale. Tahquitz Canyon is gorgeous and thankfully controlled by the Tahquitz Nation. We met a woman of Mexican/Native heritage on the trail who said the canyon was closed for about 30 years as the result of squatters through the 60s and 70s who trashed the place with garbage, human waste, and graffiti. Sadly, too believable. She was also very embarrassed about Drumpf being the best the GOP could offer, wondering what would happen next and trying to mobilize her connections. The trail is only 2 miles round trip but between Jim's bum ankle and my dodgy oxygen supply we opted not to take the guided walk so we could bail out if we needed to. Not necessary and we were both just fine despite lots of stairs and a 350ft elevation change. Thanks to the gym and Tai Chi, I'm in the best shape I've been for years.
 

Not wanting to spend the rest of the day indoors to avoid the heat, I convinced Jim we should go to the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California. The short story is that from 1905-07, by error, the Colorado River was diverted to the Salton Sink and resulted in an inland sea, larger and deader than the Dead Sea. People expected it to dry up but it didn't because of agricultural run-off and for, a period in the 50s/60s, there was a Salton Riviera explosion of resorts and recreational development. We didn't know much in that era about "agricultural run-off" in which DDT and fertilizer were components of the drainage. The sea is still vast at 50 km long and 24 km wide, but it smells foul (really awful!), nothing can live in it, the beach 'sand' is made of fish bones from the big kill-offs, and the area is derelict. Despite admonitions to avoid it if you have respiratory issues, we were very glad to have seen it, an image of post-apocalyptic possibility and a quick lesson in human intervention gone very wrong. There are serious air quality issues and if the wind gets up it threatens the posh life to the west.

On the way back to our nest in Palm Springs, we stopped in at the Coachella Valley Brewing Company to ease back into our life of privilege...temporary as it may be.

About Dates; the eating kind

It's been an age since I've posted a blog, but some of the fam are stubborn about Facebook....

This is our third time visiting the Coachella Valley, we're in Palm Springs, and we only just found out that the valley produces 90% of the dates the US grows. I doubt I even knew the US grows dates. We went to Shields Date Farm yesterday, in Indio, at the far eastern end of the Valley.

The farm has been in operation since the 30s when an intrepid couple moved to the desert and decided to grow dates. What we learned at Shields is never to complain about the price of dates.
The process to get a date to your mouth is ridiculous and labour intensive. I don't even know where to start; maybe with date seeds always produce a new variety so if you want to replicate a type of date you have to cut off the suckers after they've put down some roots, in a year or two. Then it takes something like 15 years before a tree is big enough to make seeds. But wait, there is no natural mechanism for them to pollinate so somebody has to harvest pollen from the male (1 male tree to 45 females) and apply it  by hand to the seeds.

Then there is the issue of water. Dates grow best in the desert but they need a LOT of water so you have to have a huge supply, but it can't be rain because rain touching the dates damages them. So get this; after the seeds have been pollinated by some poor schmuck up a 40 foot ladder, the clusters, each cluster not a whole tree, are wrapped in waterproof tents so they don't get rained on on the one day a year it might happen. Seriously.
The harvest isn't any easier because they don't take a cluster down all at once like bananas. EVERY day the whole (orchard?) patch gets a going over and individual dates are picked by hand, again, up a 40 foot ladder.
I can't imagine how this inefficient system has kept dates alive for thousands of years but it has to be because people are willing to play out the ritual in order to get the delicious fruit. If you ever see a date shake on a menu, grab it. Yum.
Aside from the date production revelation, we enjoyed a nice lunch on the lovely patio under the shade of the date palm trees.
We also went on "The Walk". If you aren't from British Columbia you'll miss the amusement of this. The  Walk is a biographical sculpture garden of the life of Jesus and, me being a car-carrying atheist you're wondering what the heck I was doing there? It was too good a back-story to miss: Bill and Lillian Vanderzalm contacted the Shields Farm in about 2012 to suggest the collaboration because they were closing their theme garden in Vancouver  BC. The deal went forward and now there are 14 bigger than life statue vignettes depicting the biblical version of the history of Jesus of Nazareth; in Indio California from Fantasy Gardens in Richmond (Vancouver) BC. The real fantasy is that Bill Vanderzalm was premier of BC and got tossed on his ear when he was caught accepting a $20,000.00 "incentive" from a Chinese realtor. Symbolic might be that the stone in front of the sepulchre is molting its fiberglass.

Aside from my amusement, the garden was lovely and a peaceful interlude.