Friends and Wine

Good morning, my friends. The weather took a little turn yesterday. It was cloudy much of the day, but there was no rain. Definitely the temperature dropped a couple of degrees. Nevertheless, we had a very nice afternoon with our friends, Debi and Jim. Debi is looking a little perkier than she was the last time we saw her. We're very hopeful her recovery will continue on the path toward wellness. 

The evening before, we received a text from them suggesting two wineries: Cougar and Robert Renzoni. Mike suggested starting at Cougar since we've been to Renzoni before. When we arrived at Cougar, we realized that we had been there before. No matter. It was a good way to start a nice day. I took a few pictures, but mainly, we just enjoyed our wine and our food and relaxed and gabbed all afternoon long. I took this next photo in the tasting room at Robert Renzoni. It seems a good place to start, because you know I took pictures of every blooming thing.

The first winery we visited was Cougar.

This first one is phlox.

There were plenty of white roses. Here's one:

My phone tells me this is Uniform Treasureflower.

The phone tells me this is Salvia microphylla. Apparently, it's common name is "Hot Lips."

These are red geraniums.

Here's another white rose.

This is a Wood Iris.

It's a beautiful tasting room. I liked this chandelier made from wine bottles.

These were messages on slats from a barrel.

This was hanging on the wall. Who sees a quilt here?

We each selected a glass of wine and then found a table outside. Looking out across the valley, these were the vineyards for this winery.

If I'm remembering right, we all chose a red wine.

And we enjoyed this charcuterie board...

Along with more bread and olive oil made with olives from trees grown at the winery. The olive oil was delicious.

After we'd finished our wine, we decided to move along to Robert Renzoni.

Here I enjoyed the things they had for sale inside their tasting room. This one seems obvious.

I told Mike he needed this hat, but he thought $28 for a hat negated his need.

I liked this one too:

Like before, we each selected a glass of wine and then found a table outside. Gazing out across their vineyard, it looked like this:

Here, we had lunch. I had another Italiano sandwich. Mike had a chicken club sandwich. We only ate half and brought the other half home for dinner.

We sat and talked, and talked, and talked, and then we returned to the RV. It was nearing dinner time by then, but we still took short naps, and then enjoyed what remained of the evening.

Just as I was finishing up this post, the kitties spotted birds outside our window. There's a tree behind us producing lots of seeds right now. They get scattered all over the catio. We haven't yet seen any birds at our seed feeder, but I suspect they prefer the seeds from this tree. 

What kind of bird do you suppose this is? It looks kind of like the goldfinches we get at our feeders back home. When the goldfinches arrive at our feeder at home, we know spring has arrived.

The weather is taking a turn for the worse today. We're expecting a cloudy day with rain probably starting around dinner time. It won't interfere with our plans to visit the City of Temecula this afternoon. I just want to walk up and down the main drag and snoop in some of the shops. For sure we'll visit the shop that sells fudge. And I don't know how a day in which fudge is involved could be anything other than a good day. Do you? 

Okay...so off I go to enjoy our cloudy good day. I hope you have a good day ahead of you too.