During the summer months, the house is surrounded by a profusion of colorful rosebushes, and the sidewalk is ringed with plants that look like miniature Christmas trees. Looking through the fence slats, on the property adjacent to their house, you can see a small vineyard and rows of corn. Their home is very typical of older Willow Glen, but their one-acre lot with its many fruit trees isn't. What isn't typical is this place has remained almost the same for several generations, and its ground is still being tilled, just as it was 100 years ago. This is where Ilko and Carol Vuica live.

My husband and I first met the Vuicas last year after we sold our Robsheal home. We wanted to rent for a while, and they owned a couple of rentals. One was just perfect for us, so Ilko and Carol became our landlords. We soon discovered we had much in common. We were all about the same age and attended St. Christopher Church.

In time, I would learn the history of their home and property. Carol's ancestors moved to Willow Glen in 1903 from Croatia and bought land here before the 1906 earthquake. Some years later, Carol's parents, Peter and Elva Brayevich, would farm the orchards that produced the delicious fruit that their Willow Glen neighbors came to enjoy. They farmed 15 acres of cherries with a few walnut trees, and their orchards stretched across what are now Hamilton Avenue, Glen Ellen Way and Cherrydale Drive. Carol's father was one of nine siblings, and one of her uncles also owned 10 acres of cherry trees near Hicks, Pine and Cherry avenues.

Carol's father was dedicated to farming his land and took great pride in it. And in an almost befitting way, he would die of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 81, sitting atop his tractor next to the beige house.

Ilko came to Willow Glen from Croatia in 1971 and married Carol the same year. They had two daughters. During that same year, Carol's family sold off most of the acreage, but not the one acre on the corner where they live in the beige house.

On the side of their house, next to the remaining piece of land, three of the Brayevich siblings built a house in 1972. It is a spacious home, painted white with flagstones across the front and a wide circular driveway. In 1999, when the last of the siblings died, Carol and Ilko kept the house as a rental.

Shortly after we became friends, Ilko and Carol invited us over for iced tea and a visit to their backyard. I'd had a peek of it through the slats in the fence and I was really looking forward to seeing more of it. From what I had already seen, I had a feeling it would take me back in time to my childhood days during the 1940s and 50s growing up in the Santa Clara Valley. But imagine my surprise at seeing what their property actually contained.

As we walked into the yard, the first thing I noticed was an old harrow with its rusted disks that had "teeth" that looked quite fierce. It was attached to a LS Allis-Chalmers tractor that Ilko said was built in 1934. He told us that the old tractor was still in working condition; then he confessed that it works only if he is willing to go through the sweat of hand-cranking it.

Ilko said he didn't need to use the tractor to hoe his rows of corn and the vineyard. He does that with a regular rototiller. We also learned that Ilko is a vintner, making wine for himself and his friends from the grapes grown right here in Willow Glen. After he presses the grapes, he then ages the wine in his cool basement and does his own bottling.

Then they showed us another marvel. It was a very old pump that Carol's ancestors had found on the property when they bought the land. They guessed it was more than 100 years old. It was in their garden area, and they rigged the rusty old pump as a waterfall, with the water flowing down into a silver bucket with a large hook on top. But it wasn't any old bucket. This was one of the original buckets that Carol's family had used when picking cherries.

We were also surprised to see that Ilko had built a bocce ball court. Bocce is an ancient Italian version of lawn bowling, probably not found in many Willow Glen yards. Ilko made the court from Santa Clara Valley history. He went to the Santa Clara Railroad Station and got some of the station's heavy old railroad ties to create the 80-foot court.

There were so many other wondrous things about their place. But there was one more thing to see and experience, and that involved us.

Ilko showed us a large, metal mailbox mounted on a crossbar about four feet high. Next to the mailbox was a matching metal "hood" about a foot long and six inches high, and he said that's where they used to put newspapers to protect them from rain.

Then, pointing to the mailbox, Ilko said, "Look at the house numbers. Even though they're faded and peeling off, if you look closely they are still visible. It says 1675 Hicks Ave., your place."

Yes, that's right. We rented the house that Carol's family built.

Bobbi Cushman is a longtime resident of Willow Glen. She wrote this for the Willow Glen Resident.