Condemnation Plantation

Buckets of rain

2013-04-16T01:10:00.001-04:00

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand
You got all the love, honey baby
I can stand.
--Buckets of rain, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has a touring schedule that would be grueling for a man half his age. He was in California on Saturday, New York on Sunday, and is in Richmond on Tuesday. He can't be in it for the money.

We're not in it for the money either apparently, since we seem to spend so much of it. Our latest dip into the till was for rain gutters, which we got up right before the first spring thunderstorm last week. In a sudden outburst of frugalness, we decided against the round gutters that would have cost twice as much and against the copper gutters that we didn't even want to know the cost of. Darien was concerned about any gutter marring the aesthetics of the cabin, but she is more than pleased with the rectangular galvanized ones we selected. The "musket brown" color blends well with the logs. Darien's test case came when Robert's wife Mary came over from across the street to chat and didn't even notice them.

We worked with Layman & Son on the gutters. John Humphrey in particular was very patient and helpful in designing what was admittedly a difficult installation. He told us he was sending his best crew, Rogelio and Bryon, to do the job. It was a formidable challenge for them. The fascia board dips and bows along the line of the roof as it tries to find a level spot, nor is there a flat surface for the downspouts to rest against.

We had one slight mishap. The thunderstorm that came on the heels of the installation filled the rain barrel, which was not centered on the platform. A rain barrel can fill up quickly during a storm and fully loaded a 60 gallon barrel will weigh 500 pounds. The weight of the water caused our version of a bucket of rain to tilt and fall, crushing the side. Fortunately, I was able to pop it out with my boot.

The gutters were designed to flow into a rain barrel on each corner of the front of the cabin. A couple of other downspouts will channel water down into the back yard (to some as yet undetermined location). What we really like, however, are the two rain chains on each side of the house. We are sticking with two for the time being because those are the locations with a clear line of sight from inside. We will eventually do something more elaborate, but for the time being I positioned some large stones under the chains to break the fall of water so we don't end up with a large mud hole.

I've been struck how often Mr. Dylan sings about rain and even cabins. Since he will be in Richmond, I'm thinking he might enjoy dropping by for a cup of coffee while listening to the water trickle down the chain. If anyone knows where he is staying, please drop him a line for me.

Looks like a-nothing but rain ...
Sure gonna be wet tonight on Main Street ...
Hope that it don’t sleet

Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me "Pa"
That must be what it’s all about
That must be what it’s all about
--Sign on the window, Bob Dylan

Nailing it

2013-01-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

The final barrier to full legal compliance with the city's building code has been the stairway. The eight steps down to the lower level and an additional two to the bathroom require handrails to satisfy the guardians of our safety. I think it is similar to Darien refusing to let me wear slippers without treads, for fear I will tumble to my death going down the stairs.

We toyed with the idea of a wooden rail, but the vision of metal began to take hold. When Kenny Edwards built our fence on the balcony, we showed him the stairs and at that time he said he might be interested, so we called him back to consider it more seriously. And consider it he did. He spent a good amount of time looking, measuring, calculating, and measuring some more. What he proposed was ambitious. He wanted to form a single rail, starting from the top post, following the stair's S-wiggle, bending along the giant curved clay wall in the family room, and continuing along to serve as the handrail down to the bath. He loved the idea of the wood and clay and steel all working together. "I think I can nail this," Kenny kept saying.

When he finally mentioned a price, we gasped. This was more than we were prepared for. Kenny has the soul of an artist, however, and we could tell he was aching to do it for the challenge and the impression it would make -- and he could tell we were struggling between the ideas of a reasonable budget and what could be a stunning addition to the cabin. We knew his work lives in much more elegant houses than ours and we didn't doubt his work commanded top dollar, but the price was just too high for us. We finally came to an agreement that we all could live with. Maybe he is just a crafty negotiator so that his first price was intended to make us feel better about what we agreed to, or maybe he really did see this as an opportunity to work in a way he doesn't often get a chance to, with complete freedom to create a unique piece in a unique house.

Kenny visited several times, studying the stairs and laying out the project with a laser measuring tape. He bent a long copper rod into the shape he wanted for the rail and used that as his template. Mr. Seals helped him find the studs to anchor the rail so he knew where he was going to have to weld the brackets. He was fashioning the rail in his shop, so it was important that everything be as exact as he could make it. If he got something wrong, he would have to take it back and work it again to the specifications. The pipe is an inch and a half in diameter and over twenty-one feet long, so it was not an easy piece to work with. He did all the fabrication in his shop and then brought it over with a couple of his boys. After matching things up to ensure it was going to work, he welded his handmade support brackets in place. The top of the rail was fastened to the top post, a seven and half inch diameter log, using a long bolt that went through the entire piece of wood. The pipe makes an initial hard right angle, then a couple of inches later turns and begins its long descent, sweeping along the curved stair and then running parallel to the floor as it negotiates the curved wall; it makes a nice bend downward again to provide a steady grip for the final two steps, curving gracefully into the clay wall to terminate.

It was a perfect fit.

I wasn't there to observe the installation, but Kenny must have breathed a large sigh of relief to see his handiwork match his vision. We decided not to paint it, so it is a glistening silver that should age with elegance and dignity. Our hearts beat more gently now when guests come over, and it is a comfort to have something to hold at night when we make our way to the bathroom. The steel pipe feels good on the hand and complements what I am coming to realize is a very tactile living environment: the woods softened with tung oil, or the rough stone under foot in the shower, or the hard smooth sink counters. It is a sturdy piece of work that doesn't tremble in the darkness.

I have to admit, Kenny nailed it. He did indeed nail it.

I brush the trembling handrail. My fingers grope the darkness beyond.
-- Tracto, Antonio Santamaría Solís

Ring me up

2012-12-19T23:34:00.001-05:00

Sometimes work on the cabin just plods along.

