Red Bricks

In our Orangevale home, east of Sacramento, in the early 1960's, we built what seemed like miles of brick planters in the front and back yards. We were able to buy historic used brick from the early 1880's (approx) Sacramento courthouse. There was no quality control in those days and the bricks were irregular shapes. Some of the bricks would have one side painted as it had been the inside of a painted wall. It took a large amount of mortar to level the bricks for the planters. One night we had mixed too much mortar so we quietly continued to work into the wee hours of the morning. We didn't want to disturb the Cantoni family, our next-door-neighbors, as we were working near their bedroom windows. The planters turned out beautiful.

After the planters were landscaped, Gordon planted strawberry plants around the other plants in the planters. In a few years we had LOTS of strawberries. They were big and delicious. The girls would go out and pick large bowls of strawberries and once in awhile, our whole dinner would be homemade strawberry shortcake. It was a hit with all of us.