The Greenhouse, Occupied

It's just a whole 'nother thing, looking at this house all red and cornsilk yellow. I love it. I love the way it looks against the sky and the landscape. Forest green turns out to be a great accent color (along with cobalt blue) for the red. So the greenhouse, which was already pretty groovy-looking, looks even groovier now.

While the Big Sit was going on, I grabbed Tools, who didn't mind being pulled away from birdwatching. His favorite bird is a fast-rising ring-necked pheasant, anyway. I asked him to come down and look at the sagging roofline on the greenhouse. He recommended a support pole, a floorjack if you will, and even texted me a photo of it from our local Lowe's. My personal tool/gizmo shopper. It's a 7'0" - 7' 4" adjustable pole. You put it in place and crank it up until it's bearing some weight.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as a floorjack. That's what Tools is for. That, giant concrete drills, and decoration.

He arrived at the Big Sit like Knight Rider in a new graphite-gray Corvette, which was most unfortunate, because we had to look at that car all day long, sitting in our driveway, totally outclassing every other vehicle that arrived. It was harrible.

The manifestation of the floorjack. It's smack in the middle of the floorspace, which is taking some getting used to, but the greenhouse no longer looks swaybacked, like an elderly horse. And I like the color!

Now that's a nice topline. Much better. I'm also diggin' the ketchup and mustard color scheme of the house. Bill pointed that out. At first I was most chagrined, then embraced it.

 Inside, Salivia greggii "Desert Blaze" is blooming like mad! It survived transplanting and repotting without even so much as a shrug or dropped leaf. May it keep going. I'd love to carry it over the winter, since I'd been looking for it for about a decade without success, and found it at a farmer's market in Brunswick, Maine this summer.
This is one of my favorite plants, an icy bright variegation on a theme. In the foreground is a small red mandevilla that just had to come in when it got nippy. And the beautiful lacy-leaved vine in the corner is pink jasmine. I cannot wait until it blooms. It grew and grew all summer with nary a blossom. I think I see tiny buds...mmmm.

Geraniums "Frank Headley" and "Happy Thought Pink."

I keep trying to get a shot of the golden arbor vitae that does it justice. I'll have to wait for sun.

Every once in a great while, there is sun.

And when there is I scat up to the towertop to have a look-see. For those who wonder what it's like up there... looking north

 looking east

and looking south

and looking west as the sun drains away.

A House in Use

The Big Sit was a housewarming, really, many of our favorite people coming from all over, bearing carbs for our table. There was a preponderance of doughnuts and baked goods made with apples, and it was all delicious!

I got to listen to Steve the Royal Meteorologist for the Whipple Bird Club give his weather report for the day. He has this radio voice I love, very resonant and authoritative.

Margaret and I arm-wrestled. These are actual, unretouched photographs of Zick beating someone, anyone, at arm wrestling. Beating Margaret!! who's been workin' out. Guess all that laundry totin' and lawn rakin' has had an impact.



Yee-haw! Ain't tellin' what we wuz wrasslin' fer.

Towertop was very very beautiful.

Having so many friends come was a treat in itself. But there was one housewarming gift I'd been looking forward to for months. Terry Lobdell came from northwest Pennsylvania with our sweet and wonderful friend Dallas, bearing bat boxes he'd made himself. Three of them. Not just bat boxes like you'd get at a nature shop. These are bat manses. Bat Taras. Bat Taj's. This is Mimi soaking up some of Terry's amazing bat wisdom. I didn't manage to get a photo of Dallas.

They're huge and heavy and well-insulated, with room for hundreds of bats inside three compartments. And Terry mounted two of them on our deck, and he put the third (an observation box you can OPEN UP so you can PEEK at the BATS through PLEXIGLAS) yes I am shouting

on a 4 x 4 that supports my clothesline. It was featured in the previous post.

Terry's van, which is a rolling hardware store. He is the cutest. He knows so much about bats, and yet he told me he learns volumes each season. I know how he feels. There is so very much to know about bats.

 I love that there are people on this earth going around doing things for bats, spending their own time and money helping creatures that terrify most people. That wasn't very well put, but you understand. It just moves me.

From the amount of time and thought Terry and Dallas put into mounting these boxes, I am sure that if there are bats to be got here, we will get them. Mimi, who loves bats more than I, if that were possible, came away with a serious case of bat box envy. We'll have to do something about that.