Take the doorbell, for example. An inexpensive electric chime was installed during the first renovation, but somewhere during the reconstruction it was disconnected and no longer functions. We have been without one since we moved in last April. But in anticipation of our new house, Antonia had used last year's Christmas money from my mother to fund a new bell. Eventually we selected one and Mr. Seals recently installed it, so visitors no longer need feel ignored when they press the old button and no one comes to the door. Almost a full year for a doorbell -- not too bad.

This isn't your ordinary ringer, however. We wanted something that was in keeping with the cabin's character, so we eschewed the electrical and went old-school with a mechanical one. The bell is good and sturdy brass with an oil rubbed bronze finish, made by Copper Mountain Hardware, a model they call Eastlake. The outside mechanism is a large key, which when turned forces the clapper to strike the housing. I was concerned it was not going to be loud enough, but it passed the bathroom test with aplomb. (One person rings the bell while the other is downstairs in the bathroom with the door closed. If you do this to us in real life, do not expect us to actually answer the door.)

The bell barely fit on our thick front door. No doubt compared to modern doors ours does a poor job of insulating us from the weather outside. It is simply constructed -- a series of three shiplapped 1x4s stacked and nailed together. It has some worn iron fixtures, but what never fails to fool people is the seemingly massive hinges along the edge. They appear more fitting on a castle fortress. It is not until I point out to visitors that the "iron" plates are actually thin plywood painted black that people see the ruse. There is a diamond window in the center of the door, useful for seeing who is outside, or tracking the movements of Robert's old dog Max through our garden. The door is similar in construction to the ones on the cabins next to ours, except they don't have the faux iron or peek-a-boo window, which leads me to believe ours were later embellishments.

Handsome as it is, the bell does have a failing. We have a glass storm door, which one must open to gain access to the bell. This isn't obvious to the causal visitor. Moreover, if the door is open, which it often is, the bell is completely useless. Family and friends have taken to using the bell more as a mechanism to announce their entry then a means to ask permission. I suppose it does dissuade the occasional salesman or solicitor, who continue to press the dead electrical bell we have yet to remove.

We do enjoy receiving visitors. I won't go as far as Mae West (“Why don't you come on up and see me sometime.. when I've got nothin' on but the radio”), but you will be warmly received, now that you know the secret of the bell.

Thanks for the gift, Mom.

Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell
--Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry

Shines like gold

2012-11-18T21:27:00.000-05:00

This nine pound hammer is a little too heavy
For my size, buddy, for my size

Work has slowed down on the cabin, letting us gear up for the next phase. Mr. Seals is up in the mountains hunting this weekend, but a few weeks ago Robin invited us over to help him celebrate his birthday with friends. We admired the work Robin and Mr. Seals had put into their own house on the north side, though each claimed it was the work of the other. What I did notice was that evidently Mr. Seals has been pilfering from our job site. He had installed one of our old railway windows high up in his den to let in light, and had taken a short log, shellacked it up, and fashioned a rocking horse from it for his grandchildren. I find it hard to begrudge him the thefts, however. Pieces and parts from his other jobs are always showing up at my place. Darien says she felt honored to discover pieces of our house re-purposed in his. Maybe that is why our cabin sometimes feels smaller than it should.

It was a lovely party. Mr. Seals shared some of his golden honey bourbon with me and we sat outside by the fire ring while others played bluegrass and Robin harmonized with her childhood friend from Franklin County.

It's a long way to Harlan, and a long way to Hazard
Just to get a little booze, just to get a little booze

The leaves at the cabin now are shining reds and golds and silvers, almost ready to loose their hold on the trees. I think the hard acorn rain has subsided. Our cabin is surrounded by tall oak trees and in the fall the acorns begin to drop. We do not have an attic, so there is precious little between us and the sky. During their height, the nuts hitting the roof sound like a tattoo played out on a snare, especially on the white membrane where our next green roof will eventually live. Sometimes the hard nuts come so fast it sounds like a string of firecrackers going off. The tin roof over the screened porch rings out even more of a racket when the acorns hammer it. We see the squirrels scampering around in the fall branches and sometimes I have to go out on the balcony to confirm that they are not throwing them down to taunt us. Most of the time it just makes me chuckle to hear the racket.

We asked Bill Vick to fashion a little architectural element to sit above the french doors out of the kitchen. It covers the small gap that was created where pieces of the top molding were joined. At the same time, he prepared the little strip molding to frame the bluestone hearth. Mr. Seals hammered down both the top molding and the floor trim for us. The hearth trim vanishes unobtrusively into the hardwood floor in a very pleasing effect, so we are golden on this one.

Mr. Seals also put the rest of the screened porch into shape for the winter. With literally not a closet in the cabin, we are desperate for storage space. He had already enclosed the porch with plywood walls, but Mr. Seals suggested an indoor-outdoor carpet, to make it a little less drafty and keep the bugs from crawling up through the openings in the floorboards. The last step was building some sturdy shelves for us to stack our bins of seasonal clothes, little used cooking utensils, tools, and whatever else we think we need to survive. We now have the largest, chilliest walk-in closet I have ever seen.

A few weeks ago, Scott nominated the cabin project for the Golden Hammer Award, given by the Better Housing Coalition in several categories, ours being for residential renovation. We didn't walk away with the gold, but it was for the good cause of encouraging high quality and affordable housing in Richmond. It was fun talking to the other contestants about how they approached their projects. The event was in the former Hotel John Marshall, a Richmond landmark that was vacant for twenty years before it was itself renovated and converted to apartments. I found out a few days latter that my colleague Kristina is a resident at the John Marshall -- I would have loved to have had a peek at what the rooms are like. Maybe another time.

Although I was disappointed not to have won the award, I take solace that I have on site a man able to swing his own golden hammer in my stead, bringing to my cabin his own brand of magic. I hope he stays around a bit longer before he heads off to the mountain for good.

