"Can your guy be there at noon?" The man on the phone from Chandler Concrete was as pleasant as he'd been the first four times I had re-scheduled the delivery of a yard – no, make that two yards – of concrete.
By then, the square-ish box of pressure treated wood will be ready to accept the squishy grey mud. Randy Bledsoe. has been working on it since Monday, making sure that the dirt at the bottom is level. Four inches of concrete will soon support the GardenSpirit hot tub and give a little extra oomph to the new deck that will accompany it.
Ah yes, the hot tub. Even my earliest dreams of GardenSpirit included a bubbling tub set into a secret garden - a place for women to luxuriate, chat, relax after a long day in the garden. So even before I put down the floor in the sunroom before the painters get started next week, I am installing a hot tub that will easiily hold 6 women and as many as 8 or 9 in a squeeze. I got great deal on it - bought it from a nice woman in Burlington who said she'd used it only 10 times in the three years it had sat behind her house. In almost perfect condition.
Right now it's sitting in the garage. Thank goodness the doors are 9 feet wide; it gave the delivery men (5 of them) a couple of inches of clearance on each side when they slid it onto THAT concrete pad. Like a lot of things during this renovation, installing the hot tub is a domino effect process: first I had the architect design the deck, then Glenn Parker, the contractor had to make sure the deck design would work. But he pointed out that one of the septic tanks was buried somewhere in the vicinity of the new deck. Oops. Can't build on top of that.
So yesterday, Clean Septic System came out to a) find the exact location of the tank and b) pump the septic system. Of course, when Tracey tried to remove the septic system cap, it cracked. He's gone to get another one and will be back today to pump it. And the concrete guys will be here at noon.
Because it rained Tuesday, the ground is damp and soft. Randy says he'll have to wheelbarrow the concrete from the driveway to the wooden box - the concrete form as it's known officially. Then a little screed action to level it (not smooth, mind you -- a little rough to prevent falls), a day or two of curing and then we can get the hot tub out of the garage and into the open air again. Just in the nick of time --the garage doors are being replaced in another week or so and there's no access with the tub sitting squarely under the door opener. Like I said -- it's a process.
Next up: an emergency trip to Raleigh to pick up fabric for the squeaky rattan chairs in the family room. Gotta get there before Friday. That's when Juan the upholsterer comes back with the loveseat he's finished. Whew!
Paint chips litter my kitchen table, my mind, even my dreams. I'm trying to figure out the wall colors for the Guesthouse and I'm ready to, uh ... climb the walls.
There is a tiny bit of urgency to make these decisions, since the painters are coming next week (or sooner, if they finish up their current job early). I know that the woodwork and kitchen cabinets will be painted white. But I'm not a painter - do you paint woodwork or walls first?
That's crucial information, since the walls are the bugaboo. It's a backwards domino effect: in order to choose the wall colors, I need to know how the room is decorated. In order to know the decorating, I need the furniture (which is in place at last). But almost all the furniture is being upholstered, so I need to make decisions about fabric. Which brings me back to color.
Let me tell you, trying to envision colors for an entire house without any real sense of what things will look like, is a challenge.
I did it once, when we built our home. Everything in a new house is a blank slate. But in those days, I had control over the fireplace color, the rugs, the ceilings. And I bought new furniture. Over the course of several MONTHS, not days.
This is different. The fireplace is the fireplace. I don't love the color, but I'm stuck with it. The big massive stones are a bit incongruous with my light, airy garden theme. But hey, I'm plunging ahead.
I do have some help. A wonderful and extremely patient decorator named Amy Mannila is traveling with me to furniture and fabric stores. Yesterday, we spent an entire day at Mill Outlet in Raleigh, with a side trip to Discount Fabric Warehouse.
I bought 49 yards of fabric for the loveseat and sofa that will grace the sunroom - the main meeting space for Gardenspirit. It's wonderful -- white background with my favorite flower of all time: lilacs. Lucky for me, there was enough on the roll of fabric. I bought the entire stock!
