The Berm Works and the Chickens Prove the Size of their Brains

June 22, 2018July 29, 2018 / eponine3 / Leave a comment

I woke to the sound of a rain that made me think about the windows being open in the living room, and … uh-oh, might the wood floor be a puddle? It was the kind of a rain that resembles the sound of a feisty wind going through the leaves. I listened – if saying I listened both carefully and drowsily makes any sense – and couldn’t quite tell. Is that rain or is that wind?

Concern for the floor got me up. Dry. Good. Rain poured straight down, not in, not a lick of breeze. She wasn’t going to like this. The dog, I mean. This dog. This is her happy pug face on a sunny day, her cushy spot — not that anyone here brought that towel outside for her to have a soft bed to lay on during the construction of the coop…

This dog hates the rain, and it was raining hard. At a quarter to 6am it was light enough for me to see whether or not she was doing the thing(s) she must go out to do before she gets her breakfast every day. First order of business she managed quickly. You might think she would know by now, going on nine years old, that people can count, and we all know that one order of business does not make two. She thinks — every time it rains, every time we go through this routine — that she can scoot to the front door after half of the business is done, and we will let her back in. During the less-than-five minutes that we stood in the rain today, she got totally soaked, and predictably scooted, but this did not fool me any more than it has in the past. I picked her up and tossed her in the grass admonishingly. I wonder if she says to herself: One of these days, if I just keep trying, I might get away with that!

Coco finally complied, though not nearly as quickly as you would think – why can’t dogs just squat and go and be done with it? Why do they sniff and search and reject perfectly good spot after perfectly good spot? Surely she then thought (if she thinks, and that’s a leap) that this early morning torture was over, but no. I played her game now, the delay-for-no-apparent-reason game.

I meandered on the driveway (wet through already, what did it matter?). Wait, I can imagine her saying. That’s not the way this works. I do my thing(s) and we go back in. It’s raining!!!

Actually I wanted to check out the berm.

My property slopes gently toward the woods on the southeastern side. Having spent a great deal of time on the chicken coop construction site over the last few months, we could see the tendency of heavy rainwater to come down the driveway and wash through the mulch I had laboriously spread on the upside of the site. This was not okay. Water will flow downhill, yes, but it might submit to some redirecting. Thus we had constructed the berm along the driveway…

…and ornamented it with 18 Rudbeckia plants last week. The long, low mound of a berm, we hoped, would be just high enough to keep the water on the driveway side. Once past the coop area, it could find its own path to the woods.

Sure enough! Not only did the water not wash over the coop area, it made itself a lovely winding path toward the woods, helped ever so slightly by me, raking the edges in the pouring rain. How perfect that this little volunteer stream found its own unboring path!

In my dreams the area through which this little stream flows is a woodland garden. The stream bed is carved out a bit more intentionally (by me, when the urge to play with dirt strikes again) and lined with stones that are big enough to stay in place but small enough to walk on when it’s not raining. Maybe there’s a little footbridge. All around there are various perennials that of course the deer will leave alone, and which will bring color and interest throughout the growing season. My friend Louisa said she has some shady plants, some kind of pachysandra she has too much of and is willing to share, and there’s mountain pink and foxglove and primrose and other abundant growth I can move from the raised beds in the other garden. We’ll see…

You have doubtlessly noticed the ridiculous birds in the above photo. Until now, as far as I know, they have not ventured into their primo home on their own. There, in the early morning pouring rain, I had found them huddled under the coop, wet and bedraggled, having obviously wandered out from under the shelter throughout the night. (Apparently we got five inches of rain last night, and it’s not done yet.)

By the time it was light enough for this photo, some had left the shelter and the huddle, but still not made their way up their designer ladder. Is this chicken playing the sympathy card or am I misreading her face? (The top of her head is supposed to be fluffy!)

I thought maybe they needed a little encouragement, so I tried catching some of them to put them in the dry space. I managed four, then gave up. Let these four, clearly too slow or not clever enough to evade me, be an example to the others. That’s wishful thinking of course – an hour or so later three remained in the dry, no others had followed suit, and one had hopped back out into the wet. At least I got the first photo of the view through the front window:

Chicken on roosting pole inside! That’s the idea! The two others are trying to figure out what they are walking on and maybe sending secret signals to their compatriots that this is a whole different surface than wet mulch under the feet and must be carefully considered.

The bottom line today is that these birds get no credit for brains. After all this work, if they don’t like their house, if they can’t figure out how to climb up the stairs and go through the door in the rain… All right, we figured out how to get the water to go where we wanted it to. Maybe there’s hope for chickens?

In the meantime, Coco found a blanket to snuggle into. She is no doubt dreaming of sunshine.

The New Chicken Coop Starts to Take Shape

June 21, 2018July 29, 2018 / eponine3 / Leave a comment

Whenever you venture into anything new, it can’t be all new. You always take yourself into it, and you are not new. You are well established. You know what you like, what you feel comfortable with, how you envision the outcome. You proceed with energy, intelligence and peculiarities as per your age, health condition and background. You work with resources you’ve either earned or been gifted, and with people you know, who in turn have their own well established set of norms. As Carly Simon put it (specific context of that song aside): Nobody does it quite like you!

Or like me. And thank God. Isn’t the unending variety of outcomes unendingly unboring? There’s nothing that says a chicken coop (or anything you make) must be unique — you can buy cookie-cutter chicken coops, and there is a place in the world for those — but I’m glad mine is unlike any other. The unique combination of ideas, skills, time, resources and energy, to say nothing of the site itself, all played into the original design and subsequent creative touches that make it one of a kind. I mean, how many chickens can enter their coop through an egg-shaped door by way of a ladder that looks like this?

Sandy gets all the credit for the idea, design, retrieval of branches from the woods, angle cuts to make the edges fit against the coop, good cheer throughout (who can’t smile looking at this?). But I am getting ahead of myself.

You start with basics, the basics of construction that other people have done a gazillion times before. The goal here – building a chicken coop – can be accomplished (or at least you can start this way) by doing what many people do when they want to do something and want to get familiar with it: Watch a YouTube video. Well, maybe more than one video. There are some great ideas out there, and no one has to reinvent the wheel. Just as we can do with cooking or exercising or gardening or anything, we take ideas from different people and make our own thing.

We also look at those guys and we say That’s not rocket science. And we gain some confidence and start to play. Besides confidence, we get all kinds of useful info: Trays that slide out for easy cleaning of, you know, chicken poop. Rocks around the outside perimeter as an extra measure against digging predators. Watering and feeding systems. An egg-shaped entrance for the birds!

But let’s keep it simple. Plywood comes in 4’x8’ sheets. Seems like a good size for a coop. How we got to 4’x8’3” I am not quite sure, but I think it happened during the initial setting of the posts. I’m here to say that setting four posts in the ground — such that they are correctly positioned (in relation to the existing coop), level, square and plumb – may not be rocket science, but it is harder than it looks. That alone took three of us pretty much all of one day.

