Garden
Crazy for Color
There are few entries in my baby book. My mother was a hardworking farm wife with two children, much too busy to be documenting my every tooth and step. One of the few things she wrote was “Anita loves flowers—22 months.” Decades later, I still do. I first encountered the term “flower floozy” at Annie’s Annuals & Perennials, a wonderful nursery in Richmond, and recognized kindred spirits among the staff and customers.
The Garden of Good
In the early 1970s, a group of women approached the Sacramento Children’s Home board with a fundraising idea: Why not build a restaurant and garden on a vacant lot next to the home on Sutterville Road and staff it with volunteers? The board didn’t expect the venture to last but agreed to give it a try. They funded construction of a building that could be converted to other purposes when the endeavor came to what they felt would be its inevitable end. Casa de los Ninos opened in May 1974, and it still thrives today as Casa Garden. Over the years, its parent nonprofit, Los Ninos Service League, has contributed more than $2.9 million to the home, working to address the needs of children and to strengthen families.