Gamble Gardens

Gamble Garden Gazebo

     From time to time I get the hankering to set foot in new places. While browsing joblists I learned about Elizabeth Gamble's historic home and garden in Palo Alto. Ostensibly, I set out to inquire about a job in the gardens; however, soon enough my outing morphed into a field trip / opportunity to shoot some late summer outdoor scenes. After, consulting Google Maps, Gamble Garden's homepage, and VTA's route planner, I took Caltrain from Diridon Station in downtown San Jose to California Avenue in Palo Alto. After deboarding the train, I strolled past restaurants and cafes on California Avenue until I reached El Camino Real. At the intersection of California and El Camino Real about ten minutes later, I glanced at my phone to determine on which side of the street I should await the #22 Palo Alto bus northbound. Soon the #22 arrived and I kept my eyes peeled for Churchill. The bus driver stopped somewhere near Palo Alto High and I backtracked to Churchill having rung the bell too late for my intended stop. I walked down El Camino in the direction I had just come from past Palo Alto High and Stanford's playing fields and turned left at Churchill. I followed Churchill's shady lanes and handsome homes and gardens to Waverly. A small and modest sign announced Elizabeth Gamble Garden, though from the sign it is not readily apparent that the public is welcome into the house and on the grounds. I stared at the rather camouflaged sign and checked the house number, 1431 Waverly, then went up the front walk deliberating whether to climb the porch stairs but my feet took me left of the house through a shady glen into the gardens.

     There were some picnic tables and a bench tucked into a piney shade. An elderly man in light colored clothing rested in the redwood shade on a carved bench facing a frog fountain. In the noonday sun, the man shown brightly in his white shirt and his white hair stood out in the shadows. He sat still like a garden cat, but I felt he watched as I browsed the rows of tomatoes, kitchen herbs, regional collections and flowerbeds.

During my strolls up and down the planted rows a few joggers and a couple of dogwalkers made their jaunty way past me. I was soon drawn toward a sunny and colorful corner of dahlias and zinnias. These dahlias were showstoppers on this Labor Day weekend. They stood high in the northwest corner of the garden like petalled firecrackers. They were fat with many pointed tips in yellows, pinks, oranges, and reds- singing as though through their colors about the loving hands of volunteers ; these dahlias clearly

possess devotees of their own. Many hands evidently pitch in to prune, tend, and water these grounds. The caged tomatoes, pumpkins, dahlias, cosmos and anenomes all bespeak ongoing careful attention. When I looked back toward the benches they were suddenly empty. I soon spotted the man in white stooping over the dahlias, pruning them unhurriedly. He chucked the less than perfect specimens into a pot. These cast offs were worthy of a dining room table spread but they cluttered the more robust dahlias, and into the heap they went. I would have liked to have gathered up their softness in my arms. The man brought out the showiest individuals by clipping off the heads of their slightly bedraggled companions.

          Soon there was an orange flurry in the air. I watched a Monarch butterfly settle on a Japanese anemone.

I followed after the monarch trying to time my shutter clicks with the spread of her wings. The monarch rested in a sprawling clump of dill after dropping in on a frilly red zinnia.

After some trotting after the butterfly, I sat in the elderly gardener's bench and took in the gardens as a whole before leaving for the day. My butterfly was probably on the way to Santa Cruz or Pacific Grovel to hang with her kind for the winter sleep.

Emma Prusch Farm Park

Lady and Gent

   How to begin after going dark since the end of April here at Insight Walks? I might begin at the beginning with chickens, or would that be eggs? This handsome hen and rooster pair are a good entryway. I found them scratching for insects in the moist, deep mulch nourishing Emma's plum and apple trees. The hen flung wood chips into her escort's wattles as she dug herself a cool little bowl in the earth. For his part, he stepped lightly around a tree trunk hanging close to her side.

   Chickens as well as ducks roam the park fields and field edges freely; they sometimes wander out of the park's fences into adjoining environs such as the Shell car wash at the intersection of King and Story Roads or the #22 Eastridge Bus Stop on King near the park's entrance gates. Everything outside this historical park is rush and bustle. Had Emma Prusch never donated her farm in the 60s to San Joseans to sustain and commemorate a rural county farm atmosphere, there would be another fast food franchise or shopping plaza plopped over these orchard and garden acres without a thought of trees or pollinator gardens or a green place to lie down on a blanket.

