Just to Walk

Dave and I walked to the Co-Op late this afternoon, not because we especially needed anything, mostly just to walk.



One of the pleasures of living in the valley are the irrigation ditches, many of which are the vestiges of what was once a thriving ranching and farming community.



Many of the ditches were paved (a process that the city started when I was a child), but some of them aren't paved, and along those ditches there are enormous cottonwood trees. Some wags who live on that road up there (that runs along the ditch) named the cottonwoods in their yard after Confederate officers, a practice used also to name some California redwoods.





But they aren't all named after Confederate officers. Here's one named after the famous chicken killer:



We stopped at the Co-Op and filled our backpack with only the most necessary things, like frozen knishes and soymilk and, oh, let's see, apples and pinto beans.



On the walk home, our shadows were longer.