Both Sides

When I am walking, my brain is often in neutral (or, in cycling terms, freewheeling), so I often “notice” things without actually giving them my full attention.

The other day I “noticed” a holiday flag in a neighbor’s yard that appeared to say “YOL.” I fleetingly speculated that this might be “Yule” in some Scandinavian language, but, since I couldn’t actually see the entire flag, I figured I just hadn’t read it properly and went back to my previous train of thought.

As I was passing today, less preoccupied, I was somewhat abashed to realize that I’d seen the back of a flag that, on its face, proclaimed “JOY.”

Chapel of Love

A new addition to a neighbor’s yard caught my eye yesterday. Although it purports to be a birdhouse, it is only a few feet off the ground, so I suspect it’s just a useless lawn ornament. What especially intrigued me, though, was what appeared to be a cross on top of it, making it look like a church.

On closer inspection, this proved to be a fleur-de-lis, but there actually is a cross on the front gable. Perhaps it is meant to be a bird wedding chapel?

Construction Update

As of yesterday the stairs have been installed in the house that replaced the little pink house, so this weekend I should be able to explore the upstairs. On the other construction site, the one that had just been cleared, marker posts were up last Saturday, and on Monday there were two cement mixers pouring the footings. To my surprise, yesterday a concrete-block foundation was being built on the newly poured concrete (doesn’t it need some time to cure?), so it would appear that the builder is in a hurry.

And in a surprising development, the house that I thought surely was slated for demolition is now sporting a building permit for “Int. Demo” (interior demolition). The listed contractor is one of the area’s premier fine homebuilders and remodelers, so I’m sure the “renovation” will be done tastefully and well, but it will probably be so drastic that little of the original will remain.

Signs of Recovery?

If housing starts are an indicator of an improving economy, then perhaps it is encouraging that there is a small pile of building materials on one of the cleared lots in my neighborhood. It’s a very small pile, about enough lumber to cut up for stakes to tie string between, and the lot hasn’t been graded (if that’s in the plans), but still it’s progress.

The real estate market here has been almost totally stagnant for several years (since about the time we put my late father’s house on the market, naturally), but the neighborhood also shows signs of optimism. Some neighbors who are about to be grandparents have decided to downsize, saying they want less house to keep up so it will be easier for them to get away to visit the new grandchild. (My thought: Where will you put the children and grandchildren when they come to visit you?) It’s entirely possible that some rich Yankee will be willing to pay $1.5 million for a 3300 SF house with a 400 SF screened porch overlooking the bay and an 800 SF guest house behind, so perhaps they’ll sell it.

At the same time, the owner of a cleared lot a block from the bluff has apparently decided that the market may now be ready to absorb another vacant lot at $395,000. Both of these properties are being offered For Sale By Owner, so all the owners have invested so far is a yard sign and a box of photocopied data sheets. Who knows? It just might work!

Still Intriguing

Last Sunday I wrote about the latest new construction in our neighborhood. Today was the first time I’d gotten a chance to scope it out again—and actually the first time I’d even been out walking since Monday. Tuesday it was raining (and in any case I had my ballet class for exercise). Wednesday was lovely—no rain and a high in the 70s—but I had too many Rotary chores. Thursday I had ballet again, and by Friday it had turned bitterly cold. While waiting for a client, I dressed for walking, trying to persuade myself I would go out as soon as she left. She’d said she would come in the morning but actually didn’t show up till 1:30 p.m., by which time I knew I was not going to be able to leave the house (where I was already bundled up and freezing as our furnace struggled against the chill).

Yesterday it rained all day, with thunderstorms in the evening and heavy rain all night, accumulating nearly 4 inches, so my inspection of the house today was limited to tiptoeing gingerly around the edges of the slab, avoiding the inch-deep pool of water in the center. Even so, I was able to refresh my memory of the floor plan, and I am still mystified.

There are four rooms (or spaces) across the front. The farthest right is clearly the master bedroom. The other three are less easy to define. All three open onto the porch in front. In back, all three open onto a large space, extending the width of the house, that I take to be a Great Room on the left and kitchen on the right.