It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but eventually you get it. Once it’s in place, you sure don’t want it to move, so you start mixing cement for the holes and you throw in a bit of prayer! I look at this picture now and I am amazed that 1. I did not get discouraged, and 2. I thought this was a weekend project! (Which is maybe why I didn’t get discouraged – how our inability to see the future serves us well sometimes!) It’s a lot of work, yes. But those chicks were in the basement and getting bigger every day and they had to get out of there, sooner rather than later. Look how big!

One step at a time, as they say. Or in this case one cut at a time, one screw at a time. The number of cuts, the number of screws – not only the permanent ones, but also the temp ones that braced the structure while the cement set – caused me to step back in time to when a person would have to make each cut with a handsaw, screw in each screw in with a screwdriver. Imagine. How good we have it! And onward we go. Plumb, square, level and with joists.

The next time we were all free to work on this, maybe two weeks later, came the platform. Now we can really start to see it. This is Henry putting up the first wall. He’s framing out an access door on that end.

The weather was so nice, perfect for this work (no bugs yet!) but the chicks had been in the basement for over a month now and it was starting to smell, so we decided to bring them outside. The dogs were highly entertained. Who wouldn’t be? What are those fluffy things?

The walls were next. The excitement of seeing it take shape really does keep you going.

On the front side, where the floor sticks out a bit, will be the brooding boxes for the hens to have their privacy while laying. Centered above that are the openings for two plexiglass windows so that we all can have the pleasure of seeing chickens on the roosting pole inside. (That is, if we can ever get them to go in their luxurious coop!) On the back side, between the platform and the horizontal 2×4 just above it, will be a long, horizontal flap of a door to get to the trays. On the near end will be the egg-shaped door.

Right, it’s not overly comfortable trying to use a heavy (heavy for me) cordless screwdriver when you are in an awkward position. But see, good weather, good friends, good eggs someday…

Dismantling the Old Coop Run

June 20, 2018July 29, 2018 / eponine3 / Leave a comment

I live in the woods, surrounded by giants. I always guessed that the oaks were about a hundred feet tall, which is deemed “somewhat tall” by tree standards. A hundred feet is in fact the average height for a mature white oak. Watch them sway in a strong windstorm and somehow they feel even taller. Mixed in with the oaks are beautiful beech trees, some also gigantic in my estimation, and cedars with their beautiful purplish wood. As happens in the real world, the strong crowd out the weak, blocking the sun, hogging the nutrients, leaving the struggling underlings often spindly or dead. One can ponder the parallels to our human existence while at the same time noting Hey, that dead cedar would make a good pole!

Thus the poles for the project were acquired, trimmed, propped up off the ground, and left waiting for their new useful purpose. If a tree could have preferences, I like to think it would rather be a pole for a chicken run than left to rot on the forest floor.

While in this early stage, I could not help but notice (and begin to accept the implications of the fact) that the project necessarily involved replacing the old coop’s run with a new run. This is the coop four years ago before the chicken wire became brittle and predators got in and we had to cover the lower half with lattice to protect the birds. Bradley and Lincoln had used oak they milled from trees on the property to build it, and I loved every aspect of it, but time and weather and bugs do their thing.

That’s Rise toddling toward it, seems like ages ago.

Rise at chicken coop.jpg

When you are going to build something, you have to ask yourself: How big do you want it? After some experience in these matters, you know that there are two questions you don’t want to ask yourself when it’s done: 1. Why didn’t I make it bigger? and 2. What was I thinking!? So I took some logs and 2x4s and roughly laid out the dimensions of the new coop and runs.

My ambitions were kept in check (thankfully) by the fact that the new run – to be attached to the old coop, to be attached to another new run and the new coop — is adjacent to the forest with its giant unmovable trees that defined the space. I am grateful that some decisions are not up to me.

So that we have our terms straight, the coop is the wooden building that houses the chickens at night and where they go to lay their eggs. This assumes the chickens are smart enough to go inside at night, which is debatable sometimes. In any case the run is the area that extends from the building, a partly sheltered enclosure that gives the birds space to move around in the fresh air, scratch for bugs, dust themselves, look busy. The run has to be enemy-proof, i.e. fox-proof, hawk-proof, raccoon-proof, owl-proof, coyote-proof, even nasty-neighbor’s-dog-proof. A run is essentially poles surrounded by wire fencing, but predators also have claws so you have to dig a trench and sink the wire into the ground so they can’t tunnel underneath. We’ll come back to that fun part.

By the way, if you have not seen a chicken dust herself, come visit sometime. It’s part of the entertainment here.

The poles and the layout were as far as we had gotten by the time we got the chicks in March. Remember how cute they were? (Your decision if I mean the little chicks or the little girls!)

So the old coop would remain but the old run with its sheltering roof had to be entirely dismantled. The supports were badly rotted, though I did not know the extent of the rot till later, so I climbed up there and, with a great deal of encouragement, got familiar with this tool and unscrewed the metal roofing.

Roofs that sit under a forest canopy get dirtier than you think. Seven years of leaves and sticks falling on it, plus some decomposition, growth of moss, etc. make it not so pretty. I have to say I quite enjoyed this task though because in no time at all…

…look how shiny! Metal roofing is amazing! It was like brand new after its scrubdown and rinse.

In the meantime Sandy was taking the old framework down.

It’s probably good I didn’t know how rotted these boards were when I was up on top. But down they came. Good call to replace them, wouldn’t you say? Surprisingly, some of them came in handy later.

The documentation of this project makes me realize how involved it was. Once the old run was gone, we had hardly begun!

A New Coop There Must Be

June 19, 2018July 29, 2018 / eponine3 / Leave a comment

All I wanted was to have fresh eggs again. Just a few hens, enough eggs to keep up my supply and have a few to give away. The remaining three birds from the last batch were over two years old and for reasons unknown not producing. I tolerated their freeloading for a while, then tried to give them away (to a good home or a pot somewhere, I don’t want to know). The weather in Virginia is nice for chickens, especially in the fall, so I let them free range more than usual, figuring nature could take its course. When it was two down, one to go, I went soft and kept the last, resilient old gray cooped up all winter. It’ll get nice again, of course, I thought, and then I’ll get some newbies and deal with integrating them.

March came, and with it, my granddaughters Rise and Eppie (aged 5 and 3) – a perfect time to get chicks. The day after the girls came, we drove to Crozet to get five silkies and six brahmas and to Southern States to get six Rhode Island Reds. The next day we stopped in Tractor Supply, unintending to get any more, but the name got me: Cinnamon Queens. Their heads had a swath of color like a chipmunk, which I admit is no reason to buy them, but the two little girls were staring alternately at me and these adorable little creatures, so yes, we left with four more chicks. Seems like enough, don’t you think?

This is Rise with one of the brahmas. I hope she never forgets when Oma got chicks!

How did that fluffy little chick got to be this massive chicken? (Turns out three of the six, including this one, are Brahma Boys and therefore need a new home, which I’m working on, sorry, fellas.)

brahma rooster.jpg

And here’s Eppie with a face only she can make.