This nine pound hammer is a little too heavy
For my size, buddy, for my size
Roll on buddy, don't you roll so slow
How can I roll, when the wheels won't roll
There ain't one hammer, down in this tunnel
That can ring like mine, that can ring like mine
Rings like silver, shines like gold
Rings like silver, shines like gold
I'm going to the mountain, just to see my baby
And I ain't coming back, no I ain't coming back
--Nine Pound Hammer, traditional

Drunk under the harvest moon

2012-10-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

Mr. Seals and Robin visited the cabin for a dinner of smoked wild salmon. Robin was raised in Franklin County in an extended family of notorious moonshiners and rum runners celebrated in the novel The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant and recently released in its cinematic version as Lawless. The sometimes violent Bondurant brothers plied their trade in the twenties and thirties. To note the release of the film, Robin brought along a jar filled with her family's best recipe, which Darien has been flavoring with some sliced peaches. If this post wanders a bit, you will know the spirits have touched me.

Moonshine isn't the only thing one needs to tread carefully around in Virginia. I was working in the office late and Darien was downstairs. We both heard some thumping around and she called up to ask me what it was. I said it was just the animals being rambunctious, but it kept up so I went to investigate. Turning on the light in the dining room, I blanched to see that Hekla and Wu had together cornered a snake, thinking they were a pair of mongooses surrounding a cobra. Not caring to watch a death match, I had Darien pull the animals downstairs and bring me a broom and wastebasket. The reptile was only 15 inches or so long, but I wasn't sure what I was dealing with. It was young, but it had a large, triangular viper head, which worried me. I later pegged it as a harmless Eastern ratsnake, whose head will swell up when it is under stress. He was certainly under stress, and so was I. I found out that the problem with a snake in a log cabin is that the crook of the logs make an excellent place for it to slither into, making it difficult to extract without hurting it. I finally got it out of its hiding place and into the trash can and out the front door. Darien let out a sigh of relief and ventured back upstairs, prepared to rush me to the hospital.

Mr. Seals had work to do in other parts of town, but he and Mike have been plugging away at things as they have had time. The fascia running along the roof line was in very poor shape, so they either repaired or replaced the boards and painted it the dark green trim color we are using on the outside. The cabin has very deep eave overhangs, which shade the windows and prevents too much water from hitting the logs. In some cases, however, the logs undergirding the roof, which in a conventional house would be the rafter tails, came out too far and the ends were suffering damage from exposure to moisture. These they trimmed off so they are no longer exposed. The gutters will go up next.

Inside, Mr. Seals has finished a corner piece that covers up some interior gaps. It looks as if it is a structural beam holding up the ceiling, but it is hollow frame made from two boards and purely decorative -- one more dirty cabin secret now exposed to the world. The shoe molding is also being attended, as well as the thresholds. Mr. Seals tidied up the trim around the gnome door down to the basement. It is next to the stairs right below the faux beam, so once the handrail is in that whole section of the cabin will have a finished, polished look.

We have been knocking ideas around about our paucity of closets and decided we would convert the screened porch into a temporary large storage room. Mr. Seals suggested we seal it up on the north side with plywood, but use transparent plastic windows on the south to let in light and heat in the winter. He re-purposed a glass storm door in place of the wooden screen and we will get some indoor-outdoor carpeting to keep down the dust and prevent insects from coming up through the gaps in the floor boards. We have a lot of tongue-and-groove planks around that Mr. Seals will use to fashion shelves, then use covered plastic bins to keep things neat and tidy. The space won't be insulated, but it should be clean and dry. If we ever get the master suite extension built we will convert everything back.

Darien and I have kept ourselves busy with little projects around the house and in the yard. We have curtains on almost all the windows now and have picked out blinds for the office, which we will get when our finances loosen up. We found a good source for wrought iron curtain rods, made by the Pennsylvania Amish, that are simple and go well with our evolving style in the cabin.

The bamboo is dormant now. With fall marked by the benevolent harvest moon, the weather has cooled enough to make working outside pleasant. I've gradually devised a method for eradication that appears to be working. Most of the culms or stalks I cut low to the ground with a reciprocating saw, then trim the branches with loppers. A major problem has been disposing of the cut bamboo. When I first started, I hired someone with a truck to haul them away to the dump. He took one load and never came back, not even asking to be paid. They are just too awkward and bulky to manage efficiently. If the branches aren't too big, I let them lay on the ground for mulch to keep the weeds down and eventually decompose. I cut the trimmed culms into six to ten foot lengths and stack them with the larger branches into frames improvised by other culms I left cut three or four fee higher above the ground. The stacked culms are tightly compacted under their own weight and will eventually decompose.

Even though the culms are cut, the bamboo is not dead. Underground, there is a network of roots called rhizomes. They are shallow but tightly interwoven with tendrils that are difficult to dig up. From these roots, new culms emerge many feet away from the mother culm and can grow at a rate of up to three feet a day during their prolific growing season. In the spring I concentrate on cutting down the new growth, with some spraying of Round-Up on young plants. Growth slows down in the summer. Those that come up tend to be lower and bushier. In the fall, I again spray these with Round-Up. The idea is to let the plant start to generate growth, but then interrupt the growth cycle so that it can't photosynthesize. Eventually it will burn itself out trying to find light.

What goes on underground is more difficult to manage. The stump of the culm after it is cut becomes hard and woody. Below the surface is a massive clump of roots that are almost impossible to dislodge. The more mature the original culm, the thicker the root ball and the more difficult it is to dig up. With enough patience, I can wait for the stump to eventually begin to decompose and for the roots to loosen their hold in the earth. After that, a good swift kick with a boot will dislodge it completely.

I am losing patience with the time nature takes for decomposition, however. The hollow stumps collect water, serving as little mosquito maternity wards. The stumps also are like land mines in the yard, waiting to trip the unaware. They always harbor the possibility that beneath the surface the plant is still living, sending out its rhizome army across my property, ready to rise up the moment my diligence flags.

