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This was a lovely article, and one that is going to make me be much more observant as I hike around. I grew up in So.Cal, and your photos were so evocative. Thanks for the safety and legal tips, too.
I also love to poke around old homesteads like that!
Years ago, long before I ever thought of gardening, I read some of Eric Sloan's books on early America. In one, he mentioned that sometimes you will see a pair of mature trees sitting all by themselves out in a field... and you can deduce that they were once in front of a home, flanking the doorway.
I have been able over the course of many years to salvage plants from abandoned homesteads. Always with permission of course. I consider it a privlege to help carry on the heritage of the communtiy and those who were settlers and part of the community long before my time. I have an old fashion lilac I call the Earl Crawford lilac because it came from the home place of an attorney whose family had lived there for many years. He thought it was hilarious that I wanted plants from there for a memorial to his family. Just a few months later he died. I know the man who farmed the land and maybe even purchased it and he would not have allowed me to take a start of the bush. I have a yucca plant from another homestead. I don't really care for yuccas but it was going to be bulldozed under and I just couldn't let that happen. I also got some early spring bulbs, common yellow iris, and a rose that is probably a type of the multifloral that is now so hated. But this one is relatively well behaved and I keep it pruned to a nice size. These are plants that are older than me, maybe a hundred years old or more in origin.
