Day 1 - April, 1994

This will take place in the past. This much you should know.

My wife (then girlfriend), Wendy, and I moved into this house on a sunny day in 1994, probably one of the nicest houses on the street on a wide, Los Angeles boulevard.

We had been going out for a little over a year, but had been friends long before - 5 years? She had the money then and bought the house. She promised me a month's free rent if I moved in with her. How could I resist?

The house itself was built for a doctor and his family in 1927 in an area of Los Angeles known as Atwater Village, abutting the infamous Los Angeles River itself. A beautiful Spanish Colonial with brown saltillo tiles lining the roof and cupola, curious angles and arches inside, and the garden. My god, the garden.

Two men who lived here before we did, one of them, Paul, was a landscape architect. The house sits on a slight incline on the corner. Houses in our neighborhood aren't known for their big back yards (I'm thinking of my Mother's tiny one and my Dad's non-existent ones in South Philly) but the corner houses were moved clear back to the lot, leaving a wide expanse of lawn to cover the front. That wide expanse wasn't good enough for the landscaper, though. He tore all the grass out and put in plants. And plants. And plants. When we moved in, there must have been 125 different plants out front. Since he'd moved out after his lover had died, his mother had been taken care of the place for a few years. And we found what was left of the drip irrigation system out front. (But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Wendy had heard over the years how much I loved nature and the outdoors. We would go for walks in the mountains, in Joshua Tree, and through botanical gardens and I'd tell her how amazed I was what I couldn't only call "God's work". What I didn't know was when she began her search for a house that a garden would be a good selling point.

And this was more garden then I'd ever seen before.

We loved it, though and were relaxed once we'd met Javier, Paul's gardener. Thank God, we said, at least there's someone to take care of all this.

Man were we wrong.