Jul 27, 2020
An 8-foot high, multi-paneled glass door off the dining room folds back, opening the home to a secluded backyard patio. At the opposite end of the vast room, a large kitchen window overlooks the front yard’s lush garden landscape. When the panoramic patio door and kitchen window are fully open—no intrusive screens involved—the effect is like standing in a serene oasis with a cross breeze that may bring in a dragonfly or two.
“When designing the house, I told our architect, ‘I want to bring the outside in,’” homeowner Helen Wheeler says.
Jul 27, 2020
Locking onto a snail with laser-guidance precision, Randy Paragary delivers a lightning strike on the gluttonous gastropod. “He died during the journey,” he says. With apologies to escargot, snails would be wise to steer clear of this backyard vegetable garden.
Paragary, his wife Stacy and executive chef-business partner Kurt Spataro have kept Sacramentans well fed and entertained for decades. While retaining his local dining and entertainment venues, Paragary has evolved his interests in recent years to include Midtown’s new Fort Sutter Hotel and (drumroll, please) his backyard tomatoes and other edibles.
Jun 25, 2020
Summer days in Sacramento, when air becomes insufferably hot and soil bakes to Death Valley beige, can test our gardening superpowers. The challenge of keeping plants happy and alive is compounded by watering mandates, courtesy of below normal rainfall and Sierra snowpack.
People and pets need protection and ample hydration when summer’s blast furnace goes triple digits. So do plants. Our leafy friends are not able to bolt for an air-conditioned kitchen and refreshing drink.
May 27, 2020
Terry Grabowy purchased his “really old, really small” home, tucked away off a quiet road in Carmichael, in 1989. More than 30 years later, it was time to level the 1,200-square-foot dwelling and start anew.
“It was meant to be torn down and something new built because the house was just so old and the foundation was really lousy,” Grabowy says. “Part of it was raised and part of it was slab. The concrete was falling apart.”
