Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Blog Post #56
By Tonya Graham McQuade
Working on the front yard landscaping on Minta Lane
(apparently my dad and I were acting as supervisors)
In my last two posts (Part I and Part II), I have written about my family building our house together from 1979-1981. In March of 1981, we finally demolished the old house that was at the front of the property, which meant there was a lot of landscaping to do both in front and back of the new house. One of the first projects was putting in a new driveway, which you can see in the photo above.
I remember at one point my dad called the driveway “Myrtle Drive” after his Great Aunt Myrtle because he had received a small inheritance ($1,000) that helped to pay for the driveway. My brothers and I also drew our names and ages into the driveway: Tonya - 14; Cam - 11; and Andy - 7. I thought I had a picture of that, but I cannot find one. The driveway was more narrow at the front, which made it rather difficult to back out of correctly. I know that was definitely true for me when I was learning to drive, which happened soon after we moved in – and I may have run over my mom’s flowers a couple time. Oops!
You can see in the photo above that my parents brought in some large rocks to help set apart areas for plants, trees, and shrubs. They also moved around a lot of dirt in the yard, creating a mound at the front that created a natural barrier between the house and the rather busy street. Minta Lane no longer has nearly as much traffic as it used to back then because the city of Antioch eventually made “G Street” go all the way through (people used to have to cut through on Minta Lane), and the city also removed the G Street exit ramp from Highway 4.
Here is my mom, “playing in the dirt,”
as she works on landscaping the front yard.
My dad drew up plans for the front yard that specified heights for the soil, as well as the various flowers and trees they would plant. In the drawing below, he lists the following trees: “Old” Lemon, Granny Smith Apple, Gravenstein Apple, Eureka Lemon, Kumquat, Dwarf Orange, Washington Navel Orange, Walnut, and Grapefruit. They got a lot of fruit from those trees, but eventually some died, and others they chose to take out.
My parents’ plan for the front yard involved many plants, shrubs, and trees.
The drawing also lists some of the flowers and shrubs they would plant: Raphiolepsis, Ceanothus, Euryops, Manzanita, Creeping Rosemary, Leptospermum, Easter Broom, Dwarf Juniper, and Coyote Brush. My mom would always amaze me with how many types of plants she could name, whereas I am rather helpless with all but the most common names (rose, daisy, geranium, carnation, lily – those I remember!).
In looking up the names of the plants listed above so I would know what they look like, one description kept popping up: fuss-free. My parents were looking to create a drought-tolerant, long-lasting, fuss-free, yet beautiful front yard. Eventually, they added a lot of bulbs and rhizomes to the mix – daffodils, pink ladies, Dutch irises, purple irises, Easter lilies, and more. Mike and I got bulbs from them on several occasions in an effort to add more color to our own yard in the spring – some grew, but never like they did in my parents’ yard.
Eventually, my parents’ front yard would blaze with color from its many flowers, trees, shrubs, and potted plants, becoming something of a “show stopper” in the spring with its myriad blooms. In the photo below, you can my mom standing in the front yard, with lots of orange California poppies, yellow Calendula, and white Easter lilies blooming around her. You can also see the old lemon tree on the right. Mike and I have enjoyed many lemons from that tree, and it was still producing when my parents sold the house. In more recent years, the front yard has served as a wonderful place for the family to take Easter photos after our egg hunt in the back yard.
My mom stands here in the front yard, which is ablaze with flowers.
The backyard took on many iterations over the years, so it’s hard to describe it accurately in a single description. It was always changing, depending on my parents’ desires and needs. At one point in the early years, it served as a “motocross course” for my brothers with their dirt bikes! They eventually extended their “course” to include the hill behind our house (back when no houses were there), passing through a gate my dad created, until a neighbor complained about the noise.
Andy and Cam on their dirt bikes in the backyard
It also featured swings of varying styles over the years, including ropes, boards, and buckets (my son Aaron especially liked the bucket swing when he was little), as well as a number of forts, both on the ground and in the trees. Its most recent swing was a 3-4 seater, meant more for slow swinging and relaxing, situated in a peaceful section of the yard sheltered by a tree and surrounded by statues of Mary, Buddha, and St. Francis. Of course, this swing was not always used properly, as you can see in the photos of my dad and daughter Anna below.
