I don’t care if California is bankrupt, on fire, on drugs, out of work and out of water; it is a ravishingly beautiful state where you can grow almost everything well. There is a word for those who like to bash California: jealous. They have mountains, deserts, exquisite coastlines, and farms that could feed the world. They also have Luther Burbank’s Gold Ridge Experiment Farm in Sebastopol, which I visited last week on my way to a book event. Luther Burbank (1849-1926) was a wildly successful plant breeder who introduced, among many other things, over 60 varieties of prickly pear cactus. He was also friends with Jack London; need I say more?

It was a perfect cool sunny day and I was the only one at the farm walking over the grassy hillsides among the oaks, persimmons, plums, and sweet peas. I bought a Luther Burbank prickly pear plant by sliding 4 dollars through a slot in a barn door. I also ate a plum, or three, which I didn’t pay for. After all, they were literally falling off the tree. My walk on these California hills, plums in hand, brought to mind the William Carlos Williams poem, which, with apologies to Williams, I have modified here:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the hybrid beach plums

that were dangling

from the dwarf Prunus

and which

you were probably

saving

for research

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so warm

For those interested in finding out more about Burbank, I recommend the new biography, The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding by Jane S. Smith. I got my copy at Copperfield’s books in Sebastopol.