Oh my. What a bittersweet thing, to come back to this post I finished on September 11, and see our beloved Curtis Loew loafing along all through it. He was wound into our lives in the most beautiful way. I have not had the heart to post on the blog since he left us on September 12, but as Robert Frost noted,
"In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
So you can see my little gentleman again, all through this post, and read the words I wrote when I hoped he be here for weeks, months, even years to come.
I've just waved goodbye to Shila, Marcy, and Bruce. They arrived around 8 AM and the birding off the deck was so good they stayed until 11:30! The list stands at 44 species and I'm sure I'll keep adding to it as the day wears on. Friends: they help so much. Birds do, too.
I had a secret in back of my house. It was a rotting deck that had been built by the folks we bought it from. It had served us well as a birding and flower platform, but weirdly, we never used it for sitting or dining out in summer.
That had a lot to do with the wide, view-obstructing boards, and the extremely splintery wood. That wood was always a huge hazard to anyone with bare feet. I had to go to the ER for a gigantic plank I ran into my pawpad when I was pregnant with Phoebe. I was almost too big to lie on my stomach for its extraction. Traumatic memory unlocked!
Lately, a human foot-sized rotten hole had opened up, and I realized that I could not have more than a hundred people and kids swarming my place with a hole in my deck. Time to call D & L Construction and Backhoe again! (I had actually arranged this almost a year ago; they're busy people!)
Teardown commenced in the first week of June.
I was not sad to see that deck go!
Before I knew it, the house was deck-free!
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Here's what it looked like from inside the living room...Eeeek!
It was a thrilling week, watching the new deck go up.
The deck stairs and railing were still under construction when most of the BWD Magazine staff came for our annual content and cover planning meeting--the third one, all held here. Can we really have been putting this magazine out for three years?
From left: Advising Editor JZ (Whipple OH), Editor Jessica Vaughan (Columbus OH), Photo Editor Bruce Wunderlich (Marietta OH), Managing Editor Dawn Hewitt (Marietta OH), Publisher Mike Sacopulos (Terre Haute IN) and Publisher Rich Luhr (Tucson AZ). In one day, we put together issue plans for 2026. Then we stood on the new deck! I love my co-workers and publishers, and feel very, very lucky to call them colleagues.
The stairs hadn't been built yet. Here they are--wide and generous, with a nice landing, and I can carry lawn chairs and plants up and down them without a problem. Couldn't carry anything easily up the old narrow stairs.
Curtis loved the new deck and its easy to climb stairs.
That evening, Liam came home and got to see it too! I'm glad I got the lightest color of composite for the decking; it's beautiful and it doesn't get too hot to walk on barefoot, even on a scorching day, I'm happy to report.
Railings are aluminum, I believe.
The deck also protects the HVAC system from crap falling into it (literally) from above. The old deck had wide spacing between the boards and, when we had a lot of raccoons around because I was still feeding birds in summer, they used the back corner of the deck as their latrine and it would fall down INTO THE AC UNITS now how GROSS is that? Just another reason why I don't feed the birds in warm weather!
See those diagonal struts? Donnie designed and added those, contributing immensely to the solidity of the overall structure. He said before he built those in, he could push the structure and make it move! Coudln't make it move now--it is super solid. This is a very new deck system, and it isn't cheap, nor was it easy to put together, they said; the instructions need work. I am so glad I got total pro's to build it. The distributor told Donnie he'd priced out dozens of these, but this is the first one he'd seen that actually got built.
Well, somebody had to go ahead and buy one!
The deck is made by Timbertech. And I adore it!
It follows the trend of most of my recent renovations, using Hardieplank siding on the house (that holds paint really well, never rots, and doesn't need to be replaced).The greenhouse is incredibly sturdy double paned thermal glass and aluminum; you can walk on the roof. I used metal on the new roofs. It's guaranteed for 40 years. Yep, that oughta do it, at least for me. We long-term homeowners take a dim view of rotty things.
the gray squirrels haven't ventured up here yet to eat my last big hibiscus.
And now it's safe in the greenhouse, so there.
I have eaten practically every dinner out here since the deck was finished. It's heaven! And the railing doesn't impede the view much at all. I really like the slender railing.
Curtis got his tick checks here, and I brushed him out in the mornings on the deck.
We are out there all the time. This fall, I've been holding little warbler watching parties there, birding by butt. It is DIVINE to see the birds at eye level in the birches just off the west side. So much easier to get good photos when seated and steady!
I love how it looks with its feet in flowers.
Yep, this deck was now wedding-ready, a month and a half before the big day. Mission accomplished!
And from the comfortable remove of having done it, I am now hugely enjoying birding from the west side. I go out there just after 7 AM and don't come in until about 9:30, my joy-cup full of warblers, vireos, tanagers, thrushes, nuthatches...holy COW it's great!
A wee bit of what I've been seeing:
Chestnut-sided warbler, ahhh
a very bright male Cape May warbler (one of dozens on dozens)
The birding has been fabulous. And on the deck itself, Salvia guaranitica attracts all the rubythroats to the second floor.
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