Art and Life on the Outside Wall of Veggielution Kitchen

  If you walk to the back of the farm out past the Prusch family home and Veggielution's eight or so acres of gardens, farm stand, and community work and learning spaces then look up, you realize you are hanging out with families of peacocks and picnickers right under the junction of I-680 and Freeway 101. I could hear the whoosh of traffic as I took a little shade rest in the Youth Garden's "Grape Tepee." At the foot of the living tepee, farm labor organizer César Chávez's words live on in dappled shade and sun on a little handmade sign . . .

   Emma Prusch Farm Park is a palpable leap back into San Jose's agricultural history. We were not always this Place of Vast Parking Lots: This was the Valley of Heart's Delight where there were miles of orchards and anything grew. This place in East San Jose is a little window into times past, but it's not just for looking through. Emma Prusch is a fully participatory heritage farm, and it is up to us how and where to link hands with our community. There is a spot for you and for me, for the young and the old. There is a working barn for beef cattle, sheep and swine, and it is one of the largest free standing wooden barns in our state (www.pruschfarmpark.org/about-us.html). 

   I watched a pot-bellied pig take a nap beside the original farm home. In a nexus of three major shopping centers including Plaza de Sán José and Placita Tropicana as well as the one housing the first Mi Pueblo Food Center, it is fascinating to just unhitch from the clock, forget about your grocery list (never-ending) and gaze at a pig taking a long grinning yawn in the midst of his Sunday snooze. Tire of swine swoons and you may wander on to pat a goat's bony forehead and look into their startlingly strange irises. Maybe this is the only place some of the children visiting today ever see a rabbit or sheep. A windmill waterwell named Bella. Sturdy corn stalks and drowsy headed sunflowers.
   One goat was pregnant and walked around like she had just swallowed down an easy chair. A woman holding her toddler up over the top planks of the animal fences exclaimed in an Asian language (I am not sure which one) with intermittent "Bay-bee!" "Baybee!!" thrown in. We all watched the soon-to-be mother together while a little girl turned furrowing her brow and peering around and between the goats looking for the 'Bay-bee. A lot goes on here, especially in summertime; Browse the Emma Prusch Farm Park Foundation's site for its historical overview and further information on events, programs, and classes.
   I listened to a birthday crowd smashing a piñata as I lay on the grass, then walked across the lawns to peer in at all the bounty of the plots in Cornucopia Community Garden: Fat tomatoes, springy basil and glistening tufts of corn silk on ripening ears of corn. I lifted the gate anchor, slipped inside and after taking some camera shots of the burgeoning harvest found myself locked inside the horn of plenty. My mouth watered in front of a tub of crowded basil--

I approached a Mexican family busy harvesting ears of corn and asked if they might let me out. The young man in white sneakers told me the gardens are private and after an uncomfortable silence his father walked me to the gate and spun the combo to let me out. He asked me about my pictures and I complimented him on the garden's health.
   We began our walk ushered in by chickens and we shall part ways with a glimpse at the elegant simplicity of corn silk mingled in sunlight--

Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve

Purple Owl's Clover with Goldfields

   Liam O'Brien, Lepidopterist, visited us at Coyote Ridge from San Francisco to lead a group of approximately forty hikers to roam the old mine roads for sightings of the rare and threatened Bay Checkerspot butterfly (and assorted others). We spotted the Boisduval's blue on some Lupine ovipositing her eggs. On this tour we also stopped in our tracks to watch a California ringlet. We spotted one Bay Checkerspot on some tidy tip blossoms. Liam described him as at the end of his brief imago days or "greased out."
   The day was breezy and sunny. Grasses bent in snakelike paths up the hillsides in the wind. A woman walking beside me called these wind-stroked undulations 'wolf whorls.' I have pondered this phenomenon in these foothills for many springs. It is like invisible snakes or great fingers stroking the earth's hair. The sight is both calming and restless: it gives body to the wind. At times we focused in on the face of one creamcup, blue-eyed grass blossom or a mixture of poppies and purple owl's clover in a small area. Other times we paused to take in whole hillsides watching the utterings of the wind.
   Purple needlegrass nodded and shone in the sunlight and breezes. These native bunch grasses have reddish purple lining their silky-looking narrow seedheads in the spring. There are all different grasses, and to learn to see between them is to learn our own history in this place. The splashy dizzying show of bright wildflowers teases us away from the soft stories whispering in grasses. Who will be the leader of the Grasses Walk? What is the professional title of a grass expert? I wonder if one will stand up and host a grass meander to teach us how the grasses here supported the humans, what lives in there and eats of it and more mysteries about the varied lives of grasses . . .

