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DO YOU KNOW BARRYTOWN? It’s a fine hamlet right on the Hudson River in northern Dutchess County, a mile from Bard College (for culture) and not far from Red Hook (for useful stuff like supermarkets, restaurants, a hardware store, gasoline….) I doubt there’s a building more recent than 1900 there.
This farmhouse on approximately 1 acre, with two barns and a shed, is for sale by its owner, Eva Mann. She writes: “It is very much a “buy the look” type of place — no major aesthetic changes for the past 75 years.” All the modern conveniences are there, but out of sight.
The house is 1800 sq. ft., with 5 rooms downstairs and 4 rooms upstairs, and 1-1/2 baths. The two barns total 2,000 sq. ft.
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For more info: hudsonvalleyhouse@gmail.com
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NOW THAT THINGS ARE BEGINNING TO LOOK LESS JUNGLE-LIKE around here, I’m turning my thoughts to what comes next.
You can almost see the beginnings of a landscape...
That consists mainly of keeping my eyes open as I go about my rounds, observing what others in the area are growing, and visiting nurseries (though many of the things I like best, like climbing roses and lavender, won’t work at all in my shady conditions).
Very Hamptons: climbing roses on a picket or split-rail fence
Lavender at the Amagansett Farmers Market
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I’m inspired by Dianne Benson‘s exuberant, idiosyncratic early ’90s gardening book, Dirt. She’s a onetime fashion designer/entrepreneur (I still have one of her fabulous dresses) and local gardening legend. I must admit I looked up her address and drove by the place today to see what I could see. (I felt too much like a stalker to take any pictures.)
Her house, surprisingly modest but beautifully and unconventionally landscaped, with unusual color combos (lots of purple) and dramatic, huge-leaved astilboides rimming the picket fence, is on David’s Lane in the center of the Village of East Hampton. Her previous property, about which she wrote extensively in Dirt, was on a wooded site like mine, and the book is full of plant suggestions and, more importantly, infectious enthusiasm for gardening.
Dig that crazy conifer
At the moment, though, I could use a little less of the infectious. I’ve just returned from the walk-in medical clinic in Amagansett after finding two engorged deer ticks on my body in the past couple of days. They gave me two doxycycline pills and sent me on my way.
I’ve decided not to hate deer. They’re beautiful, and it’s not their fault. It’s annoying to have to suit up in bio-hazard gear to work in my own backyard, but shorts and flip-flops just won’t cut it.
I’D HEARD ABOUT EAST HAMPTON’S legendary yard sales. “You’ll find everything you need at them,” people said.
What I need: a loveseat/bench for the front deck; a bench for the front hall; a night table and lamp for the guest room. Maybe some salad servers. Sofa cushions, but I’m not going to find them at a yard sale. Nothing else! I’m made of steel when it comes to resisting unnecessary crap.
But I did want to check out some local yard sales, just for the fun of it. I knew enough to pick up a copy of the East Hampton Star on Friday, with its two columns of nothing but Yard Sales, and planned a route for Saturday morning, salivating against my better judgement over ads for “Full basement” (I have a couple of full basements myself, that’s the sickness of it) and “Top drawer stuff”(always a subjective matter, never more so than when it comes to yard sales).
These Hamptons people start early. In Brooklyn, nothing happens on the stoop/tag/yard sale front ’til 10AM. Here they start at 8, 8:30, or 9 — and even then, as my friend Nancy and I discovered at 7:55 this morning, pulling up in front of our first-ever East Hampton yard sale, “No early birds” don’t mean sh*t.
Everywhere we went — and we hit half a dozen sales in Springs, East Hampton, and Amagansett — there were at least ten cars parked, and people walking out with plants, pottery, towels, picture frames, and generally high-quality domestic flotsam and jetsam.
The strangest sale, in Northwest Woods, required us to walk up a long curved gravel driveway to an ersatz chateau, above, landscaped to perfection, where in the garage behind the (just guessing) $15 million dollar manse, we found the best bargains of the day. $2 was the going price for art books (I got one on Jackson Pollock and a photography book), $25 each for low-slung canvas deck chairs (good for around the pool – that’s why I didn’t buy them: no pool). There was an antique marble washstand for $25, but we couldn’t conceive of moving it, and lamps from $5-12, but none that spoke to me.
Next, we visited an arty-looking ’70s house of vertical cedar boards, above, owned by a chic woman who had the greatest shoes in the world – unfortunately, not my size. I was idly looking at two framed Art Deco prints (women’s heads, quite pretty, but did I need them? Hell, no!) marked $15, and idly wondering if that was for one or both, when she said, “You like them. Take them for $2.” I really didn’t want them, but for $2 I couldn’t resist.
