Our next door neighbor, Jewel, is a volunteer at the Sacramento Historic Cemetery and she invited us to this year's garden open house. The graveyard was first established during the Gold Rush by Captain John Sutter who donated ten acres of suitable land on a hill a few hundred yards from the river. (Sacramento was subject to severe flooding and you surely didn't want to bury the bodies where they would wash away each winter.)

One of the most interesting side stories at the cemetery is the effort that's gone into planting the rose gardens which provide a horticulture history of the region. Some of the more than 500 antique plants are native, collected from throughout the Sacramento Valley and foothills. Others were brought to California in the holds of ships or carried in wagon trains by gold miners and other early pioneers.  Still others were brought from home by Chinese laborers and European immigrants.