Lately I have been assisting nature in breaking down the stumps. If the woody stump is far enough along, two or three swings of a twelve-pound sledgehammer will take care of business. When I hit it square and the culm is weak enough, there is a satisfying crack and I can feel the bamboo splintering through the handle. It is the same feel I used to get when connecting on a fast ball with the fat of the bat and lining the ball hard into the outfield; there is no more satisfying sensation. Many of the culms are not ready for the sledge, which can bounce right off of them. For these, I use the chopping side of a double-bladed mattock, splitting the stump down close to the ground several times, handling it John Henry-style like I would a sledge. I then attack the root, swinging the mattock like a clock's pendulum or an awkward golfer. If I hit it right, the root ball begins to separate and I can pull it out in two or three pieces, effectively killing any chance of it sending out more rhizomes.

I was perfecting my technique of teeing off on a recalcitrant bamboo root ball when I saw the earth move.Looking more carefully, I saw it was another snake, twisting away in the dirt. I don't mind snakes on my property, since they help keep the rodents under control, which are especially fond of the English ivy that I'm now trying to eradicate from the property. This one appeared to be an Eastern worm snake (Carphophis amoenus amoenus), which goes by several other names, such as blind snake, blind worm, cricket snake, Eastern twig snake, little red snake, milk snake, and thunder snake.They are said to be harmless to humans and I want to believe it so. I transported it down the hill away from the house and released it to hunt in peace. It slithered away in the dark moist earth and decaying bamboo leaves, like a drunk staggering home at night, reeling with white lightening, under the clear light of the harvest moon.

Squirrels and snakes, friends and ale

2012-08-25T19:05:00.000-04:00

I've taken a strategic retreat in my battle with the squirrels, removing both birdfeeders. It seems that Mr. Seals's location was no better than my own. As I was ruminating on my own poor record of success in combating them, I observed a squirrel, drunk with glee, scramble up the screen and begin feasting on the seed in the feeder that I thought was secure. Fearing the squirrels would rip through the screen, I removed the second feeder. Researching alternatives, I entered a world of spring loaded doors, flippers, baffles, monofilament line, PVC pipe, and the geometry of a leaping squirrel. Until I get this figured out, the birds are going to have to rely upon what they can glean from the seeds in the trees and the flowers in my garden.

The heat wave we suffered along with everyone else did do some damage to the plants in the garden. I lost my larger lavender bush before it even had a chance to get started. After I got back from California, I drained the entire contents of my rain barrel, then switched to the piped water. I'm batting less than .500 with my tomato plant -- one eaten and numerous rotten or MIA. There appears to be one fruit still there and some blooms that may or may not have time to develop. The weather broke and we have begun getting a little rain, though like many other parts of the country we are still as dry as a temperance meeting during the Depression.

The garden is moving up to the roof, too. Mr. Seals put the finishing touches on the roof and walls around the porch, allowing me to place the GreenTech tubs up there that have been waiting patiently to be called to duty for the vegetative (or living or green) roof. We made a slight adjustment to our intended configuration. Given the dimensions of the porch, we are only going to use two tubs, rather than cut the third. This will give us a small path between the two, where we have placed a potted plant on top of stone pavers. Mr. Seals will build a fascia around the edge to disguise the planter boxes. Eventually, the plants should begin to tumble over the edge and soften the look.

Darien and I filled the tubs with the volcanic inorganic medium that we purchased from Stancills, then transplanted the sedum gracile that we had been growing at Gotham. Gabriel has been babysitting the sedum we purchased from Emory Knoll Farms in his own bed while we have been waiting to be able to plant. We filled in the bare spots with those, then purchased a few medium height grasses to place against the edge. The sedum is taking root and spreading much faster than I thought it would.

Mr. Seals and Mike have divided their time between some indoor projects, such as the shoe molding, and the exterior. The front poles around the facade are shellacked, making them pop out more. In preparation for installing the gutters, all the old fascia around the roofline is either being painted or replaced. That simple dark green edging gives the cabin a much more finished (and occupied) look.

We have had some problems with carpenter or borer bees around the outside. They don't seem to bother the older wood or logs, but they do love the fresher timbers. Our insect and snake man, Paul Davis, came out to get rid of them, along with the camelback crickets that were beginning to think they had privileges to our bathroom. We are waiting for Paul to return to plug the holes the bees made. The bees don't usually return to the same place after they have been chased off, so we hope this will take care of it for a while. Paul found a black widow on our front porch and told Antonia she should clear out the straw in her carport since the copperheads like to nest there. I was cleaning out some lumber there last week and noticed the straw is still there. When it comes to copperheads, Antonia can be a brave woman.

In preparation for our Open Log House last Sunday, I painted the new panels that Mr. Seals had installed to frame the lower half of the walls on the screened porch. We did make an effort to move as much of our boxes and piles out of sight for the open house as we could. It made us realize how much we miss having closets and places to store things. Since the addition and the promise of storage is still a way off, we are starting to consider alternatives. Our thinking now is to completely enclose the porch and add some shelves. It will give us some breathing room.

The Open Log House was a nice way to introduce our project to our friends. We had a quarter keg of Red Ale from Extra Billy's, some homemade lemonade and iced tea, and snacks, along with a playlist of music from around Virginia during the past century. We had great fun, and we hope our guests did, too. We will do it again if we ever finish Phase II of the cabin. If you didn't get a chance to make it and would like to have a look-see, ring us up. I'll dig you up a beer out of the cooler.

Our table overflowed

(i handle snakes
i love it when they listen
listen)
i handle snakes
and if they kill me
i'm sure gonna miss 'em
--Tonio K.

