When I was little Easter holidays were spent at my Grandmother and my Great Aunt Gerda's house in the San Joaquin Valley. My great grandparents settled there in the mid-19th century. My great grandmother unreservedly loved for her sweet temperament & 'Old Dad'... well, I never heard a nice thing said about him. My Aunt Gerda was one of three girls in a family of nine. She never married, but stayed with her parents to care for them as they aged and with her brother Peter built a florists shop on the north- east corner of the property that the old farm house was built on (now part of the county hospital parking lot). When my grandfather died, my grandmother came back to live with her sister and keep house for her.The house and garden were magical. The front of the house almost completely hidden from the street by vines and hedges, also had a proper rose garden. There were violets & tulips in the spring, not quite secret garden rooms, a loquot tree and a seemingly huge back yard full of fascinating little sleeping houses and temporarily unused props of the florist trade. Strangely the scent of (now illegal in California), Malathion is strongly reminiscent of that lovely place.
The house was almost equally enchanting to children. It had been built bit by bit and there were strange rooms and unused porches. I adored that ivy had poked its way through the lathe and plaster and wallpaper and was creeping along the kitchen walls. The sunlight that made it's way through the vines & sheer drapes carried a softness and grace that existed only inside that house.
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| Aunt Gerda & my mother in Porterville |
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| Easter - you can tell by the eggs on top of the television. Uncle David looks like he might be auditioning for Marley's ghost in 'The Christmas Carol. |
