#opasgarden

Savoring fall figs from our mission fig tree that survived the fire and watching the new house take shape. 

A midsummer tomato haul from my parents’ garden. 

Opa’s Garden super bloom! Golden poppies (Eschscholtzia californica), the state flower of California, are blooming intensely across the state this spring after all the winter rains we had. Such a beautiful sight to see them take over the space where Opa’s Garden was too! 
For those who are curious, we will not be including the garden as part of our rebuilding yet. Our main focus at this time is to rebuild the house. There are still other obstacles to growing a garden again which we will tackle down the line (i.e. no water lines, garden bed frames need to be rebuilt, and we don’t have fences built so the garden would be very vulnerable to wildlife in the area). 
In the meantime, we are enjoying the volunteer plants and flowers that are bringing beauty to this space again.

On April 9th, exactly 1.5 years after the fires, we broke ground on the property. 

A late photo update of the property taken in March. 

This is what resiliency looks like and what hope feels like. Head up, heart strong. 

Such a gift to be able to harvest tomatoes and pick sunflowers from our property still this summer. 

So happy to see these sunflowers. 

A ripening pumpkin from another volunteer plant. 

Volunteer sunflowers that are twice as tall as I am in Opa’s garden beds.

Wild turkeys making themselves at home. 

A pumpkin plant on the property that already has vines several feet long and a pretty good sized pumpkin growing on it. (It amazes me that these are all growing without any water, other than what they are getting naturally through the ground or dew in the mornings.) 

We found a little frog while working! 

One of the many tomato plants that’s popped up around the property on its own that even has tomatoes growing on it! 

Watching the garden lead a life of its own. (Some of the sunflowers are already 6 feet tall.)

Head up, heart strong. All is not lost. 

Resilient little pansy flowers. 

A pumpkin plant and tomato seedling coming up where there used to be a bedroom. 

We won’t be growing our regular summer garden at the property this year since we don’t have running water or fences to protect from wildlife. The garden will have a life of it’s own this year, as many volunteer plants have sprouted on their own in the beds and randomly throughout the property - lots of tomato seedlings, sunflowers, and wild California poppies. 

January in the garden. Not sure what’s next yet, but doing our best to stay hopeful.

Found one last four leaf clover in a patch of unburned grass in the backyard where we always used to find them. In the midst of a lot of shit, there is still some good. Keep looking for the good. 

Hi everyone,

I would like to provide you with some updates about Opa’s Garden.

On Monday, October 9th, my Oma and Opa’s house was one of the thousands of homes destroyed in the wildfires and firestorm in Santa Rosa, California. The most important thing is that all of my family members were evacuated safely and everyone is ok.  

That said, the home that we all loved is merely a heap of debris now - ashes, roof tiles, warped metal, almost unrecognizable appliances and cars, and fragments of the beautiful life my grandparents built together.

The garden near the back of the property was mostly untouched somehow. Just a few of the vegetable bed frames burned. A few of the fruit trees even made it. But, as we figure out how the property will be cleared, we aren’t sure yet if it will make sense to keep what is left or if it makes more sense to clear everything to give us a clean slate for rebuilding.

Here’s the crazy cool thing about gardens though - plants have this incredible habit of growing in the most unlikely of places. They have a natural resiliency that is hard to explain. So I know that when the time is right, someday there will be another garden to carry Opa’s memory through.  

Thanks for all of your support the last couple of years. It was wonderful to share the garden with all of you each summer.

With love and gratitude,
Stephanie

Summer subtly turning toward fall these days. (Only two pumpkins survived the crazy heatwave we had at the beginning of September. The second round of figs are happening. And the Juliet tomato is still out of control - all of the tomatoes in that top right box are from a single plant!) 

Mid-September in the garden. 

Still going. 

Tomato season is always the best season. So much color and so much flavor gives me so much happiness! 

Rainbow tomatoes. 

Taken from under our towering sunflowers while picking tomatoes. 

Making a big batch of roasted tomato sauce with our tomatoes. 

Sharing tomatoes with our friends at Goguette Bread, an amazing bakery in Santa Rosa. And they shared a delicious olive bread (pain aux olives!) with us in return! 

Bright sunflower babe. 

Late August in the garden.