There's an unusual amount of activity in the massive Chinese Elm just outside my front window. More noise than light, the foliage is currently so dense I can barely see sky, but the excessive chirping alerts me that the rain has let up.

I'll be heading to the shop soon, to receive new drops of wine, new arrivals and new vintages of perennial favorites - the steady, cyclical nature of selling an agricultural product. I'll pass Kaiser on my way, but without my 4 year old daughter who hollers every time we pass: That's MY building! That's where I was born...

Julia and I celebrated our birthdays this past week, with less hollering. I got to slip down south to visit my folks and some family and old friends. A strange and surreal experience to sleep in my old bedroom, now with my little ones. To push tiny Simone on park swings under the same oaks I scrambled beneath at her age, or chase Ellery over grasses that I played tag and soccer on with my brothers as kids.

On Monday, the Oakland Yard staff took a field trip to Sky Vineyards. on a remote peak of the Mayacamus Range between Napa and Sonoma, 2,100 feet up a nerve-wracking, one-lane road, where Lore Olds and his daughter Maya manage a dry-farmed fourteen-acre vineyard. All around the red volcanic soils and the gnarled, rugged vines, vibrant signs of life and resilience abound in a spot so recently devastated by the 2017 Napa fires. Black charred trunks surround the property in stark and strangely beautiful contrast to the vibrant hawthorne and lilacs, and brilliant bright poppies peppering the landscape. Looking out on a deck near the house, someone spotted a nest of newly hatched finches, their tiny yawping mouths calling out for nourishment.

We all took turns peeking at the nest through the space in the grate below our feet, feeling lucky to witness the brevity of that moment - those baby finches remain in their nest for only 12 days or so after hatching, then are off and on their way. Erica looked out and took a long, deep breath (and reminded me to do so as well, without saying a word), holding the moment, the tiny cries, the clean fresh air, the serene joy of it all.

Sorry for all the nostalgia. But I'm loving the light rain this morning. The AQI of 25. The chirping in the trees outside my window. I'm thinking of those little ones on Mt. Veeder, scheduled to depart this week, maybe even today. The thousands of miles they'll travel and explore, perhaps to return to their very same nest next year, as some species are wont to do.

Happy Thursday,

Daniel