Purple needlegrasses dangled over wildflowers gently pointing our attention to poppies, goldfields, lupine, tidy tips, purple owls' clover and other flowers growing in their midst.
   White-tailed kites and kestrels hunted the gentle open grasslands. Meadowlarks hidden in tall grasses and among rocks made themselves known to one another in flutelike drifts of song. We were assorted friendly strangers sharing a leisurely walk hosted and organized by Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. We peered into the lives of butterflies learning from one of their champions, Liam O'Brien, who spends his days chasing them, studying them, painting them, saving them, and sharing his enthusiasm with the public in his loose, straightforward, humorous manner. Refer to his self-illustrated guidebook, "Butterflies of the Presidio." Or walk with him on one of his scheduled walks. There is nothing like being there, our feet in flowers and our eyes on butterflies. The story of the Bay Checkerspot, Euphydryas editha bayensis, is a window into wildlife conservation where we live. This subspecies of Euphydryas editha at present only survives in Santa Clara County foothills and Coyote Ridge is a core habitat area supporting its host plant, dwarf plantain, and thereby providing a foothold against its extinction. It's bad when the butterflies go away.
   It is April and even the cows are luminous and framed in flowers all around--black cows and calves strolling through goldfields. I stand staring at a cow and her calf all framed in bright gold, their coats like wet daubs of black paint in the sun.

Walk in Beauty

    Thick stands of Purple Owl's Clover below serpentine outcrops brings photographers to our knees; we zero in on their blushy numbers attempting over and over to catch their floral spirits with a click. Hundreds of little white eyes of the flower tucked in the plant's purple feathery bracts gaze back at us. After we go out the gate and back to our cars and descend into the city, the flowers still waver up there on Coyote Ridge. The California poppies shout. The little owl eyes in the Purple Owl's Clover look out. Needlegrasses nod. Meadowlarks sing the songs that if the blue sky could talk, would probably sound of meadowlark.

Wildflowers: You Have to Be There

The Slog (Flood February 2017)

 

Brookwood Terrace

   In a state of numb fascination I wandered around Brookwood Terrace neighborhood after the evacuation. For any residents remaining after the evacuation, the flood of the prior night posed the sole topic of conversation on the sidewalk. You still could not see the sidewalk but some neighbors in rubber boots were visiting, comparing notes and stories, and lending advice and tools. It honestly did feel a little intrusive to me to be carrying a camera and shooting photos, but this has never happened here in my close to half-century of existence. Later, shots of the flood on social media helped people in far reaches of California and elsewhere stay in touch with friends who still live in their old neighborhoods: It also gave them a grasp of the level and the impact of this flood when news coverage with its hyperbole and repetition made the country think that maybe all of San Jose was underwater. In conscribed zones of the city on the Coyote Creek, we were in a state of emergency and distress but even some other citizens of our city remained unaware that our neighborhoods had flooded and required (and still require) relief and services. Following is a collection of images of Brookwood Terrace on the day after this historic event for our community.

South 19th Day After

South 19th Sidewalk

 Everything was boggy and afloat. A resident tried to prevent his pick-up from sinking further below his front yard:

Most likely, at some point in the advancing waters, he determined his yard as high ground. Not high enough as you can see the waterline is at his front stoop.

Drought Resistant Landscaping

In the last several years of drought, many people have switched their front grass for drought resistant plants or fully California native gardens.

  We have been on water restrictions for a few summers. This family's yard will be lucky if it recovers from complete submergence under the escaped waters of the Coyote Creek. Coyote Creek became overwhelmed by the overfull Anderson Reservoir pouring into its channels. There is a town meeting at City Hall this week on March 9th; There are many people who have questions and concerns, to say the least. I am sure some are still overwhelmed and also incensed at the disruption and expense this flood has caused in their lives. I will learn what I can and take the temperature of the neighborhood at the planned forum. Two emergent lessons have been cooperation and civic responsibility (between neighbors foremost and also between communities and helping agencies) and also holding our public officials accountable and making sure they see us through in a crisis.