My friend Sandy was very helpful with the set-up – the shavings, the heat lamp, the various ways of keeping these jumpy little birds from getting out of their designated space. I should have paid more attention, however, when he told me about his friend who had other kinds of chicks and how pretty and interesting and special they were. I had a lot going on with my own chicks in the house, two delightful little girls here, etc. Next thing I knew, Sandy showed up with a dozen more: four D’uccles, three black copper marans, a silkie/Easter egger mix, a bard rock/silkie mix, a maran/Easter egger mix, and two other beauties of unknown heritage.

This is a lot of chicks. You do the math. I’m too embarrassed. No way were these going to fit into our existing coop. We’ve had 15 in there, but not (gulp) that many (did you add it up?)… Plus, Sandy’s batch, which we combined with the silkies, were considerably smaller than the brahmas, reds and queens, happily chirping away in a separate enclosure. It slowly began to dawn on us that a new coop would solve the problems that might occur if we tried to integrate the Smalls with the Bigs. Note that two coops was not part of the original plan. All I had wanted was fresh eggs again.

Stay tuned for how the new coop took shape.

new coop.jpg

Unboring defined

June 27, 2016November 16, 2018 / eponine3 / 3 Comments

I walked out to feed the chickens yesterday morning and ended up with a clearer understanding of my unboring path.

There are now eleven chickens. We lost three when I started to feel sorry for them being cooped up in the coop all the time, nice as the coop is — even (one has to think) from a chicken’s point of view. Oh, let them out, voices said. Let them scratch in the dirt and find bugs and dust themselves in the sun if they want to. Give them The Life of a Chicken to Beat All. But place (any place) has its perils, as we may recall from the last post. I don’t know what got the first three, but let us assume a wandering fox or raccoon got lucky and slept that night on a very full stomach.

The fourth chicken may have met the same end, but I blame her demise on Bridget, my anomaly of a golden retriever. Whoever heard of a golden retriever that was anything but nice? Certainly she is mostly nice, but there are moments when she forgets her breed, when something else in her brain kicks in, and we have to bring her back to the norm, which is to say nice, which is apparently too much to ask on a consistent basis of this old rescue dog who endured in her earlier life only God knows what. Someday I hope I will again have a dog that is unequivocally nice. In the meantime it’s an imperfect world.

Bridget decided a few days after the now-twelve chickens were once more cooped that she wanted the hunk of bread that had been given to them, and pawed and gnawed at a weak area of the fencing and made a hole. How a bird got through that I cannot imagine, but clearly one did.

The now-eleven chickens of mine are the best-fed chickens in town. I bring scrap from the kitchen at work — leftover tomatoes and toast, carrot peels, squash seeds, etc. — and provide a frequent feast. Chickens, like most creatures, are seemingly oblivious to how good they have it, and carry on as if I am the average chicken keeper. As I deliver the pickle bucket full of goodies, they act like it’s run of the mill. Fine. I do not depend on their appreciation. We must just know we do good and keep on doing it regardless.

Ordinarily in the mornings I feed my [ungrateful] flock and put the now-empty bucket into my car and rinse it out when I get to work. But this time I chose to walk to the garden and use the water pump that Bradley and Beth thoughtfully put in the middle. It was a cool morning for late June in Virginia. Rain was in the air. I could not help but take a moment to look around at the various raised beds proliferating. I have to think whether I would describe them as proliferating beautifully or proliferating wildly. Either descriptor will do.

The lettuce catches my eye. Spectacular lettuce! We have been feasting on it for weeks and it just keeps coming. If you have not had lettuce fresh picked from a garden lately, you will have to remember how tender and tasty such lettuce is, though I served a salad to my friend Vernon the other night and his comments focused on the maple dressing instead. I was pleased just the same.

There is not much else in the garden I would call spectacular right now. The sugar snap peas and this planting of spinach are past. The catnip is ridiculously tall but I don’t need it. The cabbage, beets, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and cukes are on their way. The onions failed. There is one volunteer squash of an unknown variety that has taken over the compost. Whatever it is (and I expect we will soon know), it loves its bed. These leaves might be called spectacular.

The beets need weeding. Some of the weeds have been food for Japanese beetles, some of whom are still munching. As I pull the unwanted plants out, I considered leaving them in. What if, after I remove the obviously favored weeds, the beetles go after the untouched beet greens instead? But the weeds make it a mess and my sense of order triumphs. Out they go, regardless of my not having garden gloves on, because of course I came to the garden not to pull weeds or admire the lettuce or assess the glorious (if wild) results of rain + sun + healthy plants.

This half hour — this sequence of feeding chickens (because I will continue to curry their favor with goodies even if they never acknowledge me) to cleaning buckets (because it was Saturday and I didn’t want them sitting in the shed until Monday) to admiring lettuce (because there is nothing else you could do with that, other than pick and eat it, which came later) to weeding the beet bed (because of my need for ducks in a row) to muddy hands (because of recent rain and my unwillingness to go get gloves) — might strike the reader as a lot of boring tasks and a lot of justifying boring tasks, but in fact this half hour represents a portion of my unboring path.

It occurred to me that I call this site “an unboring path” and presumed that would be self-explanatory, but maybe it isn’t. Using a somewhat unorthodox word, I mean just what you think. I mean the opposite of boring, the opposite of uninteresting (I suppose we could follow the pattern here and say un-uninteresting?), the opposite of dull.

Tasks themselves are of course sometimes boring. Some people find baseball boring, or ironing, or reading technical manuals. I’m not talking about any one thing here as being boring or not. I’m talking about an enjoyable path, a richness, a fullness, a continuously evolving forward movement that you are joyfully and willingly engaged in through task, purpose, circumstance, feeling and decision. An unboring path is interesting, yes, but it’s interesting because you decide to be — wherever you are and as best as you are able — a part of what’s going on, involved. Interesting moments, ideas and experiences happen only sometimes by chance. They are also sought out or, when presented to you, chosen. They can lead to something new or something familiar. What matters is that you embrace your world, using what you have — your brain, your body, your hands, your heart, your time, your surroundings, your circumstances — to get the most out of life. What you have is partly of your choosing and partly not, an ever-unique, ever-evolving combination of factors that you help shape. An unboring path is not about passing time or sitting on the sidelines. It is not about lamenting what you don’t have. It is embracing what you do have and getting in there and doing the best you can with that and enjoying every minute.

I barely began contemplating this idea when a large, stinging-type insect appeared on the screen of my window — on the inside — unsure how and unable (though valiantly trying) to get to the other side of the screen. The word for him is doomed. Soon he was, first by my hand feebly, then by Samuel’s more definitively, dead as a door-nail as they say. Why do we say dead as a door-nail? he asks when the deed is done. What’s a door-nail?

