548 Wesley Ave

There’s an ease to life at 548 Wesley Avenue that’s increasingly rare - a house with room for the various parts of life, a garden that produces amazingly well, and a particularly lovely stretch of Oakland just outside the door. Set near the base of Haddon Hill, the house belongs to a neighborhood where the best parts of Oakland feel unusually close. Haddon Hill Cafe and Leaning Tower of Pizza are half a block away. Continuing a block further is Lake Merritt - near enough to become part of everyday life, whether for a morning by the water or an evening watching the lake change with the light. Friday nights bring a different energy to the Oakland Museum, when the food trucks arrive and the gardens fill with people and music. Saturdays have their own ritual at the Grand Lake Farmers Market. The newly renovated Kaiser Center for the Arts is nearby, too, and Lake Merritt BART puts the rest of the Bay within easy reach. The house itself has grown along with the lives lived inside it. An expanded second floor adds another bedroom and bath, a dedicated office, and a generous family room - space to spread out without losing the intimacy of the original home. There is a rental apartment with its own rear entrance, adding another layer of possibility. And the garage is the sort people tend to wish they had: room for cars certainly, but also a workshop, bikes, tools and an impressive amount of storage. Then there is the garden, which borders on the improbable. This is not a yard with a lemon tree tucked into a corner. There are two kinds of pluots, three kinds of apples, a Kadota fig, Fuyu persimmon, peach, nectarine, blueberries, red currants, tangerine, orange, pomegranate, mulberry, and two varieties of lemon. The harvest changes with the seasons; the pleasure of stepping outside and finding something ready to pick does not. That may be the particular charm of 548 Wesley. So much of what makes life here good is close at hand: coffee down the block, the lake around the corner, pizza on a weeknight, music and food on a Friday evening, the farmers market on Saturday morning - and, back at home, a piece of fruit pulled from a tree in your own garden. It’s a house with an unusual amount to offer, but its greatest luxury may be how little effort it takes to enjoy it.