Local treasures -- and some private pleasures

March 3, 2004

By KATIE WATTS
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

The theme for this year's Butter and Egg Days is "Treasures of Petaluma." The public was asked to vote and 10 treasures have been selected, as follows: Lucchesi Park, the Petaluma Historic Museum and Library, the Petaluma River, Volpi's, the Butter and Egg Days Parade, Cinnabar Theater, Clover and Clo the Cow, the D Street Bridge, historic downtown, the Petaluma Adobe and St. Vincent de Paul Church. (Yes I know there are 11. There was one tie.)

Those that got the most votes won, and that's fine. But there are other treasures -- private pleasures -- that occurred to me as I was making out my list.

They belong to someone else -- or to no one, and yet they are privately yours because each time you pass by, they give you pleasure.

Here are some of mine. Feel free to join in.

The redbud trees at the library, now just about to pop into bloom. They are cuttings from the famous redbud that used to grace the front yard of the A.P. Behrens home at Sixth and C streets.

The topiary people at 333 Keokuk St.

The fences with the "peacock feather" pickets at 333 Kentucky St. and Fourth and E streets.

The starlings that insist on nesting each winter in the Washington Square Shopping Center trees. Each night they swoop and flap and twitter until they are set for the night. I've been told what vicious, unpleasant birds starlings can be, but that doesn't detract from my joy at their airborne acrobatics, perfect flight patterns and proprietary attitude toward the trees.

Dr. Jim Anderson's house at 14 Fifth St. I fell in love with its half-circle front window and wide front porch. The house was for sale at a time when we could afford either to buy it or fix it up, but not both. We drove past it so many times my sons began calling it Mommy's House, and even though it now belongs to someone who loves it very much, it will always be mine.

The Bodega French Laundry building.

The octagon house on Spring Hill Road.

The unexpected, and charming architecture of the house at 600 East D St. The cottage has, I am told, a "hip roof" which makes it quite different from other homes in the area.

The Quatre Saisons rose growing up through the cactus at the Old Adobe.

The Canada geese that commute each morning from Shollenberger Park to Lucchesi, the golf course or the airport. Ducks and geese in flight tickle my fancy because of their constant chatter to each other and energetically flapping wings. They sound as if they're enthusiastically encouraging each other, and also that they can't get over the amazement that they're really up in the air, you know, flying. "Look at me! Look at me! I'm flying. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that wonderful? Can you believe it? Holy mother of Teresa and hold the bacon, I'm really doing this, just like in that movie, "Winged Migration."

Purple leaf plums in their pink party dresses. By the time you read this, they'll be past their prime. The ones on Caulfield Lane are those I know the best and because of the new sound walls, vandalism and pruning by misguided neighbors there are fewer of them this year, but each year there's that one magical mid-February week when it's like going to a 1950s prom, or backstage at the ballet.

(Katie Watts is features editor of the Argus-Courier. In fall, she delights in the handsome stand of flaming liquidambar trees surrounding the Christian Science Church and the equally vibrant Chinese pistache trees along parts of Sonoma Mountain Parkway.)