Humble pie

2012-07-06T00:36:00.000-04:00

Encounters with squirrels can be humbling. After watching one of them grip the beech tree with its hind legs and stretch its gray body to what seemed an abnormally long distance over to Sadie's birdfeeder, I decided it was time to move it farther out on the limb, beyond the point at which any normal being could reach. It didn't faze our squirrels at all. I came home and found two of them romping around on it, having walked along the slender limb and approached the feeder from above. I moved the feeder even farther out, right out to the delicate, flimsy part of the branch where I was afraid it would tumble from its own weight. No matter. The squirrels hazarded the springy, fragile branch and again got at the seeds, knocking the top askew.

Obviously, I was going to have to find a more secure location for the feeder. There is a length of cord between two trees that had been used as a dog run for Ivan. There was no limb above it to drop from, it seemed far enough from the tree to discourage that line of attack, and was a good distance from the ground. The next day, Darien fixed lunch for Mr. Seals and Mike. She looked out the window and noticed several birds on the ground under the feeder and was pleased they had found it. That was when she noticed the squirrel hanging upside down from the feeder, holding on by its feet.

This could not be allowed to persist. I am humbled, but try again, moving the feeder to the center of the cord. The seed is gone within two days. Although I haven't actually seen any squirrels at it, I am skeptical our birds are that voracious. I cinch up the cord so it is taught, raising the feeder by a good foot. In the battle between Man and Nature, our ability to reason and to adapt tools is what has put us higher on the evolutionary scale.

Mr. Seals cleared most of his tools from the screened porch, making a last push to get things in shape before our guests started to arrive -- Jeff and Jenny coming first to help with wedding preparations, followed by other family members. A cabin with little seating and only one bathroom made hospitality challenging. We begged and borrowed chairs and eventually carried Jonathan and Antonia's old leather sofa over, balancing it on a wheelbarrow until it tipped and Jim and I had to lug it in by hand. Mr. Seals supervised, watchfully.

The screen on the back porch had been stretched from the ceiling down to the floor and was in bad shape after ten years. Like the squirrel on the feeder, the mosquitoes and other insects shrugged off our tattered screen and came and went at will. In fact, several years ago a squirrel or raccoon had chewed its way through the screen and was opening the refrigerator on the porch that Mr. Seals was using to hold cold water and some snacks.

We decided that rather than simply re-screening the porch, Mr. Seals would construct a wooden wall halfway up. He spaced 2x4 studs for framing, then nailed beadboard to the inside. He topped the beadboard with some boards wide enough to hold cups and knickknacks. He followed it up with Hardieboard on the outside. We didn't quite get it finished before the rehearsal dinner, but even in its unfinished state it was a vast improvement. We set up a card table with a tablecloth and brought over the wicker couch that had been sitting in Antonia's carport. I wheeled Mr. Seals's tool caddy into the center of the room and threw a tablecloth over that as well, turning it into a serviceable coffee table. A few candles, some flowers, and we were in business.

After the party I painted the Hardieboard the flat green Herbal Wash to tie it to the same color we used on the south side of the cabin. I also put a finishing coat on most of the interior walls upstairs.

We had a list of projects we hoped Mr. Seals would be able to finish for the party. He got through most of them, doing a lot of finish work on the floor moldings, putting the final touches on the stairs, fixing the fascia above the small porch, and doing a lot to make the cabin look less like a construction zone. Kenny Edwards came by one evening while a dozen of us were eating dinner to set into place the welded fence on the balcony. He painted it a dark forest green to match the exterior trim. It is a handsome piece of work. We put a little cafe table and a couple of chairs on the balcony. Sitting there the thin lines in Kenny's fence almost disappear against the trees. The land slopes down, putting us on a plane in the middle of the branches of the tall oaks at the bottom. It gives us the illusion of floating much higher above the ground than we are. Even so, we are surprised to see lightening bugs another thirty feet higher.

We proved with the party that we could accommodate fifty people in the cabin with a single bathroom. Like Samuel Johnson's observation that the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind, the imminent arrival of fifty guests gave our work new urgency. Having a large family willing to help didn't hurt either.

My trick with the bird feeder was not successful. We saw a squirrel essentially using Ivan's line as his personal piece of gymnastic equipment. Desperation was beginning to set in. I had observed that the squirrels didn't seem to be bothering with the feeder that Mr. Seals had hung under the eaves of the screened porch. I thought he might have something there, so I moved mine outside the dining room. I congratulated myself on selecting a location where the visiting birds were literally two feet away from us. As a bonus, I just had to swing the window open to add more feed. I saw purple finches, cardinals, and white-crowned sparrows feeding in the new location, and no squirrels! The feed even seemed to be eaten at a reasonable rate.

I left for California secure in the knowledge that Man had triumphed over Rodent. Peter and Sadie stayed at the cabin while we were away and reported no suspicious activity. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The we returned home. Darien called me over to the window to watch a squirrel hanging from the feeder, while another one on the ground feasted on the dropped seeds. In our absence they had learned how to scale the wall.

I am now thoroughly discouraged. My only consolation is that not only are the squirrels ignoring Mr. Seals's bird feeder, but so are the birds.

The hawk and the crow

2012-05-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

The cabin has been visited lately by a red-shouldered hawk. We saw him perched on the tin roof next door. He had dignity and a seriousness of purpose about him, unlike the noisy crow who sometimes struts about near the window looking for handouts. I had a good look at the hawk's russet underbelly when he took flight, first swooping low through the green bamboo then gaining altitude rapidly, riding the wind, until I lost him in the evening sun. Mr. Seals saw him a few days later, down the street, perched among the early spring leaves. The chickens had better watch their step.

