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An apricot contains just sixteen calories. If you can find them fresh off a tree, they make a wonderful snack.

I have had to take a short break--my first in four years of blogging--from the daily and weekly business of writing for Robin Chapman News, in order to finish my fourth book--my first fully researched, indexed and annotated book of regional history. The manuscript for California Apricots: The Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley goes to the publisher next week. After that, I will be able to begin posting again.

A Message From the Past on an Old Postcard

Vintage postcard of the foothills that surround the Santa Clara Valley.

I have seen the vintage postcard, above, several times on the Internet and it has always caught my eye. Something about it called to mind the view we used to have from our old kitchen window.

I remember admiring a little farm up there with an orchard and seeing a man on a tractor, turning over the ground in between the rows of trees. I often thought I would like to go up there to live.

California 'Cots 2011

An apricot orchard in Los Altos Hills.

I drove up into the hills above my house today. The windy roads took me a couple of miles in distance and a few hundred feet up into the foothills of the Coast Range. And into the past.

If you don't look too closely, Los Altos Hills still look charming and rural, the way the Santa Clara Valley looked when I was growing up here--before it was Silicon Valley, the home of high tech billionaires.

Today, I was in search of apricots, and my quest involved a nexus of old and new.