The farthest left room is connected to the Great Room by a short passage between a powder room and some sort of closet. For this reason I had previously decided it must be the foyer. It is now clear, however, that the center space, as I had originally assumed, must in fact be the foyer; now that the second floor has been framed up, it can be seen that the stairwell is here.

The room to the right of the foyer (and opening off it) might be a dining room or a parlor. The room on the left, since it does not open off the foyer, I am inclined to think may be a study rather than the dining room, but if it is the dining room, then perhaps the closet is a butler’s pantry.

Since there is as yet no stairway, I was unable to explore the second floor, but I could see from the front that there will be at least four chambers upstairs, at least two of which will open onto an upstairs porch (above the main front porch). I look forward to further investigation as construction continues.

Intriguing Floor Plan

When my husband and I were shopping for our first house (in Decatur, Georgia, in 1975), we became fluent in the jargon used in newspaper real estate ads: “Charming” (“small”), “Quaint” (“has antiquated wiring and plumbing”), “Handyman Special” (“needs a lot of work”), and of course “Endless Possibilities!” (“Maybe you can make something out of this if you can figure out where to start”).

The phrase that became part of our family vocabulary, however, was “intriguing floor plan.” This could mean that the builder or architect was eccentric, but more often it implied that pragmatic alterations made over the years by a series of owners to suit their personal circumstances had resulted in a very bizarre layout. We have a little of that here: when the previous owners added a new master suite to the back of the house, they ended up converting one of the bedrooms (now my office) to a pass-through not only from front hall/stairs to back stairs/landing but to the new bedroom. Before their renovations, which added a hall, the upstairs bathroom was accessible only through one of the bedrooms. That sort of thing.

I mentioned in my previous post that the slab had been poured for the new house on the site of the vanished “little pink house.” On Friday after his run my husband reported that the first-floor framing was up, and yesterday I got a chance to walk through it. My first impression was that the floor plan might be “intriguing,” but ultimately I decided it was just puzzling in some regards.

I got off on the wrong foot by going in the wrong “door.” There are two double-width openings from the front porch. One of them leads nowhere in particular, and I think this will be a dining room with French doors opening onto the porch. The other, with openings for a coat closet and powder room, was clearly the (very large) foyer. Other rooms were identifiably a living room and a spacious kitchen and breakfast room (with adjacent screened porch). The double garage (behind the house) opens into a back hall that connects with a side entry from the driveway and also provides access to a laundry/utility room and the master suite with the de rigueur ginormous bathroom. Between bedroom and bath is a short passage with a walk-in closet on one side and a sliding-door reach-in closet on the other. I pondered whether these were the typically inequitable His and Hers closets, or perhaps the master and mistress will share the walk-in, and the other will be a linen closet. Time will tell.

What I found puzzling, though, was the dearth of plumbing. Although drains (shower, tub, sink, toilet) had been embedded in the slab, and a gas line indicated the position of the kitchen island, there was no sign of any water supply piping. I can only conclude that, since this will be a two-story house, the plumbing will be brought in between the floors and run down to the first floor and up to the second. Again, I look forward to confirmation of my surmises.

Street Scenes

The weather continues pleasant, so I’ve mostly been walking outside. I did go to “the gym” yesterday, feeling a need for the incentive the elliptical machine offers, but I got totally disgusted by the “bad” treadmill (the only one available), which, no matter what speed you set, keeps speeding up to a pace that is just a little too fast. Despite many complaints, nothing has been done about calibrating it, and the “good” (accurate) treadmill has been taken offline again because it was making so much noise.

Outside, though, there are only more-or-less natural noises, I set my own pace, and the scene changes not only as I progress but also from day to day. The slab has been poured for the new house on the site of the vanished “little pink house,” and I look forward to following the progress of construction on that. I also made haste to photograph another endangered structure. This one is a little yellow house that has been on the market for quite some time but is now sporting a SOLD sign. Given the local trend, I don’t expect it to survive the sale by very long. No, it, too, will be demolished and replaced by a larger, more attractive house more befitting the upscale neighborhood this has become.

