Meet ‘Upstater’

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1838 Thornton M. Niven House, Newburgh, N.Y., 399K

ONCE AGAIN <the blogger said sheepishly> I apologize for the infrequency of my posts of late. Not to worry — I am about to embark on a new, Brooklyn-based gig that has the potential to energize and enliven casaCARA as well. Meanwhile, I’m going to call your attention to a new-this-year blog doing more or less what I set out to do some 2-1/2 years ago, but more comprehensively — and with more resources in the form of contributors, and all the fresh enthusiasm that comes with initiating a new project (two or more posts a day, wowza!)

It’s called Upstater, and it’s spearheaded by a professional journalist, Lisa Selin Davis, who is enamored not only of Dutchess and Columbia Counties, the portion of the mid-Hudson Valley I know and love; they also spread up, down, and around from there. In other words, they cover the riverfront, east and west, and venture into the Catskill Mountains, too.

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Sullivan County lakefront cottage, 199K

The Upstaters are perennial house-hunters wanting to share picks and finds, and though much of their legwork is mouse-work, they do spotlight interesting, inexpensive properties, and provide overviews of upstate towns that are useful to serious prospective buyers as well as buy-curious visitors and vacationers.

This week, the kleigs are turned on Newburgh, N.Y., which has the second-most historic properties in New York State (second to the Apple, of course, and that’s damned impressive). Coverage is provided by Cher Vick of the blog Newburgh Restoration, another able reporter who’s pulled together some extraordinary listings and makes a strong case for investigating the town.

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Margaretville, N.Y. oldie, “make an offer”

So while I lay a little lower than usual, get thee right over to Upstater to find out what’s happening, real-estate-wise, in Newburgh and points north.

Converted Rhinebeck Barn 329K

80187IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I PLAYED AROUND on the Columbia Northern Dutchess Multiple Listing site. It’s the best MLS I know — it actually covers a wide range of upstate New York counties, and allows you to search on properties based on when they were built.

Tonight I entered “thru 1700” just to see what would pop up. While I don’t for a minute believe this barn conversion in desirable Rhinebeck, N.Y., was originally built before 1700, it’s a place I would definitely investigate, were I in the market right now for a weekend/summer place with gardening opportunities in the Hudson Valley.

The 1,200-square-foot post-and-beam house, on three acres with a pond, looks like a child’s drawing. You couldn’t get more basic in terms of structure. Before its renovation in the 1990s, it looked like this:

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I’m not sure I love what was done in terms of window placement and other design choices, but it’s still appealing, and the property looks pretty. There are wide-board floors and a metal roof, and taxes aren’t horrific.

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Here’s a view of the interior, below. Living, kitchen, and dining are on the ground floor. Stairs lead to the bedroom, study, and bath.

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For more pictures and all the nitty-gritty, go here.

Please Please Me, Perennials

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ON SUNDAY, I WENT TO HEAR THE IRREPRESSIBLE GARDEN DESIGNER/WRITER DEAN RIDDLE speak at Madoo Conservancy in Sagaponack. I’ve been a fan of Dean’s since his ‘Dean’s Dirt’ column in Elle Decor some years ago. His 2002 book, Out in the Garden, about his creation of an exuberant planting scheme (and life, in the process) at his rented bungalow in the Catskills, has been on my night table since I moved here.

I’m writing about a glorious garden Dean designed near Woodstock, N.Y., above, for the July/August issue of Garden Design magazine. After his slide show, which ranged over several gardens he’d designed upstate and his recent trip to Japan, my head was swimming with visions of billowing perennials.

Dean’s a guy after my own heart: resourceful, down-to-earth, and budget-conscious. He’s encouraging and enthusiastic; he makes you feel you can do it. One of his trademarks is the extensive use of self-sowing plants like verbena bonariensis and echinacea, whose random appearances over time, he says, “weave everything together.” I also love his use of boxwood as a “rhythmic evergreen presence” (the boxwood ball at my front door has cheered me all winter long).

Dean began his talk with a “Garden in Four Days,” a 4-square plot he’d created for an upstate client who wanted to pretty things up in a hurry. Birch logs were used to edge the beds and Dean created a ‘cobblestone carpet’ (another of his signatures) with stones salvaged from a nearby stream. They planted 175 one-gallon perennials all at once — approximately 35 each of just 5 different plants.

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So naturally, when I visited Spielberg’s nursery in East Hampton on Monday for some composted manure to improve my still lacking-in-nutrients soil, and went out back “just to see what they had,” I couldn’t resist buying a bunch of last year’s leftover perennials at 50% off. I came away with 23 plants for my ‘curb appeal’ beds, above, on either side of the gravel walkway from my new parking court to the front door (with the 10 bags of compost, it all came to under $200).

The plants don’t look like much to an untrained eye – just brown sticks with a few baby green leaves among them. But I know from experience what they’ll look like – if not this year, then next, and bought pretty much all they had of mostly shade-tolerant, deer-resistant stuff:

– 5 blue-violet ‘May Night’ Salvia (Dean mentioned it, so I grabbed, and will put it in my sunniest spot)
– 5 Bronze Sedge, a reddish-brown foot-tall grass said to work in part-sun
– 5 Alchemilla Mollis ‘Auslese,’ chartreuse ladies mantle, one of my all-time favorite edging plants
– 3 Digitalis (foxgloves) of two different types, on the theory that if one surprised me by blooming in the woods last spring, they like it here
– 3 Ligularia ‘Osiris Cafe Noir,’ 20″ tall, dark-leaved, good for shade
– 2 Aquilegia (columbine) in ‘origami yellow,’ which I know self-seeds abundantly, works in shade, and is difficult to transplant (so even though I can take columbines from upstate when I go there next month, I figured I needed the insurance of already potted specimens)

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Now, of course, I have to put them all in. Started last night by dumping my 10 bags of compost and placing the plants more or less where I think they’ll flourish. Then I picked up my pointed shovel and found, once more, that my so-called soil is compacted and rockier than imagined. I didn’t get far before nightfall, and it’s raining hard today.

So I get a temporary reprieve from digging. But at least my dreams of perennial borders are underway.

Now, this shade-challenged area, below, is crying out for some foundation plantings:

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And here’s a barren spot, below, if ever there was one. The Roses of Sharon, which I “hard pruned” recently – just as the books say – is an unattractive bunch of sticks, and I believe it’s late to leaf out. Any suggestions as to what I can do in these areas? They’d be most welcome.

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Urgent Real Estate Questions: My Two Cents

C.W., a reader from Brooklyn, e-mailed to ask my advice on, as she put it, “what/if to buy right now.”

So here’s my advice. But please, take it with a keg of salt.  We’re dealing in opinion here, not fact.

C.W. wrote: “My fiance and I rent a pleasant 2BR in Boerum Hill for $2,500.  Our lease ends in September, and we could certainly renew.  I have a job that pays $84K, perfect credit, and $100,000 cash to put toward a home purchase.

I’m torn between wanting to buy the best apartment we can afford in Fort Greene/Boerum Hill/Park Slope/Windsor Terrace, OR a one- or two-family somewhere in upstate New York, the North Fork, or PA that I can rent out, at least for part of the year, to generate income.

Ideally, I’d like to do both, of course, but I suspect that NYC prices haven’t fallen as far as they may, whereas we might find a bargain out of the city.”

That’s the prologue.  Here are C.W.’s questions and my answers:

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