A steward, not an owner
Peter Hahn: Our sequoia is also special to me because we share an origin story - we are both originally American. There were sequoias in Europe until the last ice age, but all Giant Sequoias today are native to North America, more specifically to the Sierra Nevada in California; the first ones planted in Europe were planted in the 1850s. There are times, especially when I’m working in the vines and look up to see the sequoia standing before the east façade of the house, that the tree becomes a portal into the past: I imagine it being planted, and hear the clattering of horse-drawn carriages pulling up in the courtyard below, and the generations of workers and inhabitants strolling by, the builders, farmers, gardeners, growers, winemakers.