Meanwhile, a small mystery was recently solved. For the last couple of weeks I’d been noticing a building permit sign stuck in the ground right on the boundary line between two houses. The permit was issued to “Owner,” specified as—well, I’ll call them Smith and Jones. I know Mr. Jones slightly. A couple of years ago I admired his remodeled front porch and asked his opinion of the builder who had done the work. We got to talking and he invited me inside and showed me all around the house, pointing out all the improvements he had made.

But what was he cooking up with the Smiths? Were they going to jointly build a fence or wall between the two houses? My curiosity was satisfied last Friday when I passed the houses and saw Mr. Smith hard at work planting bricks along the front of the lawn to form a curb; the Joneses’ stretch was already complete. It made sense for them to undertake this project cooperatively, and the brick edging is definitely an enhancement to their properties.

I didn’t walk today and probably won’t tomorrow, either. Today was devoted to housecleaning, and tomorrow I’ll be making cranberry sauce, baking a pumpkin pie, baking cornbread for the dressing, and generally completing preparations for the arrival of our daughter, son-in-law, and eight-month-old granddaughter. (For the benefit of non-USians, Thursday is Thanksgiving Day.)

Coming Through the Rye

Well, maybe not through the rye, but at least beside it. Although our weather has stayed so mild that our lawn grass (predominantly St. Augustine) is still pretty green (or at least would be if it weren’t covered with pine straw), I noticed this morning that the City has overseeded the bluff (and doubtless other City properties) with winter rye. This must have been done several days ago, as it is already quite thick and lush. Unlike St. Augustine, which just looks scraggly when allowed to grow too long, rye grass becomes so downright luxuriant that you are tempted to lie down and wallow in it!

One of the things that constantly surprised us when we visited England in March 2008 was how green everything was. On the Gulf Coast, where we live, any type of grass hardy enough to survive summer heat without wilting turns brown in winter, but the cool-climate grasses that prevail in England apparently stay green all year long. So while the trees were still bare (we’d left them in full bloom or beginning to leaf out in Fairhope), the ground was bright green, even in Scotland, as many of our photographs attest.

Well, that was spring, and now it is autumn, and everywhere there are signs of the approaching holidays. Last night Fairhope celebrated its annual “Lighting of the Trees.” The City had just finished removing dozens of aging Bradford pear trees along city streets (where they had become a hazard and a liability) and replacing them with Bosque Chinese elms, so it was a bit of a race for utility crews to get the lights up in time. But now downtown is once again a twinkling fairyland and will remain so until after Mardi Gras.

Even though we have a month to go before the solstice, this premature Festival of Lights does lift the spirits and put one in a holiday mood. To add to it, this Sunday afternoon the downtown merchants will hold their annual Christmas Open House, which is the official start of the Christmas shopping season (before Thanksgiving!), and on Friday evening, December 4, we’ll turn out for the Christmas parade.

But I can’t think about that now: my granddaughter is coming for Thanksgiving, and I have to think about what needs to be done to “childproof” the house!

Walking after Ida

To reassure my brother in Japan, I will say, “We are still here.” Apparently yesterday was a slow news day and Weather Channel addicts especially may have gotten the idea that “Hurricane” Ida was actually a major and dangerous storm. A client of my husband’s in Puerto Rico called to check on our welfare, and later my brother in Oregon also checked in. Last night the local Jim Cantore wannabes interrupted our regularly scheduled programming for hurricane coverage so often and at such length that we entirely lost the thread of the plot.

The Board of Education closed the schools for two days (no doubt deeply regretting that they’d let the kids take their “hurricane makeup days” as “Fall Break” a few weeks ago), the City closed offices and departments (including the library) and canceled garbage pickup (already scheduled to be skipped tomorrow, Veterans Day) and took down the hanging flower baskets (sensibly enough, and at least they didn’t bother to take up the bedded plants), the local emergency management agency opened a shelter.

I don’t know whether there was a run on grocery stores for batteries, bread, milk, and eggs or not, but when I went to the ABC Beverage store yesterday afternoon for a routine whiskey purchase, the clerks there confirmed they’d been doing a land-office business.

