This is Lucia around thirty years ago — she was about 66 — doing what she loved most: working in her garden. You can see her quasi-anarchistic approach to cultivation. No need to go overboard with neat little rows or store-bought fertilizer. Lucia used what she had on hand and only occasionally made a trip to Navlet’s for a tomato cage or a new sprinkler. For fertilizer, she preferred her own open-air compost heap, where egg shells and coffee grounds mingled freely with cantaloupe rinds, half-eaten tuna sandwiches and that last little bit of oatmeal you never quite scrape off the bottom of your bowl.
She pulled weeds when she could get around to it, spent most evenings watering, and turned every seed or sprout she ever touched into a lush, flowering, fruitful plant. Her yard and garden had a completely organic feel, as though it had designed itself and begged her to come along for the ride.
At one point, Lucia’s backyard at 145 Via del Sol was home to a veritable orchard: There was a fig tree, orange tree, lemon tree, grapefruit tree, cherry tree, peach tree, plum tree, apricot tree, loquat tree, and walnut tree — all of which bore fruit so bountifully she had to stake up the branches to hold the weight of the harvest. That was in addition to the vegetable garden, her many flower beds, and a lawn big enough to host a croquet tournament (which it did).
We had many a high school slumber party in that back yard, and later used it as a stage for casting spells to bring back wayward boyfriends and husbands. Every few years Lucia would come into the house with some buried treasure she’d just dug up — an old T-shirt, a string of pop-beads, a bottle of 1967 vintage Pagan Pink Ripple — and have fun trying to figure out who put it there.
The house is now home to a new set of people who are making their own memories there, but those 47 years of history will live in that back yard for years to come.
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