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sensitive to color.  For example, I noticed that the foothills in the Sonoma Valley took on different colors with the change of seasons.  They were green in Spring but at the first touch of warmer weather they began to turn, gold at first, and finally to a tawny brown.  They reminded me of lions dozing in the sun, especially when the wind rippled the grasses on their rounded flanks.

From the high ground, as far as I could see the Valley was a gleaming tapestry. The vineyards, planted on rocky slops, were green until Autumn, and then like the rees on the East coast, they flamed into red, orange and gold.  Infinite shades of green tinged the fruit orchards and the vineyards.  Around these cultivated tracts of land, bordering the dirt roads and indeed in any open space, wildflowers grew exuberantly, yellow daisies and yellower sunflowers, buttercups, orange-colored poppies and blue and ywllow lark spur.  The rambly greyish-green scrub oaks often made me laugh; they seemed to be poking fun at their imperious cousins, the live oaks with bottle green leaves.  In the distance, the Russian River was a shiny silver thread running through the tapestry.  How could Nature combine so many different colors in such perfect harmony?  I still wonder.  But at that early age of course