I have slowly acclimated to the ease of using a search engine to answer questions, though I still often forget how easy and handy this is. This time I did not think twice, but instantly googled door-nail. The first benefit of this search came in the form of the passage often associated with this word, the introduction of Marley at the beginning of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

An unboring path includes the unexpected. It’s June, not Christmas, but here you have it, a most famous passage about a door-nail. I am very familiar with it. Our local Shakespeare theater http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/ performs A Christmas Carol every year, and every year I go there to see it if I can. George C. Scott in the film version is outstanding as well. I have heard this door-nail passage many times, and every time I do, I marvel at it. If you don’t find yourself marveling, read it again, slowly. Marveling will come. This short passage plainly and unexpectedly gives us the mastery of Charles Dickens: his cadence, word choice, imagery, humor. Truly marvelous. Even in June.

An unboring path includes things you didn’t know before. We have now found out that door-nails were/are a specific kind of nail that 1. need to be hit hard on their heads repeatedly to get through the wood and naturally end up “dead,” and 2. were historically longer than the thickness of wood they penetrated and therefore had to be hit from the other side to knock the point into the wood so that there would be nothing sticking out to hurt anyone, rendering the nail permanently lodged in said door and henceforth unable to ever move (even if it were animate in the first place), or to ever be retrieved, or to ever be useful again (on account of its point being bent) even if it were somehow taken out, and therefore in these ways also “dead.”

In the search that produced the door-nail passage, Shakespeare was mentioned as not being the origin of the door-nail idiom, but the Bonus Facts part of the article included several other Shakespeare facts, including this one about his use of un- words.

Shakespeare is, in fact, the first known user of many words that start with un-. He was a fan of the prefix and attached it to words that previously hadn’t used un-. Examples include unhelpful, uneducated, undress, and unreal, plus some 300 other un-words.

After the chickens and after the garden, the stinging insect came unbidden, producing the door-nail question that unleashed Dickens and Shakespeare. I feel quite certain that Shakespeare would approve of “unboring.”

A mermaid story

June 4, 2016July 29, 2018 / eponine3 / 2 Comments

I’ve been an airbnb host for more than a year and a half. My little Golden Hill cottage is occupied every weekend with guests from here and there. It may not look like it, but the cottage is kind of like a mermaid. And I don’t mean just any mermaid.

You say the word mermaid and many people immediately think Disney. A few might recall The Secret of Roan Inish. Both of those mermaids are a far cry from one particular mermaid who made a great impression on me. Mine doesn’t have a long, sexy fish tail. She doesn’t entice men. But she is set apart from her fellow creatures — she is unusual, nice in her own way, comfortable being who she is. I’m guessing from the story that she’s about five or six years old.

My neighbor Marty gave me this story not long ago. He lives at the next farm. If you don’t turn left onto my driveway, you come straight to his house. There’s a sign at the end of my driveway that clearly says Golden Hill. See?

Golden Hill sign summer 2015

But people go past it sometimes when they are supposed to be coming here. Last week I discovered why. I was coming home from Richmond, and was unfamiliar with the part of the city I was in, so I had used my GPS to guide me out of the city. Once I was on the highway, it stopped talking to me, so I forgot about it. But it didn’t forget about me. As it started guiding me on the last stretch of the way, I decided to let it. I wanted to see what it would say so I would know what my guests experience. Correctly, at the beginning of my road, it told me to go another three-quarters of a mile, which of course I did. Then I saw my Golden Hill sign, but it did not tell me to turn left. Instead, when I turned left (because I know where I live), and went maybe 30 feet more, it said, “In 900 feet, turn around.”

No wonder my guests sometimes drive past my sign. They are listening to a device that is not telling them to turn. Of course they all find the cottage eventually. There isn’t too far to go. They get to Marty’s and figure it out. Once in awhile, he is outside when they drive up. They explain about being lost and what they are looking for. He points them in the right direction, and tells them in his very dry way, which let’s hope most of them see as humorous, “But you don’t want to go there. She’s weird.” He has done this at least twice. He says this to them because I have said to him (one too many times apparently) that I am weird. When they tell me what he said to them, they are laughing. It borders on a please-tell-us-he’s-not-serious kind of laugh. For what it’s worth, Marty is weird too, because who says that to people? But I can’t mind — he’s right.

Some people are weirder than others. For a long time, my measure of weird has been television. I think I’m weird (or weirder than most) because most people have at least one TV and I don’t. At various times I have had one (and even had one for about two years and didn’t know it, but that is another story). Mine shorted out, or something, maybe half a year ago, and stopped turning on. I didn’t replace it yet, though I expect someday I will. There are numerous other reasons why I have considered myself — and to Marty and others, proclaimed myself — to be weird. Examples are not necessary here. Just trust me on this.

Not every neighbor would give you a story to make a point. But Marty did. It spoke to me.

The Mermaid Story

by Robert Fulghum

One rainy Sunday afternoon I found myself in charge of 70 or so school age children. We were in a gymnasium, and I knew that if I didn’t come up with an idea before long – pure chaos would ensue. At that very moment I remembered a game – an old roll playing game called Wizards, Giants and Goblins. So I got my charges to calm down (no easy feat, thank you very much), and I explained the rules of the game:

“Now,” I proclaimed, “if you wish to be a Giant, stand at the front of the room. If you wish to be a Wizard, stand in the middle. And those who wish to be Goblins stand toward the back. All right, let the play begin.” I allowed the children several minutes to confer in huddled masses until the action resumed.

As I was standing there I felt I tug on my coat. When I looked down, there was a little girl with blue, questioning eyes.

” ‘Scuse me.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Scuse me, but where do the mermaids stand?”

“Mermaids? Mermaids?” I sputtered. “There are no mermaids.”

“Oh, yes there are. For you see, I’m a mermaid, and I wish to know where to stand.”

Now here was a little girl who knew exactly what she was – a mermaid, pure and simple and she wanted to know where to stand. And, she wouldn’t be satisfied standing on the sidelines watching the others play. She had her place, and she wanted to know where to stand.

But, where do the mermaids stand? – all those children we try to mold and form to fit into our boxes.

Sometimes, I have moments of inspiration. I looked down at that child, and I held her hand -“Why the mermaid shall stand next to The King of the Sea.” (Yeah, King of the Fools would be more likely.)

So, we stood together – the mermaid and the King of the Sea – as the Wizards, Giants and Goblins roiled by in grand procession. It isn’t true, by the way, what they say about mermaids not existing. I know they do for I’ve held one’s hand.

Now I may have a soft spot for little girls, but no way is this one weird. She’s just different, and knows it, and is happy with it. She doesn’t try to be something she’s not. No molds for her, no boxes, no convention. All she needs to know is where to stand. If Robert Fulghum’s story is nonfiction, then somewhere in the world there is a five-year-old who helped me know that where I was standing, apart from the rest in numerous ways, was really ok. And not only ok, but good. She gave me a new perspective on something that had nagged me for years. I still call myself weird sometimes, but now I mean it more in the sense of unconventional, which is probably the same thing but somehow more palatable. As never before, I am ok with being unconventional. The beaten track isn’t for everyone.

The cottage that Bradley built is one of a kind. Search the world over and you will not find another. You might find a cottage with a wood stove and a deck facing the mountains and a 12/12 pitched roof, but will it have custom cherry windows and coffered ceilings? You might find a cottage in the country where there are 15 chickens, but do six of them lay greenish eggs? You might find a cottage that has a big garden with deer fencing all around because of the many deer that live in the woods, but is one of those deer white? The Charming Cottage at Golden Hill is set apart from all other cottages, from all other lodgings, just like that little girl who fancies herself a mermaid — it’s unusual, comfortable, nice in its own way.

