The botanical name, above, refers to the so-called leaf mustard, which may or may not be the variety that grows in the Heritage Orchard. Botany is near the top of a long list of subjects about which I know next to nothing. Also, there is a question that I got hung up on in a column a couple of years ago: are we talking about oxalis, or sour grass, when we refer to the yellow mustard flowers? Frankly, I couldn't care less. It's the event that's important, and we could call the vegetation anything short of poison oak.

To me, the importance of this occasion lies in getting people out to the orchard itself, so they can appreciate one of the main reasons we have a city of Saratoga today. No doubt ultimately there would have been a settlement here as people poured into the San Francisco Bay Area, but this became an agricultural center. It was a place where ranchers and other residents could get their groceries, have their cars fixed or their horses shod, see a doctor (doctors also used to make house calls), get a haircut, mail a package or buy a meal. The orchards extended almost into the middle of town.

Orchards weren't what really got the town started, though. To celebrate that in a realistic sense, we'd have to do something involving a symbolic redwood or fir tree, since logging back in the mountains was really the first commercial enterprise in the area that led to the settlement of what we know as the Village.

I'm all for commemorating those activities and events going back to the beginnings of, in this case, a community. However, there is a facet of Saratoga's beginnings that just as well needn't be celebrated. I'm referring to the era when the town was where the loggers came for R-and-R and there were numerous saloons here to accommodate them. As a newspaper of the 1880s noted, "To be a drunk from Saratoga is the last word in drunkenness." This is the kind of commemoration that could be left to individual households.

But, back to the Mustard Walk. Orchards, of course, meant work. Hard work. From pruning of trees to picking and processing of fruit, the end result required intensified labor. There were, to be sure, lighter moments, such as the task of cutting apricots into halves and removing the pits before putting them out in trays to dry. It was a chore that could be performed by children, and I remember the summers as a young teenager when I cut 'cots at the Walter Worden ranch on Herriman Avenue, where Saratoga High School is today. One could do the cutting while carrying on a conversation, and socialization was an aspect of this task.

The Mustard Walk activities go beyond this kind of orchard-related activity. There will be docent-led tours of the orchard—hence the "walk." There will be artists painting pictures and exhibiting their work at the Warner Hutton House gardens. The gardens also will be a venue for musicians, vocal groups and dance troupes. In the kitchen at the house, there will be a cooking demonstration using mustard recipes, courtesy of the Butter Paddle. Out in the patio there will be free wine-tasting, thanks to Santa Cruz Mountains Home Winemakers.

In the orchard itself, there will be donkey-cart rides and face-painting for children. Out in the parking lot, there will be a display of antique cars, arranged by Bob Semichy. All in all, it promises to be a gala event, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl, Super Orchard—somehow they seem related.

As I never tire of mentioning, I spend a good part of my time in the past, with the accouterments thereof. That's why the recent membership meeting of the Historical Foundation, with a program theme of "Collecting Saratoga," was right up my alley. People came up with a good supply of relics, and I found it reassuring to see that I'm not alone in my passion.