Published August 25, 2005

Anyone who has traveled by Sonoma's intersection of Fifth Street West and West MacArthur has to wonder what is going on at the southeast corner of the intersection. A visit to this corner of the world is an experience and a half.

For three years tall stalks of corn, glorious sunflowers, roses, paintings, and scarecrows have all been appearing and growing, seemingly without effort. But sometimes a passersby will see a tanned, dark-haired woman wearing a white cowboy hat and men's shirts she feminizes by cutting fringe strips around the bottom watering, hoeing, re-arranging the paintings, and simply tending her garden where all sorts of living things grow.

Irene Cunha Morgan is a local character who has lived in the Sonoma area all her life, and is third generation Sonoma County. Her mother's family was Italian Swiss, and her father's family was from St. George in Portugal's Azores. While her mother, Irene Bassi, was born on Spain Street and once served as “Queen of Milking” at the Sonoma County Fair in the 1930s, her father, John Cunha, had a dairy near Sebastopol.
Irene had eyed this special corner for years, imagining all she could do with the land,. The Land belongs to Elizabeth Woodyard, whose family once had a five thousand acre chicken ranch with drive-thru sales of eggs in what many have imagined was a drive-in selling hamburgers. The two-story house is all redwood, except for Irene's personal art gallery facing Fifth Street West. In case you don't recognize her name, she actually signs her paintings “Cunha.”

In the art studio at the back of the house Irene works in the midst of an eclectic collection of old photos that reflect both family and Sonoma history, an abundance of craft supplies that include re-use of natural sticks, reeds, stems, flowers, and other earthy goodies, old pots and pans, and all the tools she and her children's art camp learners could possibly desire.

Sonoma Friday Farmers' Market customers who chat with Irene at her booth or casual observers of her “art farm” may think she is actually Native American, which she is not, technically.

Irene says she is a “metaphysical Catholic,” who believes in a “collective memory,” and of course there is a connection to the Indian appearances, penchants, and tendencies. Her mother's godfather married a Pomo, and as she looked more and more into the traditions and relationships, she could identify more closely with that family connection.

As early as high school Irene began to paint abstracts and eventually told a boyfriend that she was going to paint a portrait of Elvis Presley. He said she could never do it, and, in a way, he was right. The painting evolved into a painting of an Indian.
Fast forwarding to adulthood, Irene became a licensed card dealer and worked at the longtime Sonoma card room institution then known as Pasali's, once located where the Blue Moon Saloon is now at West Spain Street and Highway 12. While doing what “good Catholic girls didn't do” as a card dealer, Irene began to hang her paintings around the card room. In those days the card room's customers were “farmers and doctors” and they kept buying her Indian paintings off the walls.

Once Irene's children were grown up and on their own, Irene felt free to develop herself. Renting this corner has truly been an enormous turning point in her colorful life. She says, “I never had the guts to be myself, and working out here I can now.”
Originally Irene thought she would raise tomatoes and green beans for sale, without realizing that most Sonomans, even in the mobile home park across Fifth Street, have at least one tomato plant, and don't need a whole lot of tomatoes.

One day her friend Jose gave her a truly organic ear of red corn. She planted the corn, it grew, and the innovative artist expressed herself. She sold the edible corn, made corn dolls, corn angels, and even gathered the silken hair of the husks. Now she grows sweet candy corn and the red corn that all derives from that one ear Jose gave her, and hopes to grow more organic corn in the undeveloped area south of her house. She definitely has a growing advantage with the rich soil resulting from decades of chickens pooping on the property.

A resourceful person, Irene has saved the stalks, which she says are as strong as wood. With their children have constructed the growing teepee in the midst of her art farm, bracing the stalks with recycled sycamore.

When we arrived for lunch last week, Irene beckoned me to the back of the house where she was barbecuing chicken legs and beans, and boiling corn from the garden on the grill. The grill sat on top of a dampened bed of straw, with red sheets and other colorful laundry hanging from a clothesline stretched between two productive walnut trees. In the background is her “plunge pool,” a round metal cattle trough on wooden palates with two white plastic chairs sitting in cool water, all covered with a white canopy tent.
Irene quickly whipped up a virgin mojito for me, using crunchy chopped fresh mint, 7-Up and lemonade, all in plastic wine glasses and stirred with the handle of a large spoon. For others she added gin and Bacardi Superior rum.

While Irene's cooking is unconventional and un-gourmet, the end result is delicious. Her beans began with canned pork and beans, to which she added sautéed bacon and onions, a tablespoon of a mixture of yellow and Dijon mustards, a little Grandma's molasses, brown sugar, and ketchup-additive. She believes that one must cook corn within twenty minutes of picking it for the ultimate flavor and benefit.

For the chicken legs, she marinated them over night in a vinaigrette salad dressing “to stop the growth of salmonella,” rinsed them in the morning, and then re-marinated the drumsticks in a mixture of half teriyaki and soy sauces.

When it was all ready we served ourselves and Irene took us to “The Walnut Room,” a cozy, cool arrangement under a large, shady walnut tree, with tablecloths draped over hay bales for our table and comfortable seats in camping chairs. While we set our corn cobs in their special saucers, Irene opened a stick of Clover Stornetta butter with the wrapper serving as its dish and demonstrated how we were to roll our corn directly on the cube to coat it. What a basic treat!

Then came the chocolate cake, for which Irene starts with a packaged cake mix, only puts in one-third of the prescribed water and oil, but adds a cup of mayonnaise, bakes it, lets the cake cool, and then pokes holes and pours a syrupy frosting over it all, with a few sprinkles of powdered sugar. Holy moley, ladies and gentlemen!

From Irene Cunha Morgan, we might all learn lessons in how to use everything nature gives us. Old tree stumps become seats. Old chaise lounges become branch dryers. Old branches become walking sticks.

When asked of her personal goals, she responded: “I have my kids raised and give myself to God. He's shown me he wants me here for now. I don't know what it's going to be next.”

But her best friend, Carla Heine, gave her two guitar lessons, and now Irene is teaching herself to play. Stay tuned.

—Kathleen Hill is co-author of Sonoma Valley-The Secret Wine Country and Napa Valley-Land of Golden Vines. Kathleen and Gerald Hill host two shows at 5 p.m. on KSVY- 91.3 FM Mondays and Thursdays.
hilltopub@aol.com.

—Kathleen Hill is co-author of Sonoma Valley-The Secret Wine Country and Napa Valley-Land of Golden Vines. Kathleen and Gerald Hill host two shows at 5 p.m. on KSVY- 91.3 FM Mondays and Thursdays. hilltopub@aol.com.