In addition to installing the blog software, I’ve also been busy working on a long overdue update to the Historic House Museum section. For a long time I’ve wanted to get the museum information into a database to make it easier to maintain. I’ve started working on the programming of it.

The biggest chore is going to be entering the existing data into the database. I’ve done two states so far, Alaska and Arkansas. You can take a look at those pages to see the new layout.

In addition to providing more complete address information, major new features include the ability to rank museums you’ve visited, and a small thumbnail of the museum.

Once all 50 states are done, there will be a search page added that will allow you to search by style or year built as well.

If you would like to pick a state and help with the conversion process, please contact Matt at the email address below.

Our webmaster Matt Knowles has installed a WordPress blog for the VPA web site. Members are invited to write articles, post photos or other content that would be of interest to our group.

In order to post content in the blog, you will need to be a current VPA member and you will need to register.

There are still some formatting issues to be worked out, but as more content is added these bugs will be fixed.

9 years ago when we moved to Ferndale we thought that since our house sits on Rose Ave, that we should plant the 15o foot long front exposure with rose bushes. We bought 13 rose bushes, some Cecil Brunner and some Gertrude Jekyll.

Within days we discovered one of the major differences between gardening in San Jose and gardening in Ferndale. Deer. While we were at the nursery picking out the roses, we also bought 3 apple trees and 3 blueberry bushes. The deer demolished all of those in a matter of weeks.

The roses barely survived, but after our yard started repeatedly flooding we had to do something to prevent that and while that work was going on, we transplanted the roses to the back yard.

We built a concrete retaining wall and then started building a trellis fence on top of that. It’s still not finished but it’s at the point where we can start growing the roses up on part of it. So we started moving some of the remaining Cecil Brunner roses back to the front yard.

I can’t wait until June to see our lovely arbor entrance in bloom.

Rose Trellis

Members make ornaments for sale to support the Hill House operating fund.