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IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN: time for city dwellers to think about renting a country place for all or part of the summer. If a totally charming 2BR, 1 bath village house in Columbia County works for you, take a look at this one. It’s owned by good friends of mine, but that’s not why I’ve given it the casaCARA seal of approval.
It’s a renovated 1830s Greek Revival in Chatham, N.Y., half an hour from Tanglewood and the Berkshires. Comfortably and attractively furnished with mostly modern furniture, there’s a big eat-in kitchen and a glassed-in sun room at the back.
At just $1,000 for the month of June, $1,200 for July, and $1,200 for August, it’s an inexpensive getaway for sure. In fact, I’d consider renting it myself if I was the sort of person able to make plans more than 2 weeks in advance.
For more info, e-mail franeheller@gmail.com.
THE IDES OF MARCH are almost upon us, and what a pain. I’m up in the Hudson Valley now, cat-sitting for a few days, and if ever I thought I was going to do some gardening, which I foolishly did, I’ve had to let go of that notion. The snow was thick on the ground when I got here, and now, after two days of rain, what’s not snow-covered is mushy and boggy and muddy (here’s how it looked this morning, above). True, I did manage to shovel some compost into bags for my garden in East Hampton, and cut down some of last season’s zebra grass before the rains came.
But my hope was to dig and divide some of the cottagey perennials that are here in abundance, all deer-resistant, planted mostly between 2002 and 2006 when I spent a lot of time gardening up here in Zone 5 northern Dutchess. (See one of the beds to be pillaged as it looks in mid-summer, above.) That was, it turns out, a ridiculous hope. With temperatures here in the 40′s recently, I figured the ground would be un-frozen, and I could get some rudbeckia, bee balm, catmint, ladies mantle, coral bells, lamb’s ear, astilbe, bleeding heart, and any number of other things into plastic pots, ready to be transplanted into my newly prepared Zone 7 Long Island garden beds, below, next week.
Waaaaayyyyyy premature. I shall have to sit tight, along with gardeners throughout the Northeast, and wait for the winter to finish up in its own good time.
It’s good to know, however, that the curved beds at the front of my property back in East Hampton — about 400 square feet of them, leading from my new parking court to the front door of my cottage, are pretty much ready to go. Last fall, I laid them out by raking piles of fallen oak leaves into the desired shapes. Through the winter, I woke up more than once in the middle of the night wondering how I was going to turn piles of leaves into plantable soil, quickly.
The answer came in the form of a delivery truck from Whitmores last Wednesday, containing 7 cubic yards of topsoil and compost (cost: about $400). It was shoveled, spread, and raked smooth for me right on top of those leaves, ready to be planted up as soon as the time is right.
I haven’t ordered anything from those tempting catalogues; I don’t have the patience to wait for tiny specimens to grow. I’ll buy shrubs and perennials from wholesale nurseries, and places like Lowe’s and Home Depot, which may not have anything exotic, but in recent years seem to have gotten their act together to at least provide healthy plants. I’ll divide what’s here upstate, beg divisions from other gardeners I know, and take whatever can be spared from the backyard of one of my buildings in Brooklyn, above.
My goal: curb appeal, fast. It’s going to be a happy round robin of plant-moving and schlepping, and I can hardly wait.
THIS BARN-RED COTTAGE, on a quiet 1/2 acre off upper Springs Fireplace Road, really makes me think sellers here in East Hampton are getting reasonable. Reasonable for East Hampton, anyway. Reasonable relative to what such a house would have cost three years ago.
Sweet and simple, with 3 bedrooms, two baths, and a fireplace, the 40-year-old board-and-batten house looks immaculately turn-key. It’s on a flat, mostly cleared lot, but surrounded by enough tall trees that in summer you’d be unaware of your neighbors. The landscaping is a bit barren, but that’s a fun challenge for some of us. There’s plenty of room for a pool.
Altogether worth checking out, IMO, if you’re in the market for a second (or first) home under half a mil.
Go here for the listing and more pics.
NEVER THOUGHT I COULD GET SO EXCITED ABOUT PARKING, outside of finding a spot in the East Village on a Saturday night.
For the past two days, the construction of a parking court — that sounds pretentious, but it’s not a driveway, it’s a 25′x30′ almost-square and I don’t know what else to call it — has been underway in my front yard. The workmen just finished, and I’m pleased with how it turned out.
I had determined the standard dimensions from internet research. A spot for two cars ought to be 30′ wide — presuming car doors need to open, and people need to maneuver about. And I had decided it should be 30′ deep, measured from the road, to accommodate the occasional vehicle longer than my own Honda Fit.
When Joe Goncalvez, an old-school mason, and his son arrived yesterday, marked off the space, and started bulldozing the remains of the old black asphalt, I realized that was way huger than necessary. So I cautiously had them lose five feet of width, but it’s still 30′ deep, for a total of 750 square feet of parking. That’s almost the size of the house itself! It taught me something about proportionality: that it is very hard to get right without experience (and this is my first parking court, after all).
I’m hoping that with time, and encroaching greenery, the parking court won’t look so vast, and if it does, I’ll use it for additional container planting– put out barrels of annuals or evergreens, possibly even a bench. Turn it into an entry courtyard that happens to accommodate cars.
Meanwhile, it can fit four Fits, if not six.
I love the stone — 3/4″ pieces of local quartz and granite, a natural beige/cream/brown color, worn smooth by the glaciers that deposited it here 15,000 years ago (it’s dusty in the picture above; it’s not really that yellow). I used railroad ties as edging, an economical solution and one I think looks right for my humble cottage (Belgian block or any such fancy edging would have been too much).
Joe also brought over some smaller pea gravel, and suggested that, since I had a “credit” (the parking court being a bit smaller than originally intended), he pave me a pea-gravel walkway from parking court to front door. He told me they would excavate a couple of inches and lay down landscape fabric to keep weeds from popping through.
This morning, I got up early to fine-tune the curves I wanted for the walk with my trademark technique: sculpted piles of dead oak leaves. I went out for a bit, and when I returned, they had already done it. I found it mushy to walk on and not as wide as I wanted, closer to three feet than four. So I screwed up my courage — not being naturally that assertive with workmen (or hairstylists) — and told Joe this, feeling guilty because he had sort of “thrown it in.”
He was totally pleasant and professional about it — it wasn’t any big deal for him. Widening the walk and tamping it down took all of 15 minutes. The man is a prince. And I now have a proper place to park the car, like every American home should.
WHEN I PHOTOGRAPHED my friend Nancy’s house in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, for a Brownstone Voyeur post last spring, I scrupulously avoided the kitchen. At the time, it was badly in need of a re-do, not befitting the rest of her elaborately detailed 1870s row house.
With the help of a contractor friend, she has now succeeded in creating a warm, inviting kitchen that blends with the architecture of the house and reflects the antique look of her decorating — a look that harks generally back to the Arts and Crafts era. Nancy has a serious collection of vintage copperware, so she went with a deep, hammered copper sink bought on eBay, and a gooseneck faucet in a similar finish from Rowe & Perrins.
Several decorative tiles bought in Amsterdam — some from the 1920s, others 1960s re-issues of earlier patterns — are set in a backsplash of celadon-green crackled glass tile. The spectacular light fixture above the new granite counter, which is a deep brown laced with coppery tones, was also found in Amsterdam, shipped here in parts, and reassembled.
Off-white wood cabinets and a matching island, from Lowe’s, have vertical grooves that suggest period-appropriate wainscotting. Nancy even found hammered copper cabinet handles at Gracious Home to tie things together.
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