We have our own perch in the form of the balcony that opens up off of the office. We haven't used it much, since the surface is still just the white membrane roofing material and we don't want to damage it. The platform will be large enough for a couple of small chairs and maybe a little table. It also provides access to what will eventually be a large vegetative roof over the den on the western side of the cabin. The past month has been filled with extended discussions over the best material to lay down over the membrane for protection. We have looked at a variety of solutions, from simple mats to complex interlocking tiles on small stilts. I favored a natural stone roof, but was scared off by the thought of the weight and expense. Darien's main concern has been to find a product that would channel the water off underneath so it would not sit on the roof. She has spent hours researching and talking to people. She rejected any number of products for not managing the water well enough or having holes that would collect debris or being too difficult to install or being too light to withstand strong winds or not having the right look. She finally found a Canadian product she liked -- a hard, rubberized tile on risers. It was not cheap. She went so far as to pay to have a sample tile shipped down so we could see how it looked. We were on the verge of purchasing when she thought of talking to our roofer, Steve Kay. He calmed her nerves somewhat about the water issue and suggested she visit Ollie's, a surplus and salvage shop, where he had seen some rubber tiles. They were seconds and not quite as nice as the Canadian tiles, but were a quarter the price and easier to install.

The balcony also needs a protective barrier or fence so no one takes a surprise tumble out of the nest. Scott suggested we look at the fencing at Stuzzi's, an upscale pizzeria near the museum. It uses pieces of steel that look like thin rebar. Horizontal and vertical rods form four inch squares, each intersecting point welded solid and the whole encased in square posts. We liked the design a lot and asked Kenny Edwards, the iron worker, to come over and look at our balcony. His work can be seen all over Richmond in the form of ornamental ironwork and fences, particularly in many of the older homes. Kenny designed the fence so it will attach to the outside walls, but not to the roof itself, since any penetration is going to increase the possibility of water getting in. What was surprising is that Kenny's design actually makes two bends, but the welds and rigid structure will prevent the fence from moving, even under extreme pressure. We should have the fence in this week.

Mr. Seals is also working on the inside cedar balustrade along our stairs down to the den. We toyed with the notion of using irregular shaped tree limbs for the balusters, but concluded it would be cost prohibitive to find all the pieces we would need. Besides, they would probably have to be dried before finishing and we need the bird cage for the several toddlers we are going to have around in a few weeks when we host the wedding dinner. Mr. Seals ended up finding some aluminum balusters with a dull gray finish. They may not have the drama of ancient tree limbs, but they are handsome in their own right.

Mr. Seals continues to plug away at the dozens of things still left to finish. He filled in the gap in the wall that was above the landing window, using his walnut crystal stain to get a close match to the ceiling. He used that same stain on the front door to dress up the patch that generations of dogs dating back to Pifas had used to tell the humans it was time to go outside.

The biggest change in the cabin is hardly visible at all, but it surrounds us and has raised the quality of life -- we have the sound system installed. Sundae from Audio Exchange came by last Friday and spent several hours hooking things up and getting it all straight. The system is based on the wireless Sonos. We have Play 3 and Play 5 speaker units in the kitchen, living room, and dining room, with hard wired Bowers & Wilkins ceiling speakers in the office and den. We are able to control the music in each room, either in a coordinated fashion or independently, each with its own source. I can control everything from my Droid tablet and Darien can do the same with her Kindle Fire. So far it has been mostly our own digitized music collection, Pandora, and Internet radio. Darien remarked that she didn't realize how much she missed having music until we got Sonos installed.

I've weeded the entire top portion of the garden. I think I shall have to buy some plants to fill in, so I'm looking at those that are native to Virginia. Working outside I'm getting to know the various neighbors who come by, each with their distinguishing traits -- the walker who carries a cane, dog people, the couple with the stroller, the neighbors who like to walk with each other, the puffing overweight gentleman who strives valiantly to jog, the bikers, and of course all the cars, many of which I recognize now.

One of the constant visitors is Gabriel. He has been harvesting bamboo from Antonia's house to construct his wedding chapel. I went over to look at his progress and it was a bit wobbly, though he is confident the ties and the guy ropes will stabilize it. His fallback plan is to drive rebar into the earth and drop the large bamboo posts through them to stabilize the structure. One of these plans better work. He only has two weeks to get it right. I can almost hear Rachel in the background, humming "Little Wing," her wedding march.

Those fluttering wings are now a constant with spring in full bloom. In addition to the hawk and the barred owl, there are smaller but no less interesting visitors: cardinals, robins, nuthatches, and even the black satin crow out scavenging. Sadie's birdfeeder at first didn't seem to have much activity. Then I saw a nuthatch visiting it. After that, the seed began to disappear rapidly, although I rarely saw a bird out availing itself of the free lunch. One morning I saw a squirrel climb the tree and reach over with two paws. The feeder was close enough it was able to get at the seed in the tray. This variety of seed was advertised as not being palatable to squirrels, but someone forgot to tell the ones on our property. I moved the feeder farther out on the limb and am going to keep a close eye on it.

After Mr. Seals got a few of the balcony tiles installed and we had a good rain, Darien seems to like them well enough. The water even drains out underneath them. She told Mr. Seals she should have talked to Steve in the first place and that she was just going to have eat crow after putting up such a fuss.

Fly on little wing,
Yeah yeah, yeah, little wing

Quite contrary

2012-05-13T01:11:00.000-04:00

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.

I have heard different things about this Mother Goose rhyme. One school of thought says that this is a ditty about Mary I, the queen who asserted her faith through executions, planting her political opponents in the graveyard (garden) after torturing them with thumbscrews (silver bells) and instruments applied to their genitals (cockleshells) before beheading them with an early form of the guillotine called a Scottish Maiden -- pretty maids indeed. Others say the silver bells are a reference to Mary's Catholic Church, the cockleshells a reference to the alleged infidelity of her husband, and the pretty maids are her ladies in waiting. Still others see the growing garden as a mocking reference to her barren womb and the maids her successive miscarriages or the executions of her female opponents.

