Paradise and the quest for a green lawn, a really green lawn...

We never knew the importance of keeping a lawn looking healthy, which means keeping it at least eighty five percent green, until we had a new lawn that looked absolutely gorgeous during the rainy winter months, and gradually turned into golden turf this summer. I include myself in that ‘we’ at the beginning of this paragraph but in reality the lawn in question is my husband’s pet project between his laying red bricks, building our back yard patio, and planning out his future projects, which includes remodeling our bathrooms in our home.

We bought our Hollister home back in April 2004 after selling our long time residence in San Jose. Before settling on Hollister, we spent a good two years researching towns in California, and there was a time we even considered moving to another state in order to get the home we wanted to have, the home we could afford.

One thing we knew was we wanted to live in a community where there was peace and quiet. We wanted a place away from the noise and pollution, and the heavy, dirty traffic of ‘Silly Con Valley’. Excuse me; I am still in the mode to call the valley by my favorite pet name for it. Where we lived before moving to Hollister was officially and appropriately called, Silicon Valley.

We lived in San Jose, the ‘Heart’ of Silicon Valley, for over thirty years in the same house my husband built for us way back in 1970. Back in 1970 there was a sense of peace and quiet in our neighborhood before the State of California widened the freeway by Five Wounds Church. Even though a sound wall was built to block the sound of the freeway we still could hear and feel the steady, loud hum of the freeway when ever we would go outside into our private backyard. Once that freeway was widened our peace and our quiet was completely ruined for us. We installed double paned windows on our home to block out both the dirt and the sound but the ‘steady hum’ we would hear whenever we ventured outside drove both of us to want to get away.

Our neighborhood in San Jose changed over the years, too! Many of the people we knew back in 1970 had moved away or passed away. A new group of younger people had moved into our old neighborhood. We had only one couple left in the neighborhood that was our original neighbors from the old days. Progress changed our old neighborhood into a place that became difficult to recognize.

From the upstairs of our home, in my home-office, I could look out one of my windows, and see Five Wounds Church. That is how close our hidden side street was to Santa Clara Street, and the noisy, dirty freeway. Today Santa Clara Street is the street on which the new San Jose City Hall is located, several blocks down the street from Five Wounds Catholic Church. Back in 1970 Santa Clara Street was a pleasant, quiet street. Back in 1970 San Jose was a nice place to live, and a nice place to raise children.
But progress changed all of that.

The day came when my husband decided that he was going to retire. Retirement for Dick was busy. His father needed him and Dick answered his father’s need by caring for him during his father’s most difficult last months.
My father in law, Manuel Dutra, lived to be just six weeks short of his ninety sixth birthday! While Manuel was uneducated in the classical sense, my father in law was in reality the smartest person I have met in my entire life. Manuel had street smarts that come from knowing how others think. He was a good judge of people, and in business he demonstrated his abilities.

Once Manuel no longer needed our care we knew that we wanted to move to a more peaceful environment to finish out our last years on this earth. That was what prompted our search for a place to retire to. That’s how we ended up here in Paradise, where so many things have happened both to and for us. Some good and some bad included in the mix.

Ahhh, Paradise is a good place…some good…some bad…but at least it is peaceful here in Paradise, here just outside of the Town of Hollister, California.

And my husband has his lawn to care for, which is turning green again thanks to the help of Juan at Tri-County Landscape Supplies in the nearby town of Watsonville.

Dick is also finishing up his project building our back yard patio, which I will feature in a dedicated web page very soon. Dick will give complete instruction in his web page on how to build the patio he designed, and there will be many pictures showing the steps along the way to completion.

This has been another true life story of our adventures in Paradise.

Carol Garnier Dutra a.k.a. MOM in Hollister
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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