Terry broke for lunch in the Air Chair. Yes, he fed Chet Baker. That's what the tongue action's about.

Soon, it was time for a fashion show. Phoebe came out in her homecoming dress.

Oona led the processional.

Yes, That Oona. See her (and Chet) in 2007 here. OMgosh, Chet looks like he just came out of the dry cleaners, doesn't he? So crisp, so spiffy, so very young. Two, in fact. Lawd. And in December, he's about to be nine...

Speaking of things growing up right under your nose...

I made Phoebe take off the horse head for at least one photo. We like her color choice. It's a red red year here.

There was a whole lotta hangin' out going on that Sunday. The new porch, a huge hit. And technically, it still fell within the 17' Big Sit Circle when people were on the porch. So you could "birdwatch" from towertop or porch and still count what you saw, if you saw anything, which mostly we didn't.

Mimi and Marcy and Creeper Phoebs.

Later that afternoon, Ohio University English professor Mimi took Phoebe in hand for a trip through the Common Application for college. Yikes. This is something best done with a non-family member, Phoebe tells me. So much the better when it's a super-literate university educator huge Pirates fan musician singer bat loving and beloved non-family member.

Pawpaw processing will still happen, whether I can eat them or not. Now I just get to share them.

Sun will slant across the new front porch and the bonsais will turn red, then orange, then crimson

and the man who set it all in motion will finally exhale. Thank you, Bill.

And thank you to our friends at Before and After Remodeling.  Mighty nice work!

Mission Creep in House Renovation

When you're giving a house a major facelift, Other Things are bound to crop up.

 They might include rotting window trim that lets water cascade onto your computer table and dresser. There might be roof vents that were never properly installed, that flap up in a westerly wind and let water pour onto your fine art prints in the upstairs storage room, considerably reducing your stock. There might be a set of old deck stairs that aren't worth ripping off the house. Which means you need a new set built.

There might even be a heavy metal awning over your front porch that needed 12 bolts when it was originally installed, but was only given (gulp) three, and they are on the bottom, such that the whole damn awning has pulled away from the house and is threatening to brain the house occupants. 

And all this time Bill had been telling me my hanging baskets were too heavy. 

Hey. They ain't heavy. They're my flowers. And I have been given clearance, with the awning freshly re-installed, to hang as many as I want. Craig said so.

Mission creep. It happens. The front stoop obligingly fell apart during the project, forcing the issue and nearly twisting the ankle of one of our brave crew. Note to self: Pacific red cedar is expensive, and it lasts exactly 14 years, and then it falls apart. Do something different this time.

What was different was Trex plastic board, made from milk jugs. Yay! In a fetching shade of milk chocolate brown. And there's that awning, newly re-attached. Whew!

I thoroughly enjoyed capturing the renovation in every light condition, every mood. These evening clouds. Good grief. Underlighting, anyone? Does it make me want to paint them? Yes, it does. Do I paint them? No, I have to clean the house again. People are coming...

Because Trex board sags, you have to build the whole stoop out of pressure-treated wood, and then put the Trex over that. It was a whole lotta building. I was surprised to find no rats or snakes holed up under the old stoop. Come on. Something...but it was innocent of tenants, nor any trace of them.

The finished stoop. We decided to take it all the way over to the kitchen wall, which essentially gave us another outdoor room. We've got a couple of chairs out there and Bill and I enjoy sitting out there in the (short) evenings, taking in the view from our new little verandah. Of all the changes, that porch is the one that probably pleases us most, and we hadn't even been planning to do it. Just goes to show you that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. 

On the shade of red we chose...Bill and I pored over paint chips and finally bought a quart of the red we liked best, the one that most evoked a barn, that wasn't too hot or too fire-enginey, that wasn't too maroon, that was just right. He slapped it on a goodly section of the tower, in back, visible from the kitchen window, where we looked at it for a couple of years. Yes, we move slowly, but when we move...We liked it in the chip, but liked it even better on the siding. So we bought a whole bunch of it and stored it in the basement. I told the crew when they arrived, "That paint's been sitting here for two years. Gonna have to stir it a bit..."

 My friend Orly from California pointed out that Norman Rockwell liked that color, too...here's his studio! Slightly darker, but virtually the same hue of weathered brick red. Validation from one of the greats.

Now, I would have added contrasting trim, but who am I to question Norman Rockwell? Fact is, that red sings against green and sky blue and cloud white.

from Wikimedia Commons, thank you so much!