And I get to share it. I get to be part of a movement that celebrates uniqueness. We all have a general sense of what goes into a good, comfortable, safe night’s sleep, but I get to interpret that in my own unique way and be a host in my own unique way. Because Brad and Beth built this amazing little house, I get to be part of a wave that says: Take the road less traveled. I’d say they are part of the wave too.

Take a good look at the people around you, and you will see some similarities. We all eat, sleep, breathe, void, move, and wear clothes in public. Keep going with this list. What else do we have in common? You may be able to generate an extensive list, but I am hard pressed. We certainly don’t all eat the same things, like the same music, use the same vocabulary, prefer the same activities, travel to the same destinations. Not everyone cares for dogs or cats (or snakes or ferrets or turtles or fish or parakeets) in their homes, but some people would be lost without their pet. Some people look forward, some look back, some mainly live in today. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. And some like it hot.

My cottage is in the country. What do you see when you look out of those custom windows along the back wall? This is what you see:

Trees. You see trees and more trees. Some sky as well. A range of foothills in the wintertime when all those trees have lost their leaves (which you cannot see in the photo but is there, I promise). You will not see buildings. Ugh to all that nature, I am sure some say when they look at the listing. Not everyone likes green. Some really do prefer concrete (my brother-in-law Fred comes to mind). Also, there are steep stairs that lead to the main bed in the cottage. Some people don’t want stairs of any kind. I have a drip coffee maker and a french press. Maybe Keurig is your thing — or maybe you don’t even know what a french press or a Keurig is, and all you want is a cup of coffee, for crying out loud! Why do there have to be so many choices!??!

There have to be so many choices because we are all so different. We don’t get everything — in general or when we travel — but we make choices and align our have-to-have’s and wish-to-have’s to come as close to (what for us is) perfection as possible. We continually juggle reality with desire and try to get the weekend or the vacation just right. And what makes anything perfect for you is different than what makes it perfect for me. This is why I think airbnb is enjoying tremendous success, and why it is so cool to be a part of it. The options are practically unlimited — size, location, decoration, ambiance, amenities, price, etc. Bungalows, cottages, condos, yurts, mansions, apartments, etc. Take your pick.

I love that there are lots and lots of choices. My little cottage is not for everybody, and that’s ok. Like me, it’s unconventional in various ways. Like me, it doesn’t have to fit a mold. I am glad it doesn’t. I’m glad I don’t. Granted, not fitting a mold is a pain at times, and you are misunderstood at times, but overall (and I can hardly believe I’m saying this after struggling so long about it), unconventionality is an asset. The success of this cottage, I am convinced, is at least in part because there is nothing else like it. The little mermaid of this story tells me to celebrate my unconventionality and I can choose to make the most of it. And the success of Golden Hill shouts loud and clear: Don’t be afraid to be unusual, nice in your own way, comfortable being who you are. Pick your passion and run with it. Nobody else can do what you can do the way you can do it.

Potato and onion

May 30, 2016November 16, 2018 / eponine3 / 1 Comment

Tonight my airbnb guest delighted me. She surprised and delighted me. I am surprised at myself for being so delighted. And then I’m not. It’s perfectly reasonable that I should be delighted, I say to myself. It isn’t every day — in fact it has never happened before — that a guest asks for potato and onion.

That’s right. She asked for potato and onion. They were out to dinner. I got a text. “Keswick Hall is beautiful,” Erika wrote. “Thanks for the recommendation … one question, do you happen to have a potato and onion? Or is there a little grocery store nearby that will be open after dinner?” I had sent them to Keswick Hall because you can bring your dog to dinner there (in the part of the hotel they call Villa Crawford), and these guests have a little dog. They seemed quite attached to their dog, Chuleta is her name, plus the Villa has amazing parmesan truffle fries, and it is worth the trip just for that. I was watching a movie when the text came in, and I did not look at it right away. It was a good movie. Then I had to get up anyway, so I paused the movie and looked at the message. Do you happen to have a potato and onion?

Perhaps I should explain two things.

One: Assuming I have chickens (which I didn’t for a while last summer, so this is not to be taken for granted), there will always be eggs waiting in the fridge for my guests. I have also taken to leaving a stick of butter because an egg fried in butter with a little salt and pepper is pretty close to perfection in food as far as I’m concerned, though I know some people prefer olive oil, and to each his own. This is available as well, standing where a bottle of olive oil should stand, just behind one of the gas burners, ready should you need it.

When these guests arrived this afternoon, I explained about the wifi and the stairs and the eggs in the fridge. In response to my eggs statement, Alex said, “Is there oil?” I smiled, feeling my heart soften (he’s planning breakfast, I said to myself, I like these people). Why, you may ask, is it significant that they are planning breakfast? Why does that matter? What does it say about them? It says they cook. Not everyone does. Many cannot. Or don’t have time. Or cannot be bothered. These people would take time to make their own breakfast.

Alex kept going. “I’m excited about your eggs. I guess they are really fresh.” Oh, such welcome words. “You can’t find fresher,” I say. “I hope you’ll enjoy them.” Then I said the rest of what I ordinarily say about letting me know if you forgot anything or if you need anything and to have a nice night and enjoy yourselves. And off they went to dinner.

Two: It is a rare day under the sun that there are no potatoes or onions in my pantry. Anyone who knows me will verify this truth. I keep them in baskets so they can get air. I use them frequently. I love them. I cook them in numerous ways, but most often I slice up an onion, saute it in olive oil, and add thinly sliced potatoes (skins on) and salt and pepper. The onion gets soft and sweet and a little brown as the flame does its work, and the potato crisps up just a bit as it, too, softens to peak doneness. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, this works for me. Simple and delicious.

Now you see why I am delighted. This man is not only going to cook eggs for breakfast, he is going to fry up potatoes and onion as well. Who does this?

When guests come, when you first meet them, you don’t know what’s coming. You can get an inkling, and you may or may not be right. I had a good feeling about Alex and Erika and Valerie when Alex asked about the oil. Now I will never forget them.

I know it’s not usual for someone to get excited about potatoes and onion. I know I am unusual in that way, and perhaps I will talk about my unusualness another time. Tonight I’m just smiling. Oil. Potato. Onion. And more.

Truly it’s a magical night. In the distance, I hear fireworks – must be a wedding at Keswick Hall. All by itself, that would add to the potatoes and onion delight. But as I write tonight, I am facing the new windows Bradley put in for me a month or so ago. It’s May, one year since another very special guest left me a note saying he had woken to a ballet of fireflies, and he had never seen real fireflies before. I wrote about this in my ‘People love surprises’ post. A year ago, I had questioned and then dismissed whether or not those were really fireflies, as I myself had been used to seeing them in August but not in May. But if he says he saw fireflies, he saw fireflies, and far be it from me to question that. Tonight, guess what is dancing on my windowpane. — fireflies!