But the polka dot fabric we found for the fireplace room. Oops. I think it's a mistake. I bought 18 yards to cover the two ottomans. At $14 a yard. Ouch. Fortunately, I didn't buy 40 more yards for the sofa and loveseat. So it's back to the drawing board. Or to the Mill Outlet store. Or Not Just Linens.
Funny thing is that I love shopping for fabric and decorating stuff. But I feel pushed. Which is why I made a hasty decision yesterday. Oh well. Maybe I'll like polka dots better in the morning light. Now where are those paint chips??
Well, I did it.
I made my dream come true.
I just kept walking towards it and I'll be darned if it didn't just open up like a little flower and invite me to take a whiff.
OK, I will stop being oblique and get to it:
I bought retreat property! Ta-da!
My five-year dream has been to open a women's garden retreat center. The vision was really clear: Frank Lloyd Wright kind of simplicity, heart of pine paneling, secret gardens, hot tubs to soak in, a self-sustaining veggie garden, a communal room for workshops and yoga and gatherings, vining roses that drooped over the entrance to a charming little cottage.
That's the thing about dreams. They don't always show up in the package you envision.
My retreat house looks like an ordinary four-bedroom home (because that's what it is). It has no heart pine paneling (it has 1980s paneling that was painted white sometime). It has no roses, no hot tub and no secret garden. But it's a-gonna have all that and MORE.
It does have an incredible sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the deep and private forest in the back yard (that's it in the picture). It has a dining room that I am transforming into a cafe for afternoon tea and cozy breakfasts. It has a tree house that is big enough (and strong enough) for adults. And it has a path that leads directly to the brand new labyrinth, my (now overgrown) organic vegetable garden and the fish pond, black-eyed-Susans and wild ginger.
It WILL have a hot tub -- I am already negotiating for one that will hold as many as 10 people at a time. And I have already talked to a designer who has great ideas to convert this ordinary house into an extraordinary guesthouse (I have to call it that for zoning reasons).
As I make this transformation, I'll keep you posted on the progress. It's happening pretty fast since I have committed to a weekend workshop with an author/friend of mine called "ADHD and the Writing Mind - for Women." In case you're interested, it will be held the weekend of October 13-15....at GardenSpirit Guesthouse. Wow, it feels good to say that ...
It took only one, frustrating experience of mowing the steep slopes at GardenSpirit for me to call Keith Anderson, landscaper and Bobcat Operator Extraordinaire, and beg for help.We walked the grounds, talked about options. Then I disappeared for a week at my beach retreat at Emerald Isle. When I returned,the landscape had been altered dramatically.The hilly back yard with its two towering trees is now a ledge of dirt, waiting for a new deck. The front yard is shorn of its two cedars (I really don't like cedars, regardless of how hard everyone tries to convince me otherwise). The circular gravel driveway is on the cusp of being reworked. And the Round-up I'd sprayed on the horrible grass near the house had done its work -- brown grass that would never need mowing again!It was breathtaking. And a little scary. I'd worked with an architect/designer who had told me NOT to terrace the back yard. And here was a terrace to beat all terraces. "Not to worry," Keith told me, "we'll just backfill this after the deck is in."I hope he's right. The ledge is pretty terrifying. But at least there's no grass to mow. That makes it all worthwhile!
