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SO HERE I AM, trying to renovate just one cottage, and along comes an e-mail from Jane Coslick, who has bought, fixed up, decorated, sold, and/or rented some three dozen of them!
She’s well-known as a cottage preservationist on Tybee Island, Georgia, near Savannah, where tiny workmen’s houses and fishing shacks built in the 1920s, some as small as 400 square feet, would have been pulverized in the name of development if not for Jane and others like her.
It’s the exuberance and care with which she does it, and her free hand with color, that has made Jane’s work a staple of such magazines as Coastal Living, Southern Living, and, before its recent demise, Cottage Living.
Jane has a website with links to all her press coverage, of which there’s been no shortage. Her vibrant cottages, with evocative names like Fish Camp, Calypso, and Hemingway, are like honey to magazine-editor bees. She just started a new blog, too. You can find it here.
HAVING BOTH DEER AND SHADE to contend with is kind of like being a vegan. It’s doable, but your choices are awfully limited.
I wanted to do some planting this first fall on my woodsy property in Springs, but I haven’t put up a deer fence yet. It’s fallen off my list of priorities, behind a new roof, fireplace, bathroom, etc.
I spent a recent evening looking over the offerings from several online nurseries, including Deer-Resistant Landscape and Wayside Gardens, and drove myself a little crazy trying to determine whether a plant in a 5″ plant from one nursery for $12 is a better or worse deal than the same plant in a gallon pot for $23 from another nursery.
I ended up ordering from good ol’ White Flower Farm, which is probably the most expensive, but I know from experience that their products are reliable. I chose an alder buckthorn (rhamnus frangula ‘Fine Line’, above) – five of them in fact, to reinforce the straggly privet hedge between myself and my next door neighbors – and three of an ornamental grass that is among the few that don’t require full sun: panicum virgatum ‘Prairie Fire,’ below. They arrived in just a couple of days, disappointingly tiny (these pictures show what they’ll look like, God willing, in a few years’ time).
I planted them all yesterday, which first required hacking down five leggy old lilac bushes - rejuvenation pruning, they call it – which you’re supposed to do in spring after flowering, but these didn’t flower last May anyway, so shaded out are they by enormous trees.
Then I spent many hours digging, pulling, cutting, and – with surgical precision – dabbing the cut ends of the evil, never-ending wisteria with Round-Up. (Professionals have repeatedly said it’s the only way.)
I’ve never been a patient sort of person, and I’m generally lousy at long-range planning. My next plant purchase will be something BIG.
[Photos via Hamptons Online]
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IS IT POSSIBLE? YES, IT’S POSSIBLE.
This past week, the website Hamptons.com canvassed the listings in the under $500,000 bracket.
Of the 23 properties they came up with (a few mobile homes among them), eight are “fairly well-maintained cottages and capes” in East Hampton, my new stomping ground. Some, no doubt, will go to contractors and spec builders eager to tear them down and replace them with something bigger.
Even that 500K figure sounds high to some (it does to me; I paid 320K last May for my c.1950 cottage on 1/2 acre in Springs). Said one broker: “There are people out here who think a half a million dollars is a lot of money for a 1980s ranch that needs work. Prices need to come down more before these houses sell.”
Read the whole thing here.
Anyway, who wants a 1980s ranch? Not I. I did a little of my own MLS research on Hamptons Real Estate Online and turned up something much more to my liking: an old cedar-shingled cottage on 1+ acre.
#46659 is a diamond in the rough, wouldn’t ya know. I quote:
Ready for renovation, this charming c.1900 cottage with barn is situated on a 1.20-acre property in a desirable neighborhood. Living room with fireplace, dining, kitchen, two bedrooms, and one bath. Large free standing barn on the property perfect as a studio. Room for further development. $495,000.
Suckered in once again by pretty real estate lingo. I went to see the house, on Springs Fireplace Road. It’s noisy with a capital N, but more to the point, nothing short of throwing a grenade into the house would do justice to the condition of the interior. It’s a gross-out with a factor of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. All that said, it’s a sunny, open piece of property and some of the neighbors are upscale. Will it sell? Only time will tell.
I MAY HAVE FOUND MY SYNAGOGUE here on the East End (I say ‘may’ because I’m still shopping around).
I went to Yom Kippur services at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, the oldest synagogue on Long Island (if you don’t count Brooklyn and Queens, which are technically also on Long Island). I found the unpretentious building very much to my liking (I have a habit of choosing a house of worship largely for its architecture). I also liked the gender-neutral prayerbook and the way the rabbi, Leon Morris, made the service personal and very moving.
The building, which dates from 1898, is sweet, sitting on a hill in a neighborhood of vintage cottages. It has been in almost continuous operation since 40 or 50 fresh-off-the-boat Jewish craftsmen, with their families, were brought out directly from Ellis Island in the late 19th century to work in the watch factories of Sag Harbor.
I love the elaborately carved wood decoration above the altar, the vibrant (relatively recent) stained glass windows, and the fact that the main sanctuary only seats about 100 people, with High Holiday overflow in an annex.
The shul (Yiddish for synagogue) doesn’t require tickets for Yom Kippur, the holiest and most crowded of Jewish holidays. “We don’t turn anyone away,” said Howard Chwatsky, a longtime congregant and this year’s treasurer.
It’s a warm and welcoming place for a wandering Jew like me.
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