Sierra Foothill Garden

My Favorite Junk Store and Why I Like It

I’m itchin’ to go to the junk stores again. Boy do I miss the “ARC Store” (Assoc of Retarded Citizens) in Fullerton, CA, near where I used to live. They’d bring new things in by the box-full EVERY DAY from the greater Los Angeles area and it was right around the corner from me. PLUS, they had colored price tags and each day two colors would be half price! I’d go every week, browse and cherry-pick.

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Two styles
When we bought property here in the Central California mountains in 2000, I stopped collecting tropical fish. I lost interest in buying anything at all in the way of decoration for my beach-y themed small city house 20 miles from the ocean. I now desired a mountainy, ranch-y style house in the woods.

In 2005, my husband and I finally moved to the seven acres of land in the Sierra Foothills of California we had found, located just below Yosemite National Park. This began a new adventure for us and as a couple of city kids, we sure got an education about country life.

We never dreamed we’d be building our own house,…or at least designing it, tiling floors for it and painting it. As a lifelong gardener, I was excited about gardening in this new location. The surroundings are wild and scenic, with a tall massive mountain rising high above the sloped property which is filled with scrub oaks, manzanita and Ponderosa pines.

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After five years of preparation, we finally were ready to move into a freshly painted and nearly empty house. We had left so much behind, not needing or wanting our old furniture and city things. What I kept? I kept my Grandma’s furniture, a desk, a dresser and a gate-legged table. We had all her many oil paintings, some for every room. I kept Dad’s old office desk and the ash furniture he built for his first new house, a bookcase and the three drawer dresser  he built for us babies. We kept our old comfy couch and loveseat, a nice neutral tan, and an old rattan chair I found in an alley on trash day. I covered the cushions with a serape blanket and there it is in the above photo.  Everything we kept has a story,…a family story.

My List
Since I had shifted my focus to mountain living, I slowly developed a mental list of items and materials, I’d look for at the annual flea market in our county and at junk shops and yard sales. Here’s the list:

Weathered wood
Denim
Leather
Suede
‘Plaid shirt’ plaid

Summer camp
’40s kitchen
Rusted metal
Barbed wire
Oil cloth
Yosemite slate (Black, brown and gold)
Wildflowers
Graniteware
California-colored pottery

Terracotta clay
Wrought iron
Granite rock
Pine trees and cones

Copper
Wool Indian blankets
Rope
Galvanized metal
Bronze
Night sky