One of the things Jamie loves most about the Barossa is that she can go out and find so many fresh, locally-grown and produced foods so close to home. Here are three of her favorite places.

She tells me the butcher down at Schulz’s butcher shop is her new boyfriend. I feel a bit lessened knowing that you can become my wife’s boyfriend by helping her figure out how much half a pound is in kilograms. Whatever. All the meats are fresh and fab. I particularly like the “Country Killed Meat” slogan on the sign. Mmmmm.

This is Jamie rubbing her tummy in the Tanunda Bakery. Even when we don’t buy anything we like to go in just to smell the fresh-baked breads and cakes and cinnamon rolls and everything else on the shelves. It’s the best bakery this side of the Caren & Stella Ginsberg’s kitchen.

The stylish Barossa Cheese Company, where Jamie stops every week or so to pick up a few of her favorites. Being the cheese connoisseur that I am, I always say, “Get me some cheddar.”

A little over sixteen years ago Dan and Caren Ginsberg asked me to be godfather to their soon-to-be born son Jack. Of course, it wasn’t quite that clearcut a question. As I recall it went something like this:

Dan: So what’s up with you and Jamie?
Jim: What do you mean?
Dan: Is she going to be around for a while?
Jim: Yes, she is, but why do you ask?
Dan: We’d like you to be godfather to our baby, but only if Jamie’s going to be around to keep you under control.

Jamie’s still around and Jack is sixteen years old today. He’s an absolutely great kid young man. Brilliant. Personable. Funny. Empathetic. Good-looking. Loves the TV show “Cops” just like his godfather. And even though he and his sister Stella bicker like all siblings do, I’ve never seen a big brother who loves his little sister more than he does. We could go on and on with honest compliments, but we don’t want his head to get too big.

We love you, Jackie G. Happy birthday.

NOTE: I’m posting this on November 26 in Australia, which is only the 25th in California. Celebrate for two days, Jack.

ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, broadcasts three live NFL games each week. When I say “Monday Morning Football”, I’m not exaggerating because the first kick-off is at 3:30 a.m. It would have to be a damn good game to get us up that early, and so far we haven’t been tempted.

The third game of the day, America’s Sunday Night Football, starts at a much more reasonable 11:50 a.m. Today’s game is the much anticipated Denver Bronco-New England Patriot game. Can’t wait.

UPDATE: We got up in time to see the fourth quarter of the day’s early game. Barkevious Mingo is playing for the Cleveland Browns. That’s one of my all-time favorite names.

How I got Jamie to pose in front of a sign that said, “Massive rump” is a mystery to me. If this is the last item I ever post, please let the police know that she’s probably a suspect in my death.

We have a regularly scheduled engagement bright and early every Saturday morning. We show up at the Barossa Farmers Market when the doors open at 7:30 a.m.

It’s held in and around a huge tin barn in the middle of the vineyards about a mile down the main road from our cottage. It seems like everyone in the Barossa shows up, including all the local restauranteurs who come to buy fresh produce.

Jamie loves to roam the aisles buying fresh milk with a thick layer of cream on top (takes me back to my days on the dairy), fruits, vegetables, and hummus (she’s on her own with that one). While she roams the various stalls sweet-talking all the vendors, I sit on a bench eating fresh cinnamon rolls and people watching.

We each have our role in life and I understand mine.

Cricket is a leisurely sport. Yes, I think leisurely is the perfect word to describe it.

A single game can stretch on for five days and there may be no winner when it’s all over. They play a two-hour morning session, break for a forty minute lunch, play another two-hour mid-day session, break for a leisurely twenty minute tea, and then play another two hour afternoon session.

The players all wear white uniforms but never seem to exert themselves enough to get those uniforms dirty. Rare moments of excitement are sometimes separated by hours of relative inaction.

Here’s how Wikipedia attempts to explain cricket: “Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on a field at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. Each team takes it in turn to bat, attempting to score runs, while the other team fields. Each turn is known as an innings. The bowler delivers the ball to the batsman who attempts to hit the ball with his bat far enough for him to run to the other end of the pitch and score a run. Each batsman continues batting until he is out. The batting team continues batting until ten batsmen are out, at which point the teams switch roles and the fielding team comes in to bat. In professional cricket the length of a game ranges from 20 overs of six bowling deliveries per side to Test cricket played over five days.”

Simple, huh?

