Building the Great Wall

Our first garden related project pains me with guilt, even to this day...

When we moved in, our yard and our neighbor’s yard were one large open space with a shared perennial bed that spread out from the central property line. The effect was breathtakingly expansive and lush.

The view from the house to the back of the yard.

We have three dogs however, and our neighbor has as many cats. Though our dogs are smart as dogs go, there was no way that they could ever understand an open yard with such a vague boundary between “cat” and “dog” territory.

If only it were true!

Our dogs chase anything that runs, including the neighbor's cats!

Meet "the Boys":

The Ringleader: Scrap

Troublemaker #2: Buddy

Don't let cute fool you. Troublemaker#3: Rusty

On hot days, they like to play in the sprinklers just like little kids!

After a few minor dog and cat skirmishes, we decided the "open concept" yard had to be sacrificed. They say that fences make good neighbors and so the fence building began.

Ian (my brother) helps Daniel (my son) dig one of the post holes.

It was an undertaking that took a number of weekends, but the end result was well worth the effort.

My husband created a mini-arbor at the gate to the backyard. A canopy of Silverlace vine now covers the arbor. (Silverlace tolerates shade and has a small, somewhat nondescript flower in late summer.)

Now the dogs can run free in the yard!

Bring Spring Indoors

I love to have flowers in the house and am always looking for new ways to display them. Here is a novel way to bring spring into your home.

Things you will need to recreate this arrangement in your own home:

Decorative metal trough (find decorative pots at garden supply or interior decorating stores)

3 small bulb pots

Spanish moss (find moss at a garden supply store or craft store)

pruners

twigs snipped from the garden

paper butterflies (find the butterflies at a craft store)

For this arrangement, I used three small pots of daffodils that I got at the grocery store (Total cost just under $10).

I watered them and then placed them in the metal trough. If you scout around you can often find metal buckets or troughs that hide the less than attractive plastic pots in which spring bulbs are most commonly sold.

To support the leaves, which I sometimes find flop down unattractively, I used red dogwood branches that I snipped out of the garden.

Then, I added some Spanish moss to disguise the plastic pots.

(Tip: Spanish moss can get a bit messy, so for an easier cleanup work over top of some open newsprint. If you or someone else in your household suffers from allergies replace the moss with shredded paper from a craft store).

For a final flourish, I twisted paper butterflies on to the dogwood branches.

First Projects: Our Son’s Room

To start, we decided to get the bedrooms move in ready. A week or two and the work would be done...or so we figured!

We began with our son’s room. My husband, Harold and our son Daniel spent days trying to remove the thick layer of stucco that covered the walls. After days of slow, meager progress, they gave up and stripped the walls back to the studs. This allowed us to not only fix the walls but to improve the insulation, which was spotty at best. A project that was to take weeks turned into months....

Other Twists and Turns

The house had other odd features as well. In the cramped space at the top of the basement stairs, there was a weird mini-bathroom complete with a toilet and pedestal sink. I could just imagine myself heading to the basement to do the laundry and coming upon some poor unfortunate, who had chosen the same moment to use the john. “Oh, so sorry!”

Upstairs, there was gyprock slapped crudely on top of cracking slat and plaster. In the master bedroom and the front hallway, hideous stucco had been applied with crudely with a trowel overtop of old wallpaper. A curved staircase to the third floor attic built overtop of an older set of stairs.

First Tasks: Burying the Dead

It did not take long for us to realize just what we had bought into. The house’s unique quirks quickly became serious problems impossible to glibly dismiss.

The staircase to the basement was very narrow, making it next to impossible to move appliances in our out; an impediment made clearer to us by the basement graveyard we discovered on moving day. There were 7 dead appliances; big, cold hunks of metal, including a huge washer/dryer tower and one defunct oil furnace, all of which had been abandoned and left to rust.

We found in the damp recesses of the basement not only the unusual feature of an open well, there was also a door that opened up under the back porch with literately no visible means of exit to the outside.

Neither the house or the original builder could not be held responsible for this dilemma. It was the succession of homeowners who over the years had created the difficulty. Each new owner left their mark on the house by way of “home improvements.” In the case history of the door to nowhere, someone at some point, decided the house needed a back porch. Now, to be fair in laying blame, this homeowner considered the need for providing an occasional exit from the basement and created a prevision for this by making it possible to lift the porch decking to gain access the basement door. This was an awkward plan, but workable. A later resident however overruled his predecessor’s considerations with the installation of an overhead arbor that made it impossible to lift the decking.

If we wanted the dead appliances out of the basement, we had no choice but to cut a new “door” in the back porch floor. My husband Harold and our son Daniel then used a rope and pulley to hoist the old appliances up the five or six feet onto the porch and then dragged them out to the curb.

Moving Day

We moved in on a blistering day in August. Precious valuables and china, that I would trust to no one, where pilled into our little Toyota. The rest of our belongings made the twenty minute trip from our old townhouse to the new house in a small truck piloted by a rag tag group of men and adolescent boys posing as “professional movers.”

The Big White House

I had always admired the tall white house in the center of Huttonville whenever we had passed by. When it came up for sale in 1996, we decided to take a look at the property, even thought it was a bit out of our price range.

We went to see the house on a Saturday morning and found that it to be as charming inside as it was on the outside. It was a beautiful day in late spring and I clearly remember taking off my sandals when I stepped off the back porch because the grass was still wet with morning dew. I walked slowly down the property taking it all in. The deep, relatively even lot was bordered by long perennial beds that were shaded by towering maples and a massive black walnut tree. At the back of the yard, there were a large circular bed planted with culinary herbs. It was love at first sight.

Now, you know what they say: love is blind. I looked right at the house’s quirky character flaws that day and dismissed them all as things that could be easily changed. When the house inspection revealed even deeper, more distressing character traits: the roof was shot, the front porch had wood rot, the windows all needed to be replaced and there were clear signs of water issues in the basement. I dismissed them all with a lover’s enthusiastic optimism as things that could be overcome with a little bit of hard work.

A view of the steel bridge that originally crossed the Credit River at the intersection of Mississauga Road and Embleton Road. Our house can be seen in the distance.

This is a picture of Huttonville taken in the early part of the last century. Our house can be seen on the left.

Photo Credits: Thanks to the book "From the Wolf's Den to Huttonville and the Pioneers Who Made It Possible" published in 1996 by the Huttonville Book Committee. Publisher: Ampersand Printing.