The Sunday porch: Centerville, Calif.

Japanese-American grandmother on porch 1942, U.S. National Archives“Grandmother of farm family awaits evacuation bus. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration,” May 9, 1942, by Dorothea Lange for the U.S. War Relocation Authority, via U.S. National Archives on flickr.

Centerville is a community in northern California. All along the Pacific coast — from 1942 to January 1945 — over 110,000 people of Japanese heritage were forced into internment camps.  Sixty-two percent were American citizens.

In 1988, in the Civil Liberties Act, the U.S. Government admitted that its actions had been based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Life in gardens: not always happy

Two sisters, 1927, Library of New South Wales, flickr

Elizabeth Jolley and sister Madelaine Winifred (having a good cry) in a garden, probably in the English Midlands, 1927, photographer unknown, via State Library of New South Wales on flickr.

Monica Elizabeth Jolley was an English-born author who moved to Western Australia in the late 1950s. In the photo above, the girls were about 5 and 4 years old.  Check out Madelaine’s bunny slippers.

Life in gardens: Foix, France

Balcon aux rosiers, chalet de E. Trutat, Foix, c. 1903, Library of ToulouseTwo women and a young boy next to a balcony of roses at the Trutat chalet, Foix in the Midi-Pyrénées of France.

The autochrome was taken ca. 1903 by Eugène Trutat, via Bibliothèque de Toulouse Commons on flickr.

Look, Delia, how w’ esteem the half-blown rose
The image of thy blush and summer’s honour.  .  .

— Samuel Daniel, from “Delia 31

Vintage landscape: Smiley Heights

Smiley Heights, via LoCRoadside view from Smiley Heights, Redlands, California, between 1898 and 1905, a photochrom by Detroit Photographic Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Alfred and Albert Smiley — twin brothers — were wealthy New York hotel owners who came to California in their sixties:

In 1889, while in California, the brothers became so impressed with the beautiful scenery and surroundings of Redlands that they purchased for a winter home 200 acres of the heights south of the town, through which tract they caused to be constructed a beautiful series of roads, both for driving and walking, and on the summit and along the northern declivities started a thousand or more species of rare plants and flowers of such varieties as flourish in this semi-tropical climate. Each of the brothers erected a beautiful and substantial residence on the crest of the hill. This property called the Canon Crest Park, commonly known as Smiley Heights, was thrown open to the public and the park has become famous throughout the land, being visited by thousands of Eastern tourists annually.

History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties (1922) by John Brown, Jr., and James Boyd

The Smiley estate is now “covered by McMansions,”  according to this article about Redlands in The Atlantic.

Below the garden the hills fold away.
Deep in the valley, a mist fine as spray,
Ready to shatter into spinning light,
Conceals the city at the edge of night.

Yvor Winters, from “On a View of Pasadena from the Hills