Take a Peek at My New (Old) Home
Plus some links to heartening reading and viewing
Hello Friends,
I’ve been home for just over two weeks now. The boxes are all unpacked, flattened and given away; art is (slowly) appearing on the walls; and I’m cleaning and fixing little things—generally helping this 122-year-old house recapture its shine and spunk.
My builder-buddy, Jerry, made the drive from Montrose yesterday to help me with the first of many fixing and tending projects. The day’s work wore me out. But I’m feeling very good about the progress.
So is the house. It was pretty needy when I first looked at it. I suspect the previous owners were not happy here.
Sometimes a place is just not a good fit, and it’s better to acknowledge that and move on than to stay and try to alter the place to suit you. That way brings misery all around. Which is a lesson applicable to so many things in life, whether relationships or jobs or homes.
Fortunately, I love this place. And it feels like the place loves me back. We’re settling in together.
I’m going to give you a peek, but first, I want to share three links to uplifting reading and viewing.
Wildlife rehabilitation release
First, this heartening post from
of Rx Nature chronicling the release of rescued young opossums and a bat, torn wing mended, into Jeanne and her spouse’s 15-acre woods. If you don’t read the whole post, at least watch the video, especially Venus the bat at the end and her ecstatic looping freedom flight. I guarantee the warm-fuzzies!As she held the bundle up to the sky, I saw a furry brown nose pop out, then a tiny body. Wings snapped open.
And just like that, Venus burst into the open air, soaring toward the trees. In a matter of seconds, she was gone from sight.
Sara’s face lit up. She flung her arms overhead, in triumph and joy. The joy of healed wings.
“There she goes!”
Water’s lessons on getting unstuck
And then, from
of UnTamed Science, six lessons from water on getting unstuck if you’re feeling paralyzed in these times. My favorite lesson? The last one:Start with small changes. At times, water displays her raw power with lashing rains, surging tides, and rogue tsunamis. These angry outbursts can be transformative. Yet, her deeper power comes through persistent action. In gentle trickles over eons, she wears through layers of rock to form deep canyons; with constant tidal currents she carries sand along shorelines, distributing it in rhythmic beach cusps; with consistent cycles of wetting and drying, she spalls stone. … Small changes in your daily choices matter. They may feel inconsequential, but taking steps—no matter how small—serves to decrease feelings of overwhelm while allowing your mind to develop new habits. And, over time, these small changes will accumulate….
The power of citizen science
I’ve mentioned iNaturalist before, the app that allows you to shoot a photo of a critter or plant, get help to identify them, and post the photo for researchers to use in understanding the enormous diversity of the more-than-human lives who weave earth’s living communities.
This ten-minute TED talk by Scott Loarie, part of the team running iNaturalist, shows the power of simply stopping to pay attention to nature around us: species rediscovered, new species discovered, and an enriched understanding of where and how different creatures live—all from photographs posted by ordinary people in one of the world’s largest citizen science projects.
Scott Loarie opens the talk this way:
I want to show you what is possible when we start noticing nature.
What is possible is amazing and heartening indeed! You’re got to watch this. And then download iNaturalist—it’s free—and join the action.
A peek at my home
This home of my heart was built in 1903 of local brick—probably from the brick plant in Montrose, an hour away, shipped here by train—as a two-room house with a wooden addition that included a porch and small kitchen. (No plumbing. There would have been an outhouse.)
Twenty-five years ago, some folks purchased the then-very-dilapidated place for a summer home. Their contractor removed the wood addition and added a commodious brick one designed to match the original house, with a kitchen/dining area “great room”—the whole place is 937 square feet including the addition, so “great” is definitely relative—a bathroom and laundry room. They also put on a metal roof, added insulation, heat and cooling, rewired the whole place, and also re-plumbed it. I bless that work every day, let me tell you!
It’s been a little neglected in the past few years, but it’s basically sound.
Come in through the front door.
The front room or sitting room is one of the original two rooms in the place, and the hub of the current house.
To the right is the great room addition through the original back door.
Back in the front room, the door to the left leads the bedroom and my writing space, with a lovely view of the gardens and yard, where two-tailed swallowtails are currently fluttering around the flowers.
Out back is a rectangular stucco building with a guest area that needs some work and a garage that just fits Rojita, my Toyota Tacoma truck. And I do mean “just” fits. If I pull Rojita in very carefully and gently nose her front bumper to the back wall of the garage, there’s an inch to spare between her rear bumper and the garage door! Whew.
This has been a difficult and very stressful move, but I’ve landed in my heart’s home. And I have no shortage of projects in the house, guest apartment/garage and the yard to keep me creatively busy for the next decade and some.
I’m fortunate to be here, and grateful for your support!
Blessings, Susan
Your new home looks lovely and warm and welcoming. Welcome home! Here's to many years of happiness there.
Thank you for the tour! I can almost feel the soul of these rooms and yard as you make your home here. It makes me so glad to know you are there!
And I love the wisdom from from water…the most effect comes from the small consistent work over time.