Actually, my father's terraces, and there he is at the upper right, at age 77 still taking care of this whole place. Pretty much everything you see here exclusive of the house is his doing. The basic grading had been done by the time my folks bought the place in 1941, but over the years he put in all the pathways, stairs, trees, bushes and other plantings, here as well as the other half of the property. This just most of the back yard, site of the orchard and vegetable gardens. He's preparing one of the three tiers of the latter for planting. I think those are strawberries already sprouting. Later there'd be beans, corn, tomatoes, zucchini and squash. The fruit trees include apples, peaches, plums, prunes, apricots, figs and cherries. The one in the center casting a shadow on the bank of pink-blossoming oxalis is an avocado that grew for decades before finally producing some finger-sized fruit. A row of blackberries follows the stairway, which is lined by amaryllis. When, at the age of 11, I incorporated the yard as the City of Penton, I named those pathways, left to right: Plum Blvd., Compost Rd. (because the compost heaps used to be there) and Garage Ave. (because that's where the stairs went). The square thing above the avocado tree is the platform of my observatory. This Kodachrome slide was at the end of the roll, hence the phantom image of a batch tag or something at the right edge. View full size.
Actually, my father's terraces, and there he is at the upper right, at age 77 still taking care of this whole place. Pretty much everything you see here exclusive of the house is his doing. The basic grading had been done by the time my folks bought the place in 1941, but over the years he put in all the pathways, stairs, trees, bushes and other plantings, here as well as the other half of the property. This just most of the back yard, site of the orchard and vegetable gardens. He's preparing one of the three tiers of the latter for planting. I think those are strawberries already sprouting. Later there'd be beans, corn, tomatoes, zucchini and squash. The fruit trees include apples, peaches, plums, prunes, apricots, figs and cherries. The one in the center casting a shadow on the bank of pink-blossoming oxalis is an avocado that grew for decades before finally producing some finger-sized fruit. A row of blackberries follows the stairway, which is lined by amaryllis. When, at the age of 11, I incorporated the yard as the City of Penton, I named those pathways, left to right: Plum Blvd., Compost Rd. (because the compost heaps used to be there) and Garage Ave. (because that's where the stairs went). The square thing above the avocado tree is the platform of my observatory. This Kodachrome slide was at the end of the roll, hence the phantom image of a batch tag or something at the right edge. | Click image for Comments. | Home | Browse All Photos