The rhyme has been going through my head as I've begun to till my own garden. What isn't dirt and ivy in the front yard is given entirely over to gardens. A half-dozen years ago Gabriel had laid out stone paths and raised beds that are very pretty yet also challenging to maintain. At the time he and Antonia had laid in much of the garden with vegetables and herbs, with stone paths and beds and bamboo trellises. I am gradually pulling back the ivy and weeds to expose them. Darien picked up several flats of plants from the students at the technical high school in Henrico. Italian basil, marjoram, thyme, and triple curled parsley went into the beds on the sunny slope near the drive. Some geraniums (magenta Foxxy, Patriot Bright Red, and pink Melody -- all pretty maids) were planted in the soft soil in the bathtub near the street (yes, a bathtub -- this isn't the West End). In the center ring where a water pump used to flow I placed the coleus -- Bright and Dark Ruffles and Gold Lace, with some Snow Queen hibiscus, Cut and Come Again zinnias, and different colored impatiens. In various other places I have some succulents, Blue Bonnets, and columbines. Near Sadie's bird feeder I put the moonflower, hoping to teach it to climb the tree. Darien had bought an ornamental bacopa called Abunda Blue for a program at school, so I put that in the ground as well.

I had been reading about garden plants that supposedly help repel mosquitoes. I wrote to an extension agent to get the story. "There are several plants with purported anti-mosquito properties," he wrote back. "Some include wild garlic and onion, horsemint, and (mostly cultivated) scented geraniums, marigolds, and catnip. I have also read mugwort and pineapple weed do have some repellent properties also." He admitted, however, that there is little proven benefit from simply planting them. One would have to apply their sap directly to the skin. "More effective control is by identifying and draining areas of stagnant water where breeding occurs." I was afraid that would be the answer. I was hoping to get rid of them by magic.

Our CSAs (community supported agriculture) started recently. We pay to own a share of the crops all growing season. We have one for mostly berries and fruit and another for mostly vegetables. In addition to the baby squash, greens, mesclun mix, red Russian kale and Swiss chard, baby pac choi, and strawberries, Amy gave me a big boy tomato plant, so I put that in the ground, near that same bathtub. The Green Unity environmental group on campus was selling rain barrels and when I bought one for our front stone porch to catch the water that gushes off the valley of the roof, I was given a chestnut oak sapling, so that went in too. The barrel filled up after the first rain.

Even with all this planting, only maybe one-twentieth of the land is taken up. Obviously, I am not going to be able to garden the entire property this intensely, so I will come up with a strategy to manage the rest after we have lived here a while. My main goal right now is to make the property look somewhat presentable for the wedding and prevent any guest from being choked by an errant vine. Eventually I'm also going to have to get to work on the two green roofs. Mr. Seals has begun repairing the eaves above the smaller one that shelters the porch to the basement, but won't be finished by the time of the wedding. We thought we would put up the empty tubs that will eventually hold the sedums and grasses, but add a few potted plants in now to give people an idea of what it will look like. Mike was driving by and stopped when he saw me out gardening. I knew he had been working on Antonia's bamboo and ivy, but he told me he was expanding his business when the lady on the opposite side wanted to hire him for her bamboo and ivy. Complete and total eradication is going to be the neighborhood watchword. Mike told me he killed a baby copperhead in the ivy back of Antonia's house. Not knowing what else to do with it, he tossed it up on the green roof where Mr. Seals was going to be working. I'm lucky Mr. Seals was able to maintain his composure enough to stay up on the roof when he saw it at . Sometimes it seems like kindergarten around here.

The work outside is starting to pay off, if the plants will just stay alive. We don't have any outside water yet, so the rain barrel is going to come in handy. I am fond of the garden -- it is a mix of the wild and the orderly, with constant surprises in hidden corners. More and more I am thinking that all Mary really wanted was to be able to look at some pretty flowers -- mine is quite the contrary opinion, it appears.

An exquisite nest

2012-04-30T23:50:00.000-04:00

We went to an event last Friday put together by Angela Bacskocky. It combined fashion and art and music and shoes. Lots of shoes. The theme was nesting. The women wore Angela's clothes of satin and leather and feathers, their hair suggestive of nests. There was even a giant round nest of sticks and skulls and bones and feathers in the middle of the room that the models built up while teetering around it on handmade platform shoes, like birds fluttering down from the sky in the awkward moment between flight and earth. Angela says, "The Nest deals with isolation and hibernation. It’s about the animal instinct to burrow and hide away, which is simultaneously comfortable and claustrophobic. Our nest is our home and the walls we build around ourselves, which keep us exquisitely safe but also still and imprisoned."

I've been working on the yard at the cabin lately, trying to get things in shape before there are too many insects and poisonous plants and before the heat and humidity and wedding guests arrive. Digging out the ivy and the clover and the wire grass, I've exposed the deep purple and white irises, the flowering Columbine, and the hostas in the beds and paths that Gabriel constructed years ago from granite rocks and cobblestones and bricks that he found on the property and that have been hidden by neglect. Darien had bought a few oregano and rosemary and thyme plants, so I dug those into a sunny corner next to the steps up from the drive, then I planted the jalapeno and sweet pepper plants that Alexis gave us. In addition to the innocuous species of flora and fauna, I've already seen some stinging wasps, some poison ivy, some camelbacks (which some people call cave crickets or spider crickets or other names), lots of stink bugs, a copperhead. Some of nature is working her way inside the house. The worst was the giant European wasp that I found our cat Hekla playing with. When you see a wasp the size of a cell phone charger inside your house and kicking up a buzz like a AM car radio in the middle of the Nebraska plains, it gives you pause.

The transformed cedar tree is nestling comfortably in its new home. I'm not sure how old this one was. I am told some cedars can live to be 800 or more. Mine was probably a baby in comparison. Although straight and strong, its base is not all that thick. I'm not sure when I first noticed it -- it stood on the border of the property when my mother-in-law lived here, but obscured always by bamboo. Once I cleared the bamboo, it came into view, but it was standing dead. Maybe it was always dead. Once I saw it, I admired how tall and straight, but lonesome, it was. I always thought of it as an arrow or spear for some reason; I thought I might try my hand at carving it into a totem some day.