All this despite the fact that by late afternoon yesterday it appeared pretty clear that Ida was weakening and was not going to pose much of a threat to anyone except those in very low-lying areas (a voluntary evacuation was declared for waterfront property owners).

It was quite breezy yesterday morning (more so, I venture to say, than at any time after the storm actually made landfall), and it started sprinkling just as I was about to go out for a walk. It continued to rain and blow off and on all day and through the night, but the rain gauge this morning (after the storm had passed and the rain had stopped) showed just 3¼ inches. To put this in perspective, we had 2¼ inches during a 24-hour period twice in October.

When I got up this morning, I looked out the window, curious to see what the storm had produced in the way of “derbis” (a “family word” we picked up from a friend). The back yard was scattered with dead wood (thoroughly rotten and scabby) and a few of what my husband calls “giblets” (small live branches, with leaves, ripped off by the wind). So yes, there’ll be a little cleanup. But that’s often true after run-of-the-mill storms. This was definitely no biggie. If we’re lucky, though, perhaps it brought down the last of the pine straw and most of the rest of the abundant acorns.

My husband and I dithered about exercise—hit the street or go to “the gym“? I opted for the outdoors, while he took off for the indoor track. When I returned, he said, “You made the right choice.” (Sure enough, the Christian Life Center was still closed, and he ended up running outside after all.)

It was the right decision. The temperature was brisk (mid-60s), and a fresh breeze added wind chill, so I made record time, pushing hard to warm up. And my trip around the neighborhood confirmed that no one had suffered even moderate damage. Although garbage pickup had been canceled, a city garbage crew were roaming around looking for “derbis”—or perhaps just looking for any downed limbs that might be blocking streets. If so, they weren’t finding anything.

Bottom line: a non-event, and if we can just hang on for 20 more days, we can finish this hurricane season without a single hurricane. I don’t think anyone here will object to that!

Outside Again

Now that the weather here has finally turned mild (highs in the 70s, breezy), I’ve felt less inclined to go to “the gym” and more eager to get out in the fresh air. A nasty cold kept me in for a week or so, but I’ve since had several opportunities to reacquaint myself with the neighborhood. As usual, changes are more noticeable when some time has elapsed. The “little pink house” had been reduced to an empty lot the day after I reported it as a pile of rubble, and when I next saw it, on October 25, workmen were digging trenches for the footings of the new construction. The following day, a cement mixer was on site pouring concrete. The next time I got out (November 1), several courses of concrete block had been laid on top of the foundation, and the wall has continued to rise over the past week.

A few blocks away, I was astonished to see another vacant lot. The previous property owner had died some years ago, and the house had been empty ever since. The yard had been allowed to grow up into such a wilderness that it brought to mind visions of the prince hacking through briers to get to the Sleeping Beauty. Some months ago, the yard had been cleared, leaving only a few shrubs, and it was rumored that the property had been sold and the new owner intended to “remodel” or “renovate” the house. I was dubious. The property is a large corner lot overlooking the bay, and the house was small and run-down. The new owner had undoubtedly paid a pretty penny for the location alone. So I was not surprised that the house had been demolished, just startled to realize that it had happened while I wasn’t paying attention. Now the property is surrounded by erosion control fencing, but a yellow building permit sign is the only other sign of activity so far.

As an aside, one advantage of walking on a treadmill for several months is that I’ve gotten in the habit of walking faster, so walking outside should be better exercise for me than before. I’ve yet to match my time on the treadmill, at least in part because of traffic. Yesterday I stood in a crosswalk looking impatient while half a dozen cars passed; I felt justified in shaving that 20 seconds off my time. Today, on the other hand, a car actually stopped for me in the same crosswalk. Since there was a car speeding toward us in the opposite direction, I just shrugged helplessly. But the considerate motorist seemed bent on being courteous, and the other motorist, seeing that one car was already stopped for me, also stopped. Amazing! I was too intrigued by this drama to even notice how many seconds that diversion had cost me.