How can it be? In one night: Oil. Potato. Onion. Fireworks. Fireflies!

People hate surprises

May 19, 2016November 17, 2018 / eponine3 / 1 Comment

Brad and Beth decided to move to Seattle in the summer of 2015. Brad had a great opportunity at UW, and I could not blame him for wanting to pursue that. For now, at least, the dream of the family compound was seriously on hold. (And I will continue to think of it as being on hold, thank you very much.) I had never given much thought to any other plan for the cottage and was likely lamenting my new without-them reality when my oldest son Drew said brightly, “Why don’t you try airbnb?” He gave me examples of airbnbs he and Nicole had stayed at recently, telling of the wonderful hosts and the conversations they all had had together. He gave me the boost I needed, then wisely advised: Make sure there are no surprises. Whatever you do, make sure people know what they are getting into regarding those stairs. What he really meant was: Don’t withhold any information that is potentially problematic.

March 2016 (5).JPG

Ah, yes, the very odd staircase that leads to the sleeping area. The cottage is small and the staircase is steep enough that Bradley built the treads with curvy cut-outs so that your knees don’t bump the next step as you ascend and your descending foot easily lands on the next tread. There would be guests who for various reasons could not negotiate these, or would not want to. One of my guests went so far as to call them a “sobriety test,” and people who get up frequently at night might not want to deal with a peculiarity. (I do now keep a bottle of water and two glasses at the bedside for those who get thirsty in the night, but the bathroom is still on the first level. It’s through that white door you see in the photo.) You would not want people to arrive and then find they cannot get to the bed built for two; the option of the first floor trundle with its two single beds may not be appealing. I get that.

Drew said I needed a good picture of those stairs. Several friends who are better at photography than I am offered to come take pictures so that the images on the web site would have a professional look. Their generosity notwithstanding, I was impatient to get the ball rolling once I decided on this venture, and the not-so-terrible camera that lives on my phone did the job, at least initially. I did not realize until months later that the casement windows were open when I took the outdoor photos (and that is the one that is on the airbnb site and on this one – consistency may count for something) but the mission was accomplished, and the first set of images successfully were uploaded. During that photo-taking session, I specifically recall considering the best angle for the photo of the stairs. Let there be no doubt. This is not your run-of-the-mill way to get to an upper floor.

One can only imagine the dedicated, hardworking team at airbnb headquarters, basking in their amazing San Francisco office space, reviewing as-yet-unlisted listings (“Hey, Sara, did you ever see stairs like this?”), which is to say I suspect that invisible team felt the same way about this staircase as Drew did. I did not ask them to position the photo so prominently on my cottage page, but they did. (I can’t think it ended up there randomly.) In any case it is impossible to miss when you open the page and begin to scroll down to read more. The photo’s position is a little like your mom or dad or favorite family friend giving the kind of advice you know is important using a blatant preface: Pay attention now — this is important. The prominence of the image serves plainly as the blatant preface and gently, subtly yet strongly speaks volumes: Make sure you are comfortable with this image. There is no other option for gaining access to the second story.

I love being on hand to welcome my guests. I find ways to finagle my schedule and most of the time am on site when they arrive. Doing the welcome spiel and tailoring it depending on the interest of the guest, time of day and previously expressed circumstances or concerns is one of my favorite parts of this whole gig. For me it involves the meet and greet, the presentation of place and the explanation of must-knows. Part of my spiel is “Right foot first up the stairs.” Starting with your right foot, and having to tell yourself to do so is not hard and possibly adds to the overall charm of the cottage — one more piece that is unexpected and unconventional, but totally works. But I would be subjecting my guests to disappointment and possibly to too big a challenge if I did not tell them ahead of time.

In the grander scheme of life, people do not want to deal with unexpected inconveniences. If something is potentially an inconvenience, or could remotely be construed as an inconvenience, it is best to tell them ahead of time. Whatever is a need-to-know, say it up front. Naturally, individual judgment complicates everything. What bothers me might not bother you. I speak as someone who does not like or eat nuts of any kind. I am not allergic, it is simply beyond me what people see in them, taste in them, like about them. I just don’t get it. (For this reason, I am sorry to tell you nut-lovers, I also do not put nuts in the cookies I bake. You just have to deal with that.)

I also do not watch television except on occasion. Before the cottage was listed on airbnb, a neighbor stayed in it for a few days and suggested that the lack of a TV would be a detriment to potential guests. This was a quandary. The cottage has no ideal place for a television (just look at those pictures in the first post – where would it go anyway?), plus I know for a fact that not everyone feels the way this neighbor does. I myself had been firmly planted in the thanks-but-no-thanks camp regarding television ever since my best undergraduate prof told us that someday we too would watch television just the way our parents did, despite any lofty ideas about having better things to do (“We’ll see about that,” the little voice in my head had said — and thank you very much, Peter Sandman).

On the other hand, maybe some guests would want a TV. Not everyone, after all, had been challenged by Peter. I had input on both sides. Finally it seemed best to go with my gut, but make sure there are no surprises. Leave the cottage aesthetically pleasing (i.e.without the large black screen in the scene) but explain the lack and offer to put a TV in there if someone did want it.

In the country, out here on my gravel road, cable has not come. Stations are limited. But hey, I offered. So far, not a single person has asked me for a TV. Quite a few have thanked me for not having one. We just want to play real board games, they say. We just want to listen to the crickets. We just want to talk to each other. Again I say: Thank you, Peter.

There may not be a TV at the cottage but, assuming you read through the details of my listing, you knew that. It is not a surprise. Whether conveyed through image or words, people want to know what they are getting. This observation is not limited to airbnb. None of the observations I will discuss are limited to airbnb. Parallels are everywhere in this world.

In business, an entire segment of the workforce exists to make sure that the parties involved in any operation or transaction know what they are getting and in fact get it. Words, those squirmy, slippery little buggers that are not always clear no matter how hard we try, comprise the contracts that attempt to clarify the details of our dealings. We had best not promise precision parts if we do not have access to the machinery to make said parts, the labor to build them, the materials specific to the job and the management to pull the order together. We had best not promise confidentiality when members of our team don’t take non-disclosure clauses seriously.

In relationships, we find ourselves annoyed, threatened or worse if vital information is not disclosed in a timely way. We generally don’t want to be with someone who is, in fact, already with someone else. We don’t want to show up for a party with a bottle of wine and having already had a drink or two when our hosts don’t drink at all. We don’t want to find out about an important meeting when, well, you know. Could you — could someone — have told me?

While it’s true that what matters to me may not matter at all to you, the disclosing of certain information will be not only helpful and appreciated, it will keep you from getting into trouble. I don’t want bad reviews any more than I want to sign bad contracts or enter bad relationships. The understanding of “People hate surprises” plays hand in hand with one of the guiding principles of success — preparedness. As an airbnb host, this means be prepared in every way you can think of, and in turn prepare your guests.