Andy (age 6 or 7) jumping from a swing in the backyard;
you can see the woodpile in the background
Cam sitting high up in the tree after climbing up a “tree ladder”
Cam sitting in one of his tree forts
My dad and daughter Anna (age 6) hanging from the swing
(“Poppy” always kept the kids entertained!)
Since a primary goal of my parents, though, was to be as self-sufficient as possible, the back yard was primarily used for a garden and lots of fruit and nut trees that could provide food for us to eat. They had an extensive vegetable garden, growing (from what I recall) tomatoes, string beans, fava beans, snow peas, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, beets, turnips, garlic, onions, peppers, lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, corn (my favorite), and ... I'm sure I'm forgetting something. It was a lot to maintain – the garden definitely kept them busy, but I'll be talking more about that in Part IV.
Below, you can see my parents standing in the backyard, next to one of their flower beds and on one of the paths my dad laid out using railroad ties. You can also see the brick patio my parents created outside the sliding glass door, which leads inside to the dining room. In this photo, my dad is holding a pitchfork. He said he was trying to replicate, in his own way, the American Gothic painting below.
“American Gothic,” by Grant Wood, is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
As explained on Wikipedia: “American Gothic is a 1930 oil painting on beaverboard by the American Regionalist artist Grant Wood, depicting a Midwestern farmer and his wife or daughter standing in front of their Carpenter Gothic style home. It is one of the most famous American paintings of the 20th century and is frequently referenced in popular culture…. The figures were modeled after Wood's sister Nan Wood Graham and Byron McKeeby, the Wood family's dentist.”
Of course, when I see the name “Graham,” I think perhaps the model for the woman in the photo was actually some sort of relative to my father! I often have thought he would have made a great pioneer.
My dad didn’t just pose with that pitchfork, though – he used it, along with lots of shovels, hoes, pickaxes, and rototillers, to prepare the soil for the garden he and my mom would be planting. Part of that involved moving lots of dirt from the front to the backyard, which sloped down toward the hill behind it. He brought in railroad ties to put against the old back fence, then added enough dirt to bring the yard there up about three feet. He also took out some of the trees that were there so he could replace them with fruit trees and, in some cases, sheds and forts. That right side of the yard became something of a "shanty row". Eventually, it also housed a large chicken coop – but more on that later.
My dad also brought in lots of gypsum to help the soil, as well as many loads of straw and manure from the local fairgrounds. That unintentionally caused wheat to grow in the yard since seeds were mixed into the straw and manure. He also, instead of wood chips, brought in walnut shells to act as a ground covering. He got these shells for free from the old Slatten Ranch in Antioch (which now is a shopping center). At one point, he recalled, there were about a thousand finches in the yard eating up the bits of walnut that were still in the shells.
Rototilling the soil and bringing in bricks to create a path in the backyard
Here, my dad is playing with Andy on the swing, surrounded by wheat that grew
after he brought in 20 loads of straw and manure from the Antioch Fairgrounds.
As with the front yard, my parents planted a lot of fruit trees in the backyard to go along with their vegetable garden. The photo below depicts the “tree map” my dad drew up for the backyard. It names the many fruit trees, sometimes in multiple varieties, that they planted: Nectarine, Almond, Cherry, Apricot, Peach, Plum, Tangerine, Pear, Apple, and Fig. They must have added their Persimmon tree later. My favorite was the Apricot. In more recent years, I was always happy if I was able to time a visit to Antioch to coincide with the apricots being ripe for the picking.
The “tree map” my dad drew for the backyard
My parents were also very water conscious, using a drip irrigation system for their sprinkler system to waste less water and planting many native, drought-tolerant plants. They would sometimes use buckets to catch water when it rained, and they encouraged us to take short showers (I didn’t always like that part) and to never leave the water running while washing dishes (which I haven’t always kept up).
They always kept the big California drought of 1976-77 in mind. I still remember two bumper stickers that were popular during that drought: “In this land of drought and sun, we don’t flush for number one,” and, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” At the time, as a 10-year-old kid, I remember thinking they were funny. They weren't just silly sayings, though; those guidelines were often followed in our house - lol.
In this drawing, my dad laid out the sprinkler system for the backyard,
organized around various garden and tree beds.