The Locavore Science Chimp, processing pawpaws in the evening light. You see the garage is still sickly grey-green. Can't afford to do the garage right now. But we have enough Hardie board left over from the big job to do it! Mission creep! Just give us a few years...gotta write that best-seller.

Panoramic photo by Phoebe, taken with my iPhone. Amazing!

Everybody Loves Chet Baker

Chet Baker was a little flummoxed at first by the arrival, each  morning, of a crowd of cars, trucks and trailers to his quiet country home. He greeted each one with a salvo of barking.

Then he'd scoot across the lawn to meet them and greet them.

They all came to love him.

And he loved them back.

At unguarded moments through the day I'd catch them scratching his back, hear them talking to him.

I took to leaving the back deck slider open so he could come and go as he pleased. 

He had work to do, bringing smiles.

And no morning meeting was complete without a little Bacon.

Of course I am needed here. I help them all day long, and I have to hear what I'll be working on.

Now that the work is done, I know Chet misses the men, and I'm sure they miss him too.

House Update: Moving Into the Red

What a blast, to upload these photos taken morning after morning, in varying light and glorious autumnal skies, to see the transformation of our shabby tired-looking house into a spiffy new barn. Before and After Remodeling was getting busy with it. 

Everybody liked this vining red mandevilla, and Aaron painted primer carefully around her 

as foreman Craig looked on.

I didn't realize I have such a penchant for hot colors until we painted the house red. This tangerine hibiscus makes my heart sing. Against barn red, hm. They're fighting with each other.

Maybe I'll pull her out a little farther from the siding. This is why we love container gardening. It's movable color, movable beauty.

In addition to having the house re-sided and painted, we were replacing nine windows. These windows had been shot for years. The seals were all broken, and they were permanently fogged when we bought the house in 1992. You couldn't see nuffin' out of them. They also had ugly metal dividers down the middle of the view that you couldn't see in the first place, which made it all even more discouraging. 

I countered this by making the inside view as terrific as I could. 

Foggy windows, fabulous orchids.

When time came to put the new windows in, I insisted on being present, to be the one to move the orchid collection out of the way, the one to put the plants back in their precise places. You know, because some like more sun than others, and some like to be cooler and shadier, and only Mother knows those things. Or cares.

Donny and Jessica, if I seem fussy about those orchids, which look like piles of straplike leaves now when they're dormant, this is why. They're well worth getting all fussy about. Obviously, orchids like fussy people like me to fuss over them.

So I moved all the orchids onto the bed to wait for the new windows to go in. One already had--see the window in the right corner?

We hit our only major snag with an inattentive Lowe's employee who somehow managed to turn our order for single-pane crank-out windows into dopey dual pane slot windows. Seven times over. I walked into the bedroom to find this. My view was bisected by a six-inch divider, the window split into two narrow portals. Ummm, no. Nonononono noooo. That's the kind of window you put in an institution where you don't want people crawling out of them and escaping over the fence in their backless gowns. Why would anyone, especially nature freaks, want a huge metal panel smack down the middle of their view? Ack! Send them back! Begone!

This mess-up by Lowe's would result in almost a month's delay in window installation. Rats. But these things happen in any big project. I took it in stride; I think Donny was a lot more worked up about it than I was. And there was plenty for the Before and After crew to do in the meantime. 

There was a hiatus while we worked at the Midwest Birding Symposium in mid-September. A lot happened while we were gone. We drove up the driveway on Sunday afternoon, holding our collective breath, to find this...aieee!!

Wow. Just wow. What a huge difference the horizontal Hardie board makes on the old part of the house. Running it all the way to the ground was definitely the right move. At long last, the two pieces of our intentionally crazy house are pulled together into one.

The other thing that jumped out at me when the house was finally transformed was the golden arbor vitae on the corner near the front door. Man, it looks so beautiful against the red. It looks like we planned it, to set off the house. I just thought it was pretty so I bought it and planted it when it was about six inches tall. But now it's all grown up with a brick-red foil to glow against, and it sings. So does the Japanese maple on the far left, which happens to be a bonsai that I planted out in the yard. It's about 30 years old, just like the ones in my collection, but it's 100 times bigger than they are. That's what a little root room will do for you.

The Bacon approves. More on The Bacon to come. He liked being part of this project!