Hoopla, Coming Up! But First, We Must Renovate!

Yep, I'm blogging again, having taken a "break" since April (What is it now, September 6?) As you'll see, it was hardly a break. I'm blogging not because I think the world ought to care what paint colors I chose for a renovation, but because I think that when you've worked hard, you should reflect on it and celebrate it. And when you and your beloveds have gone through an enormous life passage, writing about it and documenting it is a good thing to do all around. So much happens that we forget, and I love having a written and pictorial record of so many life passages here on this blog. If you enjoy reading it, that's great! If it inspires you to make some changes for yourself, so much the better!

This July, Indigo Hill was host to a wedding celebration for Phoebe and Óscar, who had a bare-bones, unwitnessed courthouse wedding in Indiana in January 2024, just a few weeks after he came to America for good. It was a requirement of the "fiancé visa" that they be wed within 90 days of his arrival from Spain. I didn't even have time to get out there to witness it; they just marched themselves right in and did the deed. Afterward, they went out for doughnuts. Delicious doughnuts, but still. 

We all thought there should be a little more hoopla than that...

We planned it around the flowers. Phoebe and I walked the meadows and watched, and it became clear to us over the last few years that the very end of July was peak for the wild bergamot, the woodland sunflowers, the purple coneflower. These would be the stalwarts, the backbone of our celebration. 

In so many ways, it was always about the flowers. It was about the outdoors and what the skies were doing; about living on this land. So we tried to ascertain when the moment of peak beauty might be. June as a wedding month has been done. So has May. We wanted it to be in our time, in July, the month when we both were born, when the insect music swells, and all the late flowers are having a riotous party in the wildflower meadow. When the butterflies are dancing, and all nature is celebrating anyway. We knew we’d be at the mercy of the weather; one always is when planning an outdoor event. But we couldn’t imagine anything for the ceremony but being outdoors, where we're happiest.

And so in April 2024, I began mowing what we came to call the wedding grounds. And I began weeding and mulching all the gardens around the house with a bit more than my usual tenacity. I figured if I kept up with it, I wouldn’t have a horrendous push of clearing and weeding at the end. And that proved to be the case. Just a topoff weed and water, some fresh mulch and a couple of final mows and I was good to go. If I’m good at anything, it’s maintenance. Faithful to the task, no matter how long it takes, and how many times it has to be repeated. I just keep going, and I enjoy keeping going.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, and that's bad when you are a linear thinker like me. Because preparations for this wedding had started in December 2023, when I started purging my belongings for the renovation. Not that the house needed it, much. Oh Lord, did it need it.

The preparation all started in earnest on February 14,  2024, when I had all the floors redone and the walls painted. I was a full part of the two-man crew (Walt and Hero), here putting my fan together,

who swept through my house, making it beautiful. 

My bigass new fan-that-looks-like-a-windmill is one of my favorite things in the whole house. It takes me to the prairie and makes a wonderful breeze! 

These two West Virginians sure know what they're doing, and I'd hire them again in a heartbeat. It was a surprise to me how hard I had to work to clear the decks for them to do their work. Like, I popped out of bed when I heard their trucks pull in before daylight, and when they finally left in the afternoon, I was a limp, wet rag, done in. I was also the gopher for anything they needed from town, and many days I'd have to run in with a list and go into Lowe's Hell to try to find things I had never even heard of. That was hard. 

Redoing the paint and all the flooring was like having to pack up and move, without going anywhere. Because we were replacing all the floors, we had to clear all the furniture out of each room, and find places to put it while the flooring went down. 

 Kitchen hell, full of foyer stuff while the yellow

foyer's being painted. A torn-up kitchen is always the worst, right? Because even though everything is torn to pieces, you still have to eat. When you're a half-hour from town, you don't just pop out to dinner. You deal with it. Thank goodness we weren't doing a full kitchen renovation, just paint and floors. The hard maple cabinets dating to 1999 aren't going anywhere, though I could sure use new countertops and sink. But I'll think about that later.

 In the living room, my giant built-in wall of natural history books had to be weeded through so I could empty the shelves so they could be painted Northwoods Brown. UGH!! Awwwful job. I did that in the six weeks before the renovation began. This is just half of them.