In the above drawing, you can also see both Auto and Wood sheds labeled on the side of the yard. My dad taught Auto Shop for many years, and he enjoyed working on motorcycles, trucks, and VW Bugs (of which he owned several). We also needed a lot of wood because, other than solar, the only “heater” our house had was a wood stove. My parents did a lot of research before choosing the wood stove they ultimately purchased, made by Vermont Castings, and that wood stove was still in good shape when they sold the house.
The ad for the Vermont Castings wood stove my parents purchased
As I mentioned in my previous post, my parents were audited twice by PG&E because the company couldn’t believe their bill could be so low. It was. As you might imagine, their unique house attracted other attention as well. In an article that appeared in the Antioch Daily Ledger examining ways families might manage increasing PG&E bills, the authors cited my parents’ house as an example of what could be achieved by looking to solar energy as a primary power source.
This article originally appeared in the Antioch Daily Ledger
The article states: “Doug Graham, 41, his wife, 39, and their three children consume as much power in their new two-story home as most suburbanites, but their PG&E bills averaged $17 per month in 1981. And even after the latest rate hikes, their bills have not been over $36…. The solar heating system for their Minta Lane home is designed to take advantage … of the sun’s warmth for heating air and water…. On a recent overcast date, when it was about 62 degrees outside, the Grahams chatted comfortably in their multi-windowed kitchen – where the temperature was well over 70 degrees.”
Mike's and my house in San Jose is not nearly that warm during the coldest winter months unless we turn up our thermostat above normal, but we did have 14 solar panels put in a few years ago, and that has made a HUGE difference in our PG&E bills. So far this year, we have paid a TOTAL of $338 to PG&E, and that was mostly due to using our gas furnace in the first four months of the year. We have not had a bill since April, and we don't have one this month (November). We probably will have a small one in December since we'll soon have to start using the furnace again, and we have once again turned on our spa (which we had turned off since we were traveling so much). The point is, you don't have to have an entirely passive solar-designed house to benefit from solar energy today!
My dad modeled the Minta Lane house after similar passive solar homes in Davis, CA, and it incorporated no gas features, just electric. As he explains in the article above, “The average home in Davis uses 20 percent less energy than those in Antioch,” largely because “Davis has adopted city ordinances which require better sealing on windows and doors, more insulation – and even special landscaping – for energy efficiency.”
Besides tightly sealing their windows and doors and adding more insulation, my parents kept those landscaping guidelines in mind as they planned their yard. While most of the trees they planted bore fruit that we could eat, one "fruitless" tree they planted was the Fruitless Mulberry in the backyard patio area. It got HUGE and provided a lot of shade to the house in the summer, helping to keep it cool (the house never had air conditioning). It dropped its leaves in the winter, allowing the house to be better warmed by the sun.
Caption: “The row of south-facing windows on the roof of the Minta Lane
house in Antioch allow the sun to warm the air inside the house while solar collectors
rest off to the side, supplying the family with hot water.”
That wasn't the only time that house was described "in print." Back when we were still building the house, my mother wrote the following letter to Popular Mechanics magazine: “My husband and I are avid readers of PM, and we both enjoy the approach to life that your magazine takes. We enjoy knowing that there are other people out there who do care about this world of ours and about our dignity as human beings. We are building a passive solar home, as we feel this will further our independence of the system. At the same time, we know we are doing our part to conserve energy in the best way possible. It is still possible for a man to design and build his own home and have it entirely paid for. This has been a real experience for our family.”
My mom’s letter as it appeared in Popular Mechanics magazine
And, what do you know! On December 5, 1980, the magazine’s editor, John Linkletter, responded! I love that he says my mom’s letter “was copied and passed around [their] office and pasted on the bulletin board,” for it “tells better than any of us can the philosophy of the readers of Popular Mechanics,” and it captures “the great satisfaction you get from being able to do things yourself.” I’m sure that must have made both my parents feel really good about the project they had undertaken.
A letter to my mom from John Linkletter, Editor of Popular Mechanics
Without question, my parents both got a lot of satisfaction from doing things themselves, but this post has gotten quite long enough. In Part IV, I will talk more about what they did with all the food they produced in the yard, as well as how they got started raising chickens. I'll also share a couple other news articles about the house and garden. For now, I’ll end with these two lovely photos taken by my parents’ friend Jerry Britton back in April 2004. They capture, from interesting angles, both the front and back yards my parents eventually created. Thanks, Jerry!
Your parents are impressive! Their energy efficient home and extensive garden are laudable! Thank you for sharing.
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