One way to do this is to say or present the same thing multiple times in multiple ways including words, image, action or any combination thereof. (Again I thank Peter, who suggested that saying something three times in three different ways would do it.) If you stand too close to me (unless I want you to stand close to me) I can tell you to back up either in spoken words (unlikely since I am not the confrontational type) or I can myself back up (count on it). Backing up increases the distance between us and accomplishes the goal of establishing appropriate space without my having to verbalize my discomfort. If you live with me, I will tell you sooner or later to keep the door at the bottom of the spiral staircase closed (unless of course you are going through it!). This has to do with my lack of affection for the sometimes large arachnids, creepy no matter what their size, that may be living down there and are more likely come up here if that door is open. The nonverbal I have adopted here is a sign on bright pink paper taped to both sides of the door, with the polite imperative: Please close this door (which for the record was pitifully effective with Bradley, who always had better things to do than close a door).

My inability to convey my wish effectively to Bradley should in no way deter anyone from expressing (or trying to express) what’s important in multiple ways. In the case of the cottage stairs there are no fewer than three means of communication. The online text includes a plain description, the web page includes the prominent photograph and my introductory spiel always includes the “right foot first” part. Lack of a TV is plainly stated and plainly visible when you are in the cottage. I don’t bring it up unless the guest does, and usually they say something like “Oh, I’m so glad you don’t have a TV.”

Deception is a bad idea most of the time. The exception that comes to mind is when a friend gets a haircut she is really excited about but which actually looks awful, and you simply say, “You got your hair cut!” with the most genuine smile you can muster, and leave it at that. If you are unable to quickly steer the conversation to other topics, you may be forced to say something along the lines of a compliment, which you know to be untrue. Technically this is deception. I know it’s mild, but still. The best way to avoid trouble is to be straight with people. Present what you have, who you are, what you offer, what’s important to you. To the best of your ability, be clear. Make sure people know what they are getting.

Some thoughts on airbnb

May 15, 2016November 16, 2018 / eponine3 / 3 Comments

The popularity of airbnb should surprise no one. The last fifty years have seen conventionality thrown to the wind: the women’s movement, homeschooling, the internet. There has to be another way — this era seems to shout from the rooftops — to do the same basic things humans have always needed to do: get along fairly, educate children, connect easily with others or get information …and of course, find a safe, welcoming, affordable place to sleep overnight. We all need to sleep. Every night. Somewhere.

Whether to family, friends, or friends of friends, I always loved being a host. I can honestly say I have changed the sheets in a guest bedroom uncountable times. My job as the director of quality and communication at a Forbes five-star resort has given my passion for hospitality room to fly on a daily basis. But it wasn’t until I posted my little cottage on airbnb and began having frequent guests that I saw some universal truths playing out before my eyes, and now I want to share some of them. For example:

People hate surprises — they want to know what they are getting into, so a photo of the very unusual stairs in my cottage is displayed prominently.
People love surprises — they want a little mystery, so I do not post a picture of the view from the wall of windows. I would rather they walk in and say, “Wow, we weren’t expecting that!”
One size does not fit all, thus the endless variety of options available to overnight travelers. And thanks to vrbo and airbnb for making these options readily available.
Small acts of kindness go a long way…
You never know what’s around the next bend…

The engaging, heartening and amusing stories behind these truths and some more will shed one host’s perspective on this relatively new and somewhat controversial enterprise, and further and strengthen the conversations taking place.

First I want to give a little background about my cottage, then talk about what I have learned from it.

How the Charming Cottage on Golden Hill Came to Be

In the spring of 2011, I purchased ten wooded acres in the lovely town in Virginia with a three(tiny)-bedroom, 40-year-old modular house on it. I called it my “little house in the big woods.” In front of the house was an open patch maybe 60 feet across where the sun could get through; besides that, there were trees and more trees. The driveway is long and flat, but the land slopes off both sides. On one side it’s a pretty dramatic hill. If you cut a swath through the trees and had a good snowfall and started at the top with skis on, you’d fly down that hill. Once you drive the 900’ or so driveway to the house, and then realize how the land drops off, it feels a bit like you are on a kind of peninsula, a teardrop-shaped ridge that makes you feel like king (or queen, as may be) of the hill.

The property had come on the market in February, meaning the leaves were down, meaning I could see from the open sunny patch northward to the whole range of the Southwest Mountains. My friend and realtor Stuart Stevens had grown up in this town and knew each bump of that range by name, and spoke each one with affection, as if it were a dear friend whom he knew well. I suspect he did.

My sons Bradley and Lincoln and I had had a kind of dream: Find a beautiful piece of land and build a place that the whole family could use, enjoy, come to, leave from, consider home. We had looked throughout the winter at many lovely sites, but none grabbed us until this Keswick property came on the market for the first time in nearly forty years. Within minutes of standing on that hill, I made up my mind to make an offer and had no doubt this was a good decision.By the first of May, we were in.

Many improvements were to come, but the first was a chicken coop designed after one very fine image in my memory. When my children were very young, I brought them one summer to the Eiband farm on a road called Kaisersmad in the picturesque town of Betzigau in the Allgau region of Germany. The Bauernhof has belonged to the Eiband family for generations, and I became connected to it when the eldest daughter and I had decided to be pen pals when we were each 12 years old; thus began a lifelong friendship. Claudia’s endearing father made a habit that summer of holding Lincoln’s hand, then three and a half, and together walking to collect eggs from their coop. I was smart enough one day to take the photo that would one day serve as the image to duplicate.

Here’s Lincoln at age 3 1/2, walking with Claudia’s dad, Adolf Eiband, at their farm in Betzigau, Germany, in the summer of 1991.

Lincoln and Claudia's dad

If I ever have a chicken house, I had said to myself, it will look like theirs. Lincoln and Bradley were not overly pleased to have to construct the small gable that serves no purpose besides its resemblance to the Eiband version, but they figured it out. Using poplar (I think it was poplar) cut from the property and milled with Bradley’s Alaskan saw mill, they worked together to erect the chicken coop of my dreams. Its red metal roof was the icing on the cake. There could simply be no better chicken house for me. I look at it and smile, which is all you can ask of a chicken coop.

Rise at chicken coop.jpg

Here’s Rise, Lincoln and Julia’s daughter, age 2 1/2 in the spring of 2015, heading out to visit the red hens. I framed this picture and hung it in the cottage.

The cottage was next. This fell to Bradley and Beth because Lincoln and Julia got married, making things both harder and easier. Labor hours would necessarily increase for Brad and Beth, but control of the design, pace and construction allowed their creative energy great opportunity. And in the end the kudos for the cottage go to them. Let me repeat: The kudos go to Brad and Beth.

In any creative process, the project is not limited to the hours spent physically, overtly engaged in it. Rather, for a time you live and breathe it. Ideas come while driving, showering or drifting off to sleep. Sticky points gnaw at you for days or weeks and suddenly the solution appears. Friends and family members arrive to visit and each in some way gives a hand — some hold the other end while you lift a wall or settle a beam in place, some feed the bank of ideas that you will draw from on a given aspect of the design, some simply admire and thereby encourage. All contribute to the ultimate product. But Brad and Beth did the lion’s share. One recent guest said in his review:

The cottage matched the listing description. However, the listing could not tell the charm, the beauty, and warmth of this wonderful place. The cottage had huge windows which opened up to the green forest. This is a place to connect with nature.