An okra virgin
I’ve been a southern gardener for nearly 20 years now, but I’ve never grown okra. There’s an unspoken rule in my garden: I only grow veggies I like to eat. And though I’ve sampled fried okra and eaten it in gumbo, I’ve never developed a passion for it. So okra has never graced the hallowed beds of my organic garden. The odd-shaped vegetable has always intrigued me, though. I take note of the long pointy pods piled high at the state farmers market, My husband, who speaks from childhood experience, swears that the prickly spines will “itch you to death” if you pick them without wearing gloves.The inside of the pods are beautiful, in their own way. Sliced into half-inch chunks, the pods look something like an edible Murano glass bead, dazzling white seeds arranged symmetrically within a brilliant green shell.When one of the students at my organic veggie gardening classes asked how to plant okra, I realized I would have to take the okra plunge. I couldn't teach okra from a book; I needed my own okra experience. I figured if I couldn’t force myself to eat it, I would simply give away the bounty of the harvest. There are a LOT of people in the neighborhood who would swoon over my okra.But as it often happens for me, my seed order exceeded my ability to plant. My 'sunny beds' were planted with my garden favorites: tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers. So I found myself with an unopened packet of “spineless” okra seeds in August ('spineless' refers to a lack of prickles, not the character of the okra, I am told).By the time I got around to reading the planting directions on the back of the seed package, I had missed my opportunity: “Plant in early summer. In the Deep South, plant a second crop in July. 80 days from planting to harvest.” North Carolina is not in the Deep South: that was Florida and Alabama, Texas. Our average frost date in the Piedmont is October 15. Clearly, I didn’t have enough time to grow okra that could be eaten in abundance. What the heck, I decided. The packed-for-2005 seeds wouldn’t sprout in 2006; I had nothing to lose. At least I’d find out what okra plants look like.Like an obedient gardener, I followed the advice from my set of dirt-smudged garden bibles (collected over many years) and put the seed package in the freezer for a couple of days (it was more like a week – I forgot about it after a day or two) to help the brittle seed pods sprout more easily. It worked! My bibles told me that the plants would emerge in 14 days; mine came up in 3 days!A drink of rain?
Then came a drought like none in the history of North Carolina (at least my recollection and history in North Carolina). I watered that okra every day. Those poor plants never experienced a drenching rain until they were nearly six weeks old! They struggled. I watered. And watered some more.I fought off an invasion of red ants, then aphids. I lost a few seedlings to damping off and heat. When the dying was over, about 25 okra plants stood tentatively in Bed 22. The stalks were so fragile, I was sure they would bend and fall over. Gradually, though, the stalks grew thick and tough. Pretty leaves erupted at the top and sides. My husband, who was not as surprised by this growth spurt as I, warned me that when the okra came in, I needed to cut them when they were small. Big okra is tough okra. I trusted him. He’s from Tennessee, a real Southern state.When we finally had a soaking downpour, the okra perked up. They LIKED a good drink of water. The plants grew to my eye level (not quite though, since the beds were raised 10 inches). About two weeks ago, side shoots began developing. They looked just like the unfurling leaf buds to me, but my okra-expert husband assured me that these were okra.He was right (he LOVES being right – it’s one of his best and worst traits). Lush okra blossoms unfolded from the side shoots, pale pink with deep rose centers. The blooms were so moist and tender, it almost broke my heart when they wilted and curled back into brown cocoons. But as the leaf carcasses fell away, tiny green nubs of okra turned their faces to the sun. Okra at last!Once again, my husband proved his okra expertise: the pods grew quickly, although not as quickly as in the heat of the summer. The angle of the sun is lower in the fall so there were only a few pods visible at a time. Now it was a race against time; would the pods grow large enough before frost cut their prickly lives short? Fortunately for my okra (notice I am now taking possession of this crop?) we had an incredibly warm September and October. Record-breaking heat kept my okra growing and my spirits high."Cut them!"
Yesterday, I invited my husband down to the okra bed for his opinion. “Cut them!” he ordered. “These are getting too big and tough!” So I donned my garden gloves, took the sharp knife in hand and hacked off my handful of okra pods. There were only a few. But they are my first okra. October okra.They look so tempting, lounging there in the harvest basket. I hate to eat them. But I must. The experiment must go on to its full conclusion. And now that I am not an okra virgin any longer, I plan to freeze the seeds and plant in “early summer” next year.Post script: When I returned home from a trip to Dallas Saturday night, my husband had a fresh garden dinner prepared for me: the last of my Juliet tomatoes, some late green beans, the first of my autumn broccoli...and a scant handful of fried okra.It was a breathtakingly sweet gesture from my husband. And I still don't like okra.