The ones I wanted went in boxes in the basement for later, and the ones I didn’t also went in boxes, to be donated to Gorman Nature Center in Mansfield, Ohio, for distribution to biologists and field naturalists around the state, via free tables at conventions. That was deeply satisfying to me, and I thank Dave McShaffrey of Marietta College, biology prof and fine human, and Gorman Nature Center director Jason Larson for making my dream a reality, 567 volumes over. How did I have 567 books to give away? Well, every time a book came in for review at Bird Watcher’s Digest, Bill, who never got rid of anything, brought it home. It was my job to find a place for it, and I had long since run out of space upstairs and started putting them in the basement. Please, make it stop! But he never stopped bringing books home. He just couldn’t say no to them. It took me a long time to go through all those books, and it was painful both emotionally and physically, but they were heavy and the great groaning shelves of them were unsightly and there was no reason to keep them all. 

And that's why we don't do regular book reviews in BWD Magazine. Because we all work remotely, with a tiny staff, and there is no depository (namely, my house!) for all the books that would flood in if we did. Logistics rule, always. 

Here's the after effect. Thoroughly weeded, space opened up (that has since been filled again). 

My bookshelves are still full, never fear, but they look ever so much better, painted and orderly with a few nice knickknacks scattered through them.

When the living room lighting was out and the carpet was torn up...man. That was rough.  And we started on Valentine's Day, so it wasn't very nice outdoors. But it had to be done. If not now, when? 

Here's the before of the living room. It was green, and the walls and ceiling were thoroughly smoked from weeks of power outages when all we had was the fireplace to keep warm. Real tired carpet on the floor, that had been through two kids and a dog (though the Bacon never, ever peed on rugs!) and huge creamy coffee mugs being spilled on it again and again. 

And here's the After. I went with all luxury vinyl plank flooring. I chose a Benjamin Moore color called Elkhorn for the walls, and Northwoods Brown for the beams. I wanted to work with the colors of the fireplace and make it feel cozy and denlike. I'm really happy with how it turned out. 

Before the renovation, I never sat in the living room. I was either in the studio working, cooking in the kitchen, or I was in bed. The living room belonged to the kids and the TV. But after? Yeah. I actually sit in that leather recliner from time to time, and sometimes I nap on that nice leather couch!

See that giant white chair under the bird plates? I bought it for Curtis. And he refused to get up on it, using the couch instead. So I covered his end of the couch with a furry slipcover and he loved it. And, Lordy be! I sat in the giant white chair instead, and I loved that. I had a reading nook for the first time since I left Virginia! I had SO much fun hanging all my bird paintings on the walls. Finally, they had a place to rest, and I think they look awesome. The whole place is a gallery. Better on the walls than in boxes in the basement! 

And then about a month ago Curtis decided he'd take over that chair that I bought for him. And it being white, it needed a cover, and he is in it ALL THE TIME and that, my friends, is that. I can't complain. I got it for $74 at Valu City Furniture, and it was meant to be his all along. It's the most deluxe dog bed any dog ever had.

The living room brings me joy every time I walk into it. Still.

The old kitchen accent color was Cantaloupe. I was sooo sick of Cantaloupe. I don't even like cantaloupe.

For the renovation, I chose an accent color called Lush, which is a gorgeous deep green that just seems to make the poplar wood trim sing. 

And of course the plants look great against it. 

The front door got a new coat of vibrant blue paint as well. Color is the thing. After decades in a tentatively-painted, mostly whitish interior, I'm a bit Iris Apfel about color. Not apologizing! The barn-red siding with the blue roof works for me, and I'm just moving some color indoors now.

Using Lush on all the accent walls really pulled the house together.

I used it in the studio, too, and it didn't cut the light all that much, which had been my rationale for keeping the studio white for 25 years. Dang it!

I needed some color in there, too! and I absolutely love it. It brings out the warm oranges and browns of my favorite wood colors.

Antique oaken flat file from Cranston Real Estate in Marietta. Purchased for $350, and priceless to me.

Crammed with original art. (I sorted and purged that, too, during the renovation. What a JOB.

I'd had this (photo) slide cabinet for 40 years. Slides. Remember those?  During the renovation, I finally boxed up the slides in labeled boxes, tore out the dividers, and spray- painted that sucker with baby-chick yellow enamel. I can't tell you  how much fun it was to figure out where all my pens and mechanical pencils and envelopes and drafting tools and paintbrushes would go; my boxcutters and external hard drives and bluebird field notebooks; my flash drives. paper clips. binder clips, and pencil leads...get you one of these old slide cabinets and go to town! As long as the drawers are labeled you're going to be able to lay hands on anything you desire. Talk about a clutter-killer and mood-booster!

I wanted a studio that would make me want to write and create wonderful things. And I wanted flooring that matched Curtis' brindle. Got both those things. Next it'll be time to create wonderful things. But first, there was the wedding to prepare for.

Well, this is an elephantine post, but I had to start somewhere. I'm going in a line with this, because it's a mighty big thing to try to throw a lasso around.

I got the sweetest email from a reader the other day, trying not to be obtrusive but just checking in to see if I was still alive, I guess, and to tell me she missed the blog. I thanked her and replied that I was working on a new series of posts and the reason(S) for my protracted absence would soon be revealed. 

 I hope you enjoy it. It's nice to be back.

Home Renovation: A Total Tear-Up

 Faithful blog readers have noticed that my last post before April 2nd's post went up on Jan. 24. I rarely go this long without posting, and when I do people start emailing me to ask if everything's OK. Well, in mid-December '23 I started cleaning closets, and I went into closets all over the house. Horrible job, because this is an out of sight-out of mind family. I dealt with the accumulation of decades. Nine contractor bags of clothes just from my closet. I'd already dealt with Bill's clothes, but I got another five bags out of Liam's.  By mid-January, I was finally mentally ready to tackle the books, and it was even worse than I thought it would be, because books are heavier than clothes, shoes and junk. They're heavy enough as it is!

Friends rode in to save me, helping me sort and even hauling the books away to good homes--giveaways at the Ohio Natural Diversity Conference. I am SO grateful to Dave McShaffrey and Jason Larson for spearheading the Save Zick from Being Crushed by Books effort. I gave away at least 500 books--really good books! Beautiful books! and I hope they're helping naturalists all over Ohio before long. 

I piled stuff up in the garage for ReStore--two sofas. Ceiling fan. A dozen large boxes of stuff. I was in constant motion. I never dreamt how much work it would be to purge the house (even partially!) 

The impetus for all this was a much-needed renovation. I had to get rid of that old allergen-rich carpet, and luxury vinyl flooring seemed like just the thing. I had put it down in a bathroom some years ago and love it. I needed to get the house interior painted. To do both those things at the same time, I had to get all the excess stuff out of the way. Everything had to come up off the floors, off the walls, and out of those groaning bookshelves.

If anyone had told me how much effort it would require to work ahead of the two-man painting/flooring crew, I wouldn't have believed it. I walked into the project with the reality of the work involved hitting me harder every day. To be honest, the thing that had kept me from tackling this for so long was the books. And rightly so. If ever a job deserved to be put off, this was it. But I got it done. Well, I still have a mess of non-natural history books in the basement to box up and get to the public library. There's always, always more to do for a crew of one, cleaning up after a family.

Once the crew arrived on Valentine's Day, it was OK GO. It was all I could do to stay ahead of them, moving stuff, endlessly cleaning, cleaning, finding other places for things to go. 

Thank God Phoebe didn't want her beautiful bedroom renovated. She picked the four wall colors when she was a pre-teen and we think it's lovely. So that's where a lot of the furniture and paintings and knicknacks went. It was piled solid with everything.

Having one's kitchen in this shape is a real trial. Every time I thought we had reached maximum entropy, we went deeper. Say goodbye to that green linoleum! That ucky yellow foyer! Wait 'til you see what we did there!

 When I wasn't moving and cleaning and boxing stuff, I was running to Lowe's, looking for supplies I knew not what to call or how to find. It was a special kind of hell, but I knew it would be richly worth it in the end. 

I needed a new ceiling fan that wasn't hopelessly homely. I went to Lowe's with low expectations. But fans have come a long way! This fan looks just like a windmill. I LOVE my fan. So much. To be honest, I have never before seen a ceiling fan I considered beautiful or additive. Except for this one, which I fell in love with on the spot. It's the Harbor Breeze Henderson 60" ceiling fan. The blades match my wood-like flooring. I ordered the galvanized finish (instead of black or bronze) because it looks more like a real windmill. Hero is installing the blades here.