That was before Mr. Seals cut it down. At first I thought he was just being neat. He is like that -- he keeps everything neat and tidy, always cleaning up after himself at the end of the day. It's probably for that reason he keeps insisting I should get a riding lawn mower because he doesn't like to see the clover get too thick. At any rate, he cut down the tree, but then just stored it away. We talked about using it for this or that, but nothing very definite. That was several years ago, before I found that Mike had been finishing and shellacking it. It is not finished pretty, but finished rough with the knots and junctures of limbs raised up along its length; its history is told in the gouges and pock marks in its skin. Finished rough can be more compelling than finished pretty, compelling you to run your fingers over the tree's geography.

After Mike finished working it, Mr. Seals cut it into several sections, then fit the pieces between the vertical pine logs that he had positioned some time ago at the top of the stairs. They came from one of the walls that had to be dismantled and Mr. Seals made them rock solid to serve their purpose. The cedar now spans the gaps between the posts, forming a beautiful top and bottom rail. There is a too-large gap between them that will have to be filled, but Mr. Seals has found some nice metal posts that should work well once he gets them in.

Apart from the stairs, Mr. Seals has been gradually taking care of the punch list we gave him. The cabin needs to be presentable for the wedding. He has worked steadily at the clay and compressed the pale blue round wall downstairs on Friday, the final step that will prevent it from chalking. There is a little separation along one of the edges that will have to be taken care of, but other than that the clay gives the cabin a warmth and presence that it lacked before.

Most of our boxes are unpacked and we are thinking about things we want to hang on the walls or on the little ledges that are here and there sprinkled about the cabin. I finally found a pleasant spot for the bird feeder that Sadie gave Darien for her birthday. I hung it on a tree branch between the mail box and a little wooden bench. I used a coat hanger that is easy to reach by stepping up on the flat boulder that rests under the tree.

These are the things that make the cabin habitable to sight and feel and even smell. If we are prisoners here, it is a pleasant sort of nest that I may never leave, exquisitely safe and all our own.

Oh, the horror!

2012-04-19T23:51:00.002-04:00

I understand there is a new movie out, The Cabin in the Woods, just in time to celebrate our move to the cabin. I read a good review of it, but I doubt I will see it. I don't handle horror very well. Besides, there is plenty of horror at my own cabin, from infestations of cankerworms to cars covered with dusty green pollen to copperheads not happy at being disturbed in their burrows. Yesterday a tree fell on Cherokee and I had to detour down to the river to get around it.

The good news, though, is that we are officially residents of the cabin now, which explains why I haven't been able to write in a while. Getting our possessions from Gotham to Oakleaf was the easiest part. All that took was a bit of money. Unpacking it all and squeezing it into a decidedly smaller space is what I consider work. As if to make sure we did not return, five minutes after we left the large maple in the front yard cracked in the storm that had rushed in and a large limb hit the roof, where it formed a canopy over the front walk for days before Truetimber was able to cut it down. It sent a chill up my spine to walk under it. And to emphasize the point that we were not coming back, within twelve hours our new tenants Peter and Kyler had brought a pool table into the living room and had dismantled my florescent tube lamp over the work bench and were in the process of hanging it over the pool table.

We used a local crew, Moxie Movers, for transporting our possessions. The personnel philosophy of Jesse Whitacre seems to be to hire people who are a genetic mix of beast and ballerina. They were like clockwork. I can't recall more care ever having been taken in moving my goods, and that includes moves I have done myself. We first heard about Moxie at the Listening Room, when an out-of-town performer explained to the audience a story about how he was trying to find the night's venue when he happened to see an old friend from Philly in a disabled truck on the side of the road. He ended up bringing the friend and owner of Moxie, Jesse, along to the show. Hiring a mover whose first introduction is the result of vehicle failure may not be the most compelling recommendation, but we were intrigued by the notion of a group of artists and musicians with a personal credo emphasizing care of the customer. Later, Kristen from Minima also gave us a rave endorsement of Moxie, so we rolled the dice. I knew this was a different sort of moving company when I heard Steve telling Rob about a particular painting at the MOMA while gently settling a large piece of furniture into the truck bed.

Mr. Seals and Robin came by with some chilled champagne while Moxie was still working and we toasted the cabin. When Darien offered the Moxie crew a drink, Jesse insisted that he finish up the job before cracking open the Newcastle Mr. Seals had brought, which suited me just fine. Later, after everyone had left and Steve went to catch the red-eye Chinatown bus back up to New York, Jonathan and Antonia stopped by. We decided it was time to open the Calvados, a French apple brandy. Darien's mother Donna (or Lita, as the kids all called her) was the original family resident of the cabin. She purchased it when it was still condemned. Every Christmas since her death, a close friend of hers has given us a bottle of brandy. The toast was a fitting tribute to Lita's memory.

Because we are inhabiting the cabin does not mean it is finished. There are a dozen things to finish up inside and an equal number of things to do outside, to say nothing of the two additions we have planned and a full landscaping of the property. All in good time, however. Mr. Seals has been taking care of some other clients of his, but he has also been dropping by to whittle away at our projects. In addition to some little jobs, he finished the clay walls in the space between the fireplace and the office. He used a warm tan that American Clay calls Austin Blush. He has started to work on the graceful curved wall in our temporary bedroom, this time using the blue tinted Powder River clay, although in some lights it comes across as green.

Our first large scale event is going to be Gabriel and Rachel's rehearsal dinner in six weeks. Since there is a lot that needs doing, we have decided we are going to need to set priorities and work on those. Now that I'm living here, it will be easier for me to take responsibility for some things. With most of the boxes under control, I've started spending more time taking care of outside things that have been neglected. At the top of the list was treating the spring bamboo that has begun to shoot up, a real horