My Own Private Parking Lot

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.

Philadelphia Garden Clean-Up

YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING at this 20’x25′ backyard with its battered brick wall, which is attached to the rear unit of the double-trinity house I own in the Old Kensington section of Philadelphia, that the garden is a source of great pleasure for the person who lives there.

It wasn’t me who put in the colorful annuals or hung the wind chimes; it was a tenant who enjoys the garden to the fullest.

This is how the garden looked when I bought the house in 2007:

And here’s how it looked during clean-up:

It took me just a couple of days to clean up this neglected disaster area shortly after I bought the building. Here’s what I did:

• Pulled and bagged up weeds, which were three feet high and everywhere
• Gathered and disposed of broken chairs and other garbage
• Created a simple framework of planting beds, outlined in salvaged brick and terracotta tile, all found in the backyard, on three sides of a squarish patio
• Laid down landscape fabric in the patio area to prevent the weeds from coming back
• Ordered a load of pea gravel delivered. It was dumped on the sidewalk in front and then carted by wheelbarrow through the alley to the backyard (that was the largest expense, about $120)
• Provided some planters with hostas and the French blue chairs
• Brought in few bags of compost to get the beds started
  

A pink-flowering hibiscus tree in a far corner was the sole existing plant; the tenant filled in the beds with  marigolds and coleus. Voila! A garden at its most basic, but no less enjoyed for that.

View looking down from top floor

Walking and Stalking

UPDATE, April 2011: The photos that originally accompanied this post, which I took while looking over the moon gate of this cottage as described below, were accidentally deleted from my WordPress media library, along with the photos on several months’ worth of other posts from 2009. (Don’t ask.) I have been gradually restoring the bad posts, but in some cases, I can no longer retrieve the original photos to use in my fixes. This post is one example, so I’m using images from the Zillow listing of sold properties, because I want to preserve the post for reference. The cottage sold in September 2010 for $520,000.

THERE’S NOTHING ILLEGAL about taking pictures of other people’s houses, is there, and publishing them on a blog? What about courtyards, if you have to peek over the fence to get the shot? Well, let’s hope not, because today, on a brisk stroll around the neighborhood, I saw the charming, simple courtyard, above, and had a vision for my own front yard.

I found this corner property in the Maidstone Park area awfully inspiring. It’s a bit uber-cottagey for me, but I love the concept and the execution: a moon gate, an arbor, boxwoods, a shed with French doors, and a sunny brick dining patio. There’s no driveway, just a parking pad covered with pea gravel in front of the moon gate, big enough for one SUV.

It’s all going into the mental hopper as I continue my extended decision-making process regarding a place to park the car(s) and whether/what kind of gate and fence to have at the entry (to exclude deer, or simply to provide a sense of enclosure?)

My ultimate solution will be quite different from this one (I have no need for a dining table in front of the house when I have almost half an acre in back), but the symmetry of this scheme really appeals to my orderly side.

It’s a magazine cover if I ever saw one.

Decisions, Decisions

THESE DAYS, I’M FACED WITH CHOICES I couldn’t have predicted a few months back, when I lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn.

They’re fun choices, not matters of life and death. Still, they are perplexing. For example:

• Fencing: how high? I’d like it six feet high across the front of the property, for a feeling of seclusion, but East Hampton says no more than 4 feet, and I dare not break the rules – they’re pretty fascist around here when it comes to fencing. It will be cedar, to match the house. But what kind of design – plain or cute?
  

Above: The McKinley from Wayside Fence: Rather whimsical, with those little cut-outs, but they’re not really going to be seen (they’ll be hidden behind my ‘mixed hedgerow,’ which is in the pre-pre-planning stages), so do I want to bother with that little detail?

• What kind of gate across the driveway-to-come? Big enough to drive through, or merely to walk through? When it comes to deer fencing on the other three sides of the lot, I *am* planning to break the rules. Nothing short of 8′ will keep those big bucks out. But that’s wire and in the woods, less likely to attract official attention (I hope no Town people read my blog). I’ve had two fencing guys here — both scoffed at the idea of applying for permits of any kind — and one estimate so far for the deer portion: $4,200 for 470 linear feet. Is that good or bad? To be determined.

• Driveway: how big? What shape? I’m now thinking ‘parking court’ rather than driveway. I don’t absolutely need to drive up to the front door, so why not keep the car(s) tucked out of sight on the other side of my planned gate? I looked up standard driveway measurements: for two cars, a simple 25’x25′ square should do (got one estimate for about $2,000, including excavating 5″ deep and a layer of crushed concrete). I already know what kind of surface I want: gray/beige 3/4″ gravel — larger than pea gravel, which is squishy to walk on. Then there’s the edging question. I don’t want brick or cobblestone. Too urban. Steel would be functional, unobtrusive, and keep the stones from ‘migrating,’ but I could save a grand by skipping it. Would it be so terrible if a few stones migrated into the road or my forsythia hedge?

• Fireplace. Since I’ve now decided to stay here in the boondocks for the winter, a fireplace has become a must. Not a wood burning stove; this will be strictly for atmosphere and a bit of extra warmth. I’m ordering a Malm Zircon freestanding fireplace in white, left, from Design Within Reach. The decisions here are size — 30″ or 34″ wide? — and location. Which of two corners in my living room? Also to be determined.

• Tree removal is underway and going well. Decisions here have already been made (and these were life or death decisions, for the trees), with the wise counsel of Eric Ernst of Montauk, known as “Tree Man.” He and his son Ethan, 19, are out there buzzing their chainsaws as I type. Soon, my yard will be less five or six diseased, struggling, leaning, or unfortunately placed trees (and I will have lots of firewood and wood chips for mulch). A white oak that overhung the yard oppressively is gone already, as is a front-yard pine that got no light. Now its neighbor, a blue Atlas cedar, has a fighting chance.