Walt (kneeling) and Hero wiring the fan. They do it all! This picture has a Renaissance quality to it--love their poses and the light.

The crew of two is terrific. Walt and Hero were here for five weeks--warp speed for all the painting, outlet replacing, fixing and flooring they had to do. Their trucks pulled up in the driveway before daylight each day and I got up, ready to work, too. That's all I did. They're here today in fact for a sixth week, finishing up on some electrical and window trim work. I'm washing screens and cleaning stinkbugs and ladybugs by the billion out of each window as they go. Lord. There's always more.

Enough about that. Here's how the living room looks now.

And I am so, so happy. Got myself that leather sofa I've been dreaming of, with a secure furry corner cover for Curtis to snuggle into. He loves it!!

Flooring is Toasted Barnboard by Nextfloor  (luxury vinyl). It was the only flooring that looked good with both the fireplace and the honey-orange hard maple kitchen cabinets and trim. 99% of vinyl and laminate flooring is way too gray for me. I'm a warm earthtone person.

The wall color is Elk Horn by Benjamin Moore. Trim is Northwoods Brown. I worked on colors for a couple of weeks, hauling home chips and sample cans. I used Benjamin Moore's virtual visualizer on their website--such fun to "paint" rooms all kinds of colors, to see what it would look like! I also sprang for a home interior color planner from Etsy. It's a PDF with suggestions of colors for different applications, helping you decide wall and trim colors that all harmonize together. The Manchester Tan/ Earthy Bohemian collections were my jams. The designer is a woman named Ilaria. I highly recommend her.

Interestingly, Elk Horn and Northwoods Brown were not even remotely in the color group. I had to deviate to get what I needed for the living room. But though I went through a ton of second guessing and apprehension, I'm delighted with my choices, and the house looks pulled together anyway. The key is not using too many different colors. Gone, at least for me, are the old days of painting each room a wildly different color. 

The stone fireplace was the inspiration for the new color. Paint and flooring revolved around it. I wanted colors that would set off and compliment the local sandstone it was built from. It really is the centerpiece of the house.

And I finally got a handle on those bookshelves. Still a bit yet to do. I'm trying to find someone local to clean my CD carousel changer. Electronics shops laugh at me because the machine is obsolete and they can't get parts. Dammit, I have 500 CD's I still love to play (after weeding), and I hope to find someone who will at least take a look at it. Until then, the CD's stay in boxes downstairs, and there are some empty shelves. It's incredible to me that there is any space on those shelves, considering how many books there were before the purge.

I sprang for a triple-thick tufted Ruggable where I do morning yoga, and where Curtis does his Doga.  It's the Rowan Teal Blue and Copper oriental style rug. I'm giving the names of the things I chose, because I figure some people might like them and want to know. 

I've made two reading nooks in the living room and it's really changed my life. I have always read in bed because I didn't have a place to do it in the living room. As a result I would read about three pages and it's lights out. The book would fall and I'd be out. Oh, it's so delicious to sink into a recliner or oversized sofa-chair with a good light and read a book NOT in bed! 

I never got a chance to sit in the Big Chair once Phoebe and Oscar got a load of it! It's a cuddle chair for them. They read there for hours in the few days they were home on spring break. There's little that warms my heart more than seeing my beloveds enjoying the new reading nook.

That's the living room. And this is the real renovation, no foolin'!

Next: Kitchen, foyer, studio...

Into the New Year, with Gratitude

Purging is a process of unearthing, of rediscovery. You can discover old pastel china from your former life, and you can discover essential truths about life and love, if you can look far enough past the drudgery to let them come arrowing in. 

I found an envelope addressed to my mother, Ida, at the first retirement community she inhabited. It was Phoebe's original birth announcement.

Dad had already died when Phoebe was born, but I was so elated to be able to present a grandchild to my mother’s arms. 

July, 1996. She only made it out here twice. Once for our wedding, and once for Phoebe's birth, and then her traveling days were over.

Phoebe’s birth announcement was a perfect time capsule. 

Inside the capsule, I found my drawing of an eastern phoebe and twinflower, Linnea borealis, the plant that gave her her middle name. There were photos of the Earthlings we once were. Phoebe was such a sprite, such an old soul,with dark blue eyes that looked right into your core. She still does that. She was so bright we called her New Penny, shiny-fresh and coppery. 

She was amazing. All new babies are, but this one...she watched everything, took it all in, and seemed to understand.

 

This photo says it all to me. The wonder of looking down at a squirming, kicking infant and thinking, “We MADE this!” How did that happen? Look what love has done!

But the wonder only grows. You see your kids becoming who they are meant to be. I watch Liam scrambling over wet boulders to capture sunset bounce light on wet black sand, risking wet sneakers and turning an ankle for the light, the light. I watch him finding secret hidey holes and branches to climb on, watch him soaking up the past and immersing himself in the present, watch his considerable imagination running away with him, and I understand exactly what he’s feeling, and how great is his need for the undiscovered and mysterious, and how, though he doesn’t quite grasp it yet, beauty is his primary motivator. It’s not a bad coach, beauty. Works for me, and I can see it working for him.

Roman Theater, Merida, Spain

I watch Phoebe’s clockwork clicking along, getting everything planned out in the manner of her sire, and I feel him smiling with pride at her quick decisiveness and her seemingly effortless way of logisticizing our peregrinations. We’ve just finished a trip to peninsular Spain and the Canary Islands with Phoebe entirely at the helm.

 She did all the booking and planning and marshaling of her brother and mother; even all the driving! I see Bill’s ridiculously acute logistical skills coming to bear with everything she does. There’s his intensity, his tightly-wound drive to get it all right. Of course, no matter how smooth it is, it’s not effortless; I can smell the smoke coming out of her ears. The truth is she can’t help but do it; she’s like a hunting dog trained for the point and fetch, because it’s in her genes.

It was very, very windy in Extremadura.

 But she got something from me, too, to balance that intensity. Phoebe can plan and logisticize like a demon, but she is then blissfully able to stop the whirring of her gears and let herself sink into the moment. She wants to set it all up just right, but then she can enjoy herself and be present for whatever unrolls from there.  That, I think, is a balance that I gave her, one her dad was always and forever yearning for: the ability to turn off the yammering left brain and let the right brain just be. Thank God that girl can sink into the moment, drive roots deep into any place she lands, and not yearn for something else that must be better than the here and now. She can thank her mama for that balancing influence. Genes, mixing, tumbling, and creating irreplaceable beings, beings that in many ways surpass either of their parents. The genes he gave her, the genes WE gave her. I won’t forget the we of it all. I won’t let bitterness in the door. I’ll keep sight of the gifts and forget the travail. 

Watching the combination of genes from each of us play out in these kids, I feel incredibly lucky to be here to see the show play out. I also feel a deep sadness that I’m the only one now who gets to experience this, the watching and the wondering and the sometimes searing jolt as I figure out the provenance of every little one of their traits. I wish Bill could have been here to see that. We all wish he could have been granted a full measure of years, perhaps to realize and reap the rewards of all the things he initiated, all the seeds he sowed. But no, he had to go at only 57.

They’re gifts, these kids, and he gave them to me, he who hid the LuRay dishes and he who left the jumbled gyre of his belongings. And nobody else but Bill, with his tremendous talent and humor and boundless vision and creative energy (and his utter disregard for anything resembling drudgery) would have left such an intractable mess, or could have given these irreplaceable human beings to me, and to the world.

Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, 2000. Liam was celebrating his first birthday. Phoebe was 4 1/2.
See the poster art behind us? Green kingfishers, by JZ.

So Bill Thompson III gets a pass on all this—on everything!— and my enduring love and gratitude for being exactly who he was. And now,  if my luck holds out, I get to be the one who sees these good young people through the portal to their futures, who maybe someday gets to see them lay out the train tracks, sliceable wooden food and herd of wild plastic horses for their precious and irreplaceable beings. 

And won’t that be something?

All this, from cleaning out the disgusting mess of 27 years of hard, good living. If you go at it with an open heart, you can get a lot from purging, much more than the expected rewards of order and cleanliness, though they are great indeed.

 Watch Liam see his basement transformed, for the first time. Happy New Year! Throw some stuff out!