Beyond

For twenty-five years I drove every summer up to Seattle for a bicycle vacation. And every year I would pass the road signs to Oregon Gardens. This year I visited them. They are 20 miles off the interstate in the small town of Silverton. You travel on scenic country roads to get there. The Oregon Gardens is similar to Butchart …

Año Nuevo Point was named on January 3, 1603, over 400 years ago, by Father Antonio de la Ascension, chaplain for the Spanish maritime explorer Don Sebastian Vizcaíno. The Quiroste, a group of Ohlone Indians, lived here at least on a seasonal basis in order to hunt, fish, and gather abalone and other shellfish from the sea. The Quiroste were …

The Methuselah Tree. Over the years, I have bicycled and drove on Skyline Blvd a couple hundred times and I never saw this tree that is right off the road. It’s 14 feet in diameter, 44 feet in circumference, and 137 feet tall. It is 1800 years old.

In late spring and early summer, streets are awash with the magnificent purple-blue blooms of jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia). As well as being superb street trees, jacarandas look stunning on their own as a specimen tree in an open lawn, where their fallen flowers form a colorful carpet of blue. My Sunnyvale garden has no room for the jacaranda but beyond …

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Emma Prusch Farm Park is a 43.5 acre (176,000 m²) park in East San Jose, CA. Donated by Emma Prusch to the City of San Jose in 1962 to use to demonstrate the valley’s agricultural past, it includes a 4-H barn (the largest in San Jose), community gardens, a rare-fruit orchard, demonstration gardens, picnic areas, and expanses of lawn. The …