The whir of the planer and the buzz of the table saw in the workshop underneath my bedroom became commonplace for those two years or so, and I realized I am one of those people who feels like all is well with the world when the sound of power equipment is going in the background. Saturday morning meetings over coffee to catch up on the latest and the upcoming became commonplace too. I made some big breakfasts in those days, thinking that of course I had to provide sustenance to these hard working, wonderful and amazing people who just kept going on this project one piece at a time.

I took pictures to document the process — not as many as I now wish I had, but enough to make an overview. In the cottage is a looseleaf binder with photos showing the construction; here are a few:

laying the foundation (note chickens behind Brad — all that dirt was dug out by hand as well)

H-12.17 (4)

raising the first wall – that’s Beth’s dad Tim Peery helping on the left (thank you, Tim!)

zcottage 11.14 (11).JPG

resting a moment (yes, that is a chicken hat, isn’t she cute?)

One set of photos I unfortunately cannot find shows the cherry French door when it was still laid out in pieces on the basement floor. I know that photo is somewhere (probably buried in a phone that no longer works), but in the end the door speaks for itself. Bradley made the door — designed it, chose the wood, planed the lengths, trimmed, mitered, joined, finished.

People look at it and see a door. What I see — beyond the research on how to build a french door, beyond the trip to the guy he found (on craigslist, no doubt) who had the best quality wood at the best price, beyond the image of planks of wood subsequently hanging out the back of their white Civic (named Sensei), beyond the pieces carefully positioned at the pre-assembly stage on the basement floor — is the intelligence behind it all. I’m allowed to say that because he’s my son, and besides, he’s the one who didn’t read until he was nine. He doesn’t get extra credit for that delay, but it is kind of remarkable. That’s a whole nother story though, which I will get to one of these days.

Tzcherry door Brad made.JPG

here’s that cherry door before it had a deck in front of it

W10aOct 5 (8).JPG

and getting near the end, stonework all around the foundation

I do remember when the guy came from the glass company to measure for the cottage windows, including the trapezoid-shaped ones, and when they came, the trapezoids were all wrong and had to be recut (at their expense, not mine). Bradley said, “Mom, it’s basic geometry.” Perhaps. But the door — the door is not basic. The door is a peek at a young man who doesn’t let the fact that he has never done a thing stand in the way of doing it. He just figures things out. He is first a thinker and then a doer. He invested in great equipment (all somehow at good prices) and the best and most highly recommended books on carpentry so that he might tap into the expertise of those who have already figured some other things out. It was a joy to watch him.

Beth is his perfect counterpart, God bless her. She worked her day job all day at her computer, somehow shutting out whatever Brad was doing nearby. She walked their dog Zadie, and took me along, almost every day when I got home at 5ish. Oh, how I enjoyed those walks! Beth is truly one of the world’s best listeners. She is sweet, balanced, and confident and a perfect match for Bradley’s intelligence and gumption. And she somehow made me feel like she actually enjoyed my company, which she deserves a great deal of credit for. Understand that after working all day, after a mile and a half walk with me and then a bit of supper, she started with whatever needed to be sanded or primed or relocated or organized or painted or planted. That’s right, I haven’t even begun to talk about the massive garden they planted too!

They worked and they worked. Joyfully. Skillfully. Steadily. The accomplishments of these two are truly mind-boggling, and their attitude is inspiring. I am forever grateful not only for this gift that they left me, but also that I can share it with others who enjoy it so much. I especially love it when cottage guests give them a shout out. Here are some more comments that have come from my guests:

We both agree, the Cottage at Golden Hill takes the cake as the most unique, comfortable, peaceful & relaxing AirBnB we have ever been lucky enough to stay at!

Her son Bradley did such a phenomenal job with all the construction of this beautiful house.

The views, wood burner and floor to ceiling windows were my favorite features of the cabin.

The pictures do not do it justice…the space and view are beautiful.

Charming is an understatement, this cozy cottage (built by her talented son) is full of character.

The cottage is beautiful – looks just like the pictures – amazing craftsmanship!

The cottage is incredibly charming and cozy.

The cabin itself was amazing! Her son and his wife built it themselves and its beautiful.

The cottage was even more beautiful than we had hoped. The craftsmanship was exquisite!

Easy to find and yet tucked away in the woods, this cabin is elegantly cozy and gorgeous…completely designed and hand-built by her son, who is indeed a master craftsman. He and his girlfriend labored over every beautiful detail for 3 years. As an architect and interior designer, I really appreciated the quality craftsmanship and design…the way you can see forest views out of EVERY window and the little touches like the beautifully finished flooring, cherry shelving and kitchen island. (Hi Brad! Your Mom told us you read these. You and Beth rock! We were blown away and inspired.)

The house is perfect. The location and craftsmanship are wonderful.

The house is stunning and very comfy and the location is beautiful and peaceful.

Floor to ceiling windows meant tons of natural light, but it felt very private thanks to its orientation toward the woods. We had a great time sipping coffee on the patio watching the chickens peck around the yard.

Great location and beautiful crafted home.

The home was more beautiful than we expected. It was gorgeously designed and built by her son…which made us marveled at it more.

we just sat in awe at the craftmanship of your sons little home. (architect or engineer?) your chicken coop may have convinced my new wife we can have one

The cottage was just as described and pictured. It is a work of art, set in the woods and very peaceful.

This house is so awesome! The pictures were not even able to capture how beautiful this cottage was. Patricia’s son built it by hand, which makes it even more unique and special. Tiny-home fanatics (like my boyfriend and I) will DIE when they see this.

Patricia’s son is something of a Renaissance man and built the cottage and most everything in it with skilled hands and utter attention to detail.

Your son is so talented and you’re very generous to share such a gift with the airbnb community. We couldn’t get over the quality of craftsmanship evident everywhere.

Patricia’s Son and his girlfriend built an amazing cottage that is Cozy and peaceful.

We were blown away by the beautiful windows and the view of the mountains! I did not expect the house to have that. Perhaps you would want to include a picture of this on your page? It was our favorite part of the house. 🙂

Patricia’s cottage was wonderful – everything we expected and then some! It was cute, quaint, and absolutely perfect. It is a a beautiful property nestled back in the woods.

This cabin is the cutest! I can’t believe they built it themselves.

This space is a true gem. Bright, open and extremely comfortable, we didn’t want to leave. In fact, we are planning a time to come back for a whole week to sink in and enjoy the stunning architecture of the cottage and it’s peaceful surroundings.

The cottage itself is just beautiful, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the woods, and maintains the perfect balance between quaint/rustic and modern. My husband absolutely loved the wood burning stove, too– despite 65 degree weather, he kept it going all weekend and it was wonderfully cozy!

My great thanks to Rob O’Connor for the following images which give you some idea of the finished product.

March 2016 (3).JPG