where we’re living

My maternal grandfather spent his entire working career in the wholesale nursery business. He was a partner in the Hemet Wholesale nursery business, and he was sales manager for the storied Howard Rose Company. I remember one wall of his office consisted entirely of a huge blown up photograph of a field of roses in bloom, illuminated by fluorescent lighting.

I remember well their acres of nursery stock and roses in cans off of San Jacinto Street between the towns of Hemet (where I grew up) and San Jacinto. What I don’t remember, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why, as I must have passed by there hundreds of times, is the Howard Rose property  to the west of town, just before you leave the San Jacinto Valley, where they grew roses.

Both companies are long gone, but my dad pointed out to me that Four Seasons, where Terry and I are settling in, is on land that was once that Howard Rose Company property. It’s never a great thing when agricultural land gives way to other uses, but I have to say that it gives me a certain delight to be living on land that was once an important part of my family’s history, and of the history of the town in which I grew up.