The Flood of February 2017 William Street Park

Soccer Field Turns into Lake in a Night and a Day

Only the Ducks Seemed Pleased

My Path Through Coyote Creek's 100 Year Flood

   February 22nd 2017 is the day I learned that gophers and moles will swim when their lives depend upon it. I walked down the street with family friends and neighbors to find the scrambled chaos of a flood crisis at the William Street Bridge on Wednesday morning. Our walk happened before, but only hours before, the entire neighborhood flooded and people had to drive through streets that were sudden temporary creeks, take household tools like push brooms and shovels to unclog storm drains in an attempt to save their houses and yards, push cars to higher ground. Some people were barefoot and others shouted out of SUVs for their loved ones to get in the ^#!~* car already--"we're outta here!" It was a scene of panic and confusion. Some of us just stood there staring at the swirling water on 21st street at the corner store. We all had this numb or aghast expression on our faces even the German shepherd standing against a garage on San Antonio and South 22nd street. We used to call it "Goldstone's" and then "Guru's" but it has since changed hands a few times. It's now called 'San Antonio Market.' A man was locking up the door in the small lift (like a heel) between the store entrance and the sidewalk. The sidewalk was all moving water. I saw a woman plunge with a yelp thigh deep into a storm drain as she attempted to cross San Antonio Street. Photos following this blogpost I took on Thursday morning, post flood, wearing rubber boots and plastic pants. I had to walk up the middle double stripe of San Antonio several blocks to avoid the murky and swirling flowing sidewalks and streets on Wednesday night. I was wearing a black skirt and black shoes (since thrown away) and was worried about all the distracted drivers whose wheels were sending up brown waves of water hitting me or just sliding over since I had heard cars are able to float in 6" of water. I needed to get home and see our street and house. I called my dad and urged him to take a look outside because I was fording a stream to come home and wet to somewhere above my ankles from steering to the shallower areas. "Check it out!" I only remember keeping my goal in mind (getting home) and stopping to thank my Mexican neighbors actively battling the rising waters. Evidently, they were the ones losing ground and the creek meandered into their backyards and submerged the cars on the street. We were being swallowed and watching it happen. I sat with my parents and watched it all over again several times on the news. It was late on Wednesday on the 10:00 p.m. news before we were seeing media images and receiving assurances that the floodwaters had peaked and were receding. Many of us had been watching trees and other landmarks such as notches on the bridges to guess at the water level and the "creep." I've decided to do the shots on their own and the narrative on its own.

Guadalupe River Trail - River Oaks Footbridge to Ulistac Natural Area Ramp

Blue-blossom ceanothus

     When February revisits the Santa Clara Valley my fingers begin to tingle and the only relief turns out to be hours of vigorous weeding. Okay-granted. I do relieve all that vigorous weeding with bouts of dreamy weeding as the Red-tailed hawk slowly circles the sky. She puts everyone in her domain on alert with her air tearing cries. The earth is soft and yielding after being pounded and kneaded by series of heavy rains; Invasive annual grasses surrender the soil much more easily than they are wont to at drier times. The grasses are soft in my hands, and as I pull them out and pile them in stringy heaps I am soon rewarded with bundles of ceanothus blossoms bursting forth and all the bees drawn hither who lend me their subtle, warm companionship as they tumble the flowers. Nearby animals do not hesitate to maximize on unearthed insects, freed up flowers and sleepy seeds my hands and thrashing form shake down from their withered chambers. About an hour into my work, I am no longer separate from all this nonstop interaction and mutualism. No longer foreign to the busy oneness enveloping me.

I got off light-rail at River Oaks Station and crossed the bridge over the Guadalupe which is out past Valley Transportation Authority offices and new playground built for the apartments adjacent to the the river trail. People of all ages and dogs of every size were out enjoying their strolls, jogs, and bike rides. Here's a view of the trail after I have crossed over into Santa Clara but before I have reached the down ramp into Ulistac.

Santa Clara apartments and Guadalupe RT Levee

The GRT parallels apartment complexes so that it takes you past people's kitchens and bedrooms. I gaze at balcony decorations and container gardens on my way by. The trail is heavily used by office workers and other residents. Thamien Park and Rivermark are very close. People commute over the bridge to go to Safeway or else wander over to Peet's and other amenities over in Rivermark (Stone Cold Creamery, Smash Burger, Posh Bagel, the Prolific Oven among others).

    Don Callejon students play on the Thamien Park field and the young children enjoy the sand and playground at Thamien Park while families, often mothers with young children, visit. Older folks take advantage of shaded benches near the tennis courts and behold the pageantry. There is also a well-tended basketball court where quick games are often in progress or children zip around on small bicycles. If you walk up the switchback ramp from the Thamien tennis and basketball courts you come upon a bench and overlook with a rail, but what you gaze upon is a litter and rubber ball graveyard.

Trash Clog

Heading north on the trail, in several minutes I come to the Hetch Hetchy change over station and the footramp down to UNAREP's work shed at Ulistac.
    There is a charcoal black fence lizard sunning on the lower boards. He welcomes me into Ulistac Natural Area with curious upward tilts of his perfect little head. I get his picture before he slides out of sight only coming right back to watch me from the T of the boards. His eyes look deep dark and intelligent to me.
I get a sunny feeling all over me from my brief flirtation with Lizard. This special place is full of welcome.

Greeter