Entering the property and exterior views of the house

The driveway entrance off the private road at 22275 Berry Drive, Salinas. Isn't it lovely? You can't see the house until you get past the gate (which doesn't work). The fencing on the left is the northern border of the property. To the right is the western property line. Aunt Mildred put the house on the south west corner of the lot instead of plunking it into the middle of the property. This gives you a view to the oaks and the seasonal stream. It also made the house secluded and she wouldn't have to see it from her adobe house, which is the next house up the private road.

This oak tree is dead, having been toppled during a recent storm. Wayne's good neighbor, Tom Bailey, found a friend who was willing to remove the wood without charging us, if he could have the wood. What a bargain. This thing would have filled at least one dumpster on it's own. It took them five hours to do the work.

The area in the last photo, without the fallen oak tree. Just inside the main gate, to your left, Wayne built this plywood fence and the open gate you see. In the middle of the photo, what looks like reinforcement for the fence is really a drop-leg table. You can unhook it and have a surface to use. In the lower left is some sort of boiler or burner. Maybe Wayne built it to be an outdoor heater.


A close-up of the possible outdoor heater.

The house and a dumpster from the drive way, looking directly south. To the left, thru the open gates, you can see the part of the acreage that serves as a parking lot for Wayne's equipment. Those green plants on the left are geraniums. The brush in the middle is part of a butterfly bush hedge. We have to remove the hedge because it is too close to the house to please the fire insurance inspector. It looks dead. Other bushes of the same variety in neighborhood yards are still green and in bloom.

Wayne paid his house insurance premiums by credit card. Apparently Social Security notifies all credit bureaus when the county tells them someone has died. The credit bureau notified the credit card company. The credit card company cancelled the card. The fire insurance company cancelled the insurance. I have my fingers crossed that we can get insurance on the structure while we are having the necessary remodeling done. If not, we will have to buy a more expensive construction policy.

The front door. I have a photograph of the house from the inspection report done when Aunt Mildred died in 1995. The door looked the same. The house was built in 1985, about the time when Wayne married Pat. Wayne had always lived with his parents. When Wayne said he was going to marry Pat and stay with Mildred and Ross, they decided to build him this house on part of their acreage. It is a one-room house with attached garage, basically a studio and very small. You sleep, eat, and cook in the same room where you live. The bathroom door opens into the kitchen. Wayne turned the garage into a workshop.

We don't have any photos of the interior, yet. The Disaster Cleanup people wouldn't let us be inside without protective clothing until they could make it safe. From the doorway, I could see a path from the front door to Wayne's chair and tv. There was a path to the fridge and the bathroom and one to the door to the workshop. The crew completely gutted the kitchen and bathroom. There was so much mold and filth, they decided it was the only way to go. After seeing the photos and the mounds of dead flies and rat urine stains everywhere, I agreed. We didn't save any furniture, except a roll-top desk and a glass-front cabinet that Aunt Mildred and Uncle Ross cobbled together from other pieces of furniture. They were famous for doing this.

There is a commercial strawberry field on the whole western border of the property. The dust from their cultivation seeped onto everything in the house in a fine talcum. It would have been out of character for Wayne to have dusted his house or cleaned his bathroom or wiped off his kitchen counters.

The west side of the house. The white thing on the left is a solar collector and the little box on wheels is a portable sauna. Under the tarp behind the sauna is a home-made cement mixer. Wayne built it rather than buying one; because, it was more fun, according to his neighbor, Tom. You can see the garage door behind those two vertical boards. (We haven't been able to figure out what the boards are used for.) The way the house is situated, you could never have driven a car into the garage. As I took the photo, I tripped over a pink enamel bathtub buried in the ground. There are bathtubs everywhere. People use them to water stock. Back in the Wayne/Pat days, they did have a horse.

Another view of the west side of the house. This was Wayne's garden plot. He had drip irrigation nodes buried all over the property. My husband, Donald, is musing over a leaking node. People pay a set amount for their water every month, no matter how much they use, so a leak doesn't seem too important to one's pocket book.

Behind the house, you can see more impromptu shedding to cover various projects and equipment.

Still on the west side of the house and in the garden plot, in the middle of the photo, there is a lean-to against an aluminum garden shed. Both are full of agricultural chemicals that can't just be thrown into a dumpster. They must be legally removed and disposed of.

The massive trees on the left will probably have to be removed. They are dying from a pine-bark beetle infestation that is 90% of the conifers on the west coast. Once infested, the trees die quickly and become an explosive fire hazard.

Eastern and north sides of the house, with dumpster. The mountain views to the south and west are beautiful as is the view of the ancient live oaks and the seasonal stream on the north edge of the property. On the eastern border of the property, Wayne planted a hedge of butterfly trees to shield his view of Tom Bailey's house. Most of them are dead or in need of serious triming to save them. Tom has since erected a deer fence around his property. Now all the deer come to Wayne's house. The gophers are world-class. And a badger was living under the storage shed. Some of the scat in the yard looks like it could be from some pretty serious critters.