If you visit Silicon Valley today, it’s hard to imagine, that not so long ago, this was fertile farmland where peaches, apricots, almonds and strawberries grew. Where schoolkids worked as pickers in orchards all summer long.
In Los Gatos stands a little wooden fruit stand. Cornucopia Fruit Stand stood by a farm house and was once surrounded by apricot orchards. Today, busy Winchester Avenue and the freeway run right next to it, and Netflix’s new headquarters stand where fruit trees once stood. Lily Falcone planted an oak tree right in front of the stand in 1936. The current owners of the stand and Los Gatos residents got together and petitioned the city to NOT have the oak cut down. And now that little fruit stand and grand oak tree stand defiantly by the ever-broadening road, a reminder to a slower, gentler time.
I sat below the oak tree on a warm summer morning and sketched the fruit stand.
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Love this…very nice!
What a treat to find your drawing in my mailbox. Delight for the eyes!
Very interesting to read — the juxtaposition of fruit stands and the slick, high-tech world of the today’s Silicon Valley — thanks for this!
Hey hi!! its amazing to see beautiful sketches in watercolor+black marker…i remember while studying in Architecture college here in Goa we had a beautiful oppurtunity where in we were introduced to urban sketching in various mediums….After finishing college never got the time 2 go back …but @ the back of my mind i alwayz wantd 2 go…cuz thtz what i liked about it…U wont believe it!!! I actually gt an oppurtunity to teach and ive already planned to take them…they were all the more excited to go give Urban sketching a shot…:)
I grew up in Los Altos in the 60′s. The core technology companies where here, HP, Lockheed, NASA, and IBM. But, they were concrete islands in a sea of agroculture. Those were easier times when small toes preferred the dark furtile dirt to the endless miles of cement and asphalt of today.
I’m 50 years old now, and retirement is not so far away. I hope I can find a place where there are more trees than people, bags of cherries and plenty of dark furtile dirt for my weary feet.
Charming sketch of this little fruit stand. I’m so glad it is still there as a reminder too.