So I pulled out two dollar bills and handed them to her. Moments later, her friend came over and said, “You’re selling your birthday presents? Even the ones I got in a very good antique store up in Buffalo and carried down just for you?” Meaning those prints. She turned to me. “He’s really hurt. Can I buy them back?” She thrust the two dollars back at me, at which point the friend realized she had not only sold them, but sold them for two bucks.
His face fell, but he tried to joke it off, saying (of me) “Now she wants $25 for them.” In the end, they insisted I keep them, even though, as I said, I didn’t care. They’re in fine condition and look good on a shelf in my bedroom, so that was a decent score (maybe after I get them re-matted, I’ll upgrade that to ‘incredible’ score).
Then it was on to Amagansett and the fabled Domino magazine ex-editors’ second sell-off of swag, i.e. photo-shoot props, above (the first was in the West Village May 9). Today, according to an article in the Star, they were joined by others from the fashion and design industries, hoping to “unload some of the excess they accumulated during the boom years.” (Now is this really their stuff to sell? I’ve sold a few review copies of books to the Strand in my time, but it seems a bit bizarre that these substantial pieces of upholstered furniture and designer clothes were never returned to the retailers/manufacturers/PR reps, and that no attempt was apparently made to offer at least a token amount of the proceeds of these sales to some cause or charity.)
There, next to a cottage on the Montauk Highway, was a mob scene. I lost interest after I was told the one thing that would have worked for me (a wooden bench) was not for sale. As for the advertised “bargain basement prices,” ha! It seemed as though just about everything, including a brass standing lamp and a small, glass-topped wrought iron table, was marked $425.
“EVER WONDER why our Yankee forebears seem to have been incapable of designing a bad house?” asks Rural Intelligence, a year-old culture website that is like a New York Times Styles section for the Hudson Valley and Berkshires.
It’s a point that will be abundantly illustrated this Sunday, June 14th, when the town of Canaan, N.Y., in northern Columbia County, launches its 250th birthday celebration with an historic house tour featuring eleven houses dating from the 1780s to the mid-1800s, some open to the public for the first time ever.
Isn't this missing some columns?
Upstate farmers may have built some fine vernacular dwellings in the late 18th century, but they went on to do some pretty strange remodels in the 19th (above). Many of the houses on the tour started as humble homesteads, usually two rooms up, two rooms down, with a central stairwell. As their owners prospered, they would either build a larger house adjacent to the smaller one, or remodel the existing house, often in the Greek Revival style.
Sometimes it is hard to discern the “hidden homestead,” but at Turning Leaf and in the Daniel Warner and Jason Warner houses, the original residence is a clearly defined 1790s wing at the back of the 1814 and 1830 main houses.
Daniel Warner House: a gem
The Daniel Warner house has halved logs supporting the second-floor floorboards of the older sections; the Jason Warner house has trimmed and incised beams in the older part of the house, meant to be seen and therefore decorated – an unusually fancy finish for an 18th century farmhouse.
Bradley House: spiffy eyebrow Colonial
The Canaan 250 House Tour runs from 1-5PM, Sunday, June 14; tickets ($20) and maps available at Canaan Town Hall, County Rt. 5, just south of State Rt. 295, starting at 10AM.
"The Shanty": Dutch roofline, Victorian porch
THIS MORNING I WAS GREETED BY A SURPRISE VISITOR: a 4-foot foxglove in sudden, outrageous bloom in the woods just beyond my property line. Reading up on it, I came upon the phrase “naturalistic woodland garden.” That’s what I want to create here; that’s what’s suited to this site, which, though south-facing, has very few spots for plants that require full sun.
Shade-tolerant and deer-resistant will be my watchwords as I figure out what to plant. Columbine is easy, self-sowing, as I learned upstate. Meadow rue I’ve never tried, but here in Zone 7 I might, along with chartreuse bursts of spurge, which I love (hope the deer don’t) but have never had any success with.
Yesterday, with the help of a pickax-wielding friend, I did further battle against wisteria roots, uprooted overabundant barberries, moved ferns out of the area where I want eventually to put a patio and into what I call the ‘fern glade.’
Over the past few days there have been quite a few vital home improvements. I now have HEAT, for one. Yes, it’s June, but on Tuesday, when Charles the plumber made my furnace operational for the first time since I got here in mid-May, it was chilly and raw, and I immediately put the thermostat up to 70 and basked in the warmth. (That was too warm; I soon put it down again to 65.)
Thanks to Tom the electrician, I now have a light at my front entry. I have a washer and dryer – oh, the convenience – and a stove. The refrigerator question is still open; Sears is coming to pick up the noisy Whirlpool beast on Sunday, and I will replace it with something quieter and more high-end, as soon as I can focus on it.
Read up on foxgloves here.
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