In baseball, one pitcher stays in the whole game and pitches to one batter after another. In cricket, one batsman can stay at bat for hour after hour, but the bowlers (pitchers) are switched after every six deliveries.

It’s played on what’s called an oval because, as you might have guessed, the playing field is oval-shaped. Unlike baseball, where most of the action takes place in one corner of a diamond-shaped field, all the action in cricket takes place in the middle of the oval and the batsman can hit the ball in any direction — forward, to the sides, even backwards. Because all the action takes place in the middle of this huge oval, every seat in a cricket stadium is so far from that action that they would all qualify as the cheap seats in an American stadium.

This is a very exciting time in the Australian sports world because Australia and England are playing a five game series for a trophy called The Ashes. These two old rivals play for The Ashes every other year and alternate the country in which they play. Coincidentally, they were also playing The Ashes series the last time we were here. The difference is that Australia had the best team in the history of the sport back then, but the English have been kicking their butts around the oval for the last few years.

Confusing as the game is, it’s also oddly fascinating, which explains why I’ll be sitting in front of the television — along with everyone else in the country — watching The Ashes for hour after hour for the next month.

Our friend Hamish comes from this area of Australia. He would disagree with that and tell you that he comes from Stirling, South Australia, not the Barossa Valley. But the two towns are only about 40 miles apart and in a country this large, I think that should qualify as “this area of Australia”.

Hamish is visiting his family, so we drove down to have dinner with all of them a couple nights ago. Whenever we tell anyone here in the Barossa that we visited Stirling, they kind of glaze over and say, “Oooh, that’s the Beverly Hills of South Australia.”

No doubt about it, Stirling is a gorgeous little town. Well, maybe it’s not large enough to properly be called a town. I guess if I call Angaston a village because it has only 1900 residents, Stirling must also be a village because it has only 2500 residents.

It’s in the Adelaide Hills about 15 miles southeast of Adelaide. It’s filled with lovely shops and restaurants and huge old houses built on twisting country roads amid the local forests.

It may be the Beverly Hills of South Australia, but we think it’s much nicer than its California namesake.

We decided to take a drive to the Clare Valley the other day. The Clare Valley is to the Barossa as Sonoma is to Napa. It’s the other wine district about an hour’s drive north of Angaston.

The drive took us along narrow country roads through miles of Barossa Vineyards, then through miles of wheat fields, and then through miles of Clare Vineyards. It was like a trip through time from today’s Australia to the Australia of the past and then back to today.

While we were there, we stopped at this gorgeous, well-known little winery called Skillogalee and had a cup of coffee in the garden outside it’s restaurant. Yes, that’s what I said. We visited a wonderful little winery and had coffee.

We’re odd that way.

We haven’t posted anything for a week or so and we’ve started to get emails asking, “Are you guys ok?” and “Are you sick again?”

Fear not. We’re both fine. In fact, we’re better thane fine. We’ve joined a gym and we’re working out every morning. We’ve just been very busy taking day trips around South Australia and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with the blog without internet in our cottage. But speaking of our health, here’s an update:

Much to our surprise, Jamie’s been sick far more than I have on this trip. Nothing major, just an occasional flare up of her arthritis. If she takes her meds and gets enough sleep, she’s usually good to go.

The big surprise is that I haven’t had a single sick day on this trip. Not one. I’ve been eating and drinking everything I’m not supposed to eat nor drink and it hasn’t impacted me at all. In fact, I’ve felt so fantastic that we’re beginning to wonder if all my prior ailments were brought on by something environmental in San Luis Obispo? Allergies? Mold from the oak trees? Chemicals from the vineyards? Something else? I guess we’ll find out when we get back to SLO in February.

And we promise to post more often.

This is, we think, our third or fourth trip to the Barossa Valley, but it must be our first time here in Spring because we had no idea we’d see so many roses. They’re everywhere. And they’re the biggest, most colorful roses we’ve ever seen.

Every yard is filled with roses. Every public space is filled with roses. Every vineyard has roses at the end of each row of vines. And one vineyard has four kilometers of red roses planted alongside the main highway between Tanunda and Angaston.

We met a little old lady at the grocery store who told us that she belongs to a group of local residents who volunteer to take care of all the public flower beds. She invited Jamie to join them, obviously unaware of her unique ability to kill even the hardiest of plants.

The photo above was taken on Murray Street, Angaston’s main thoroughfare. If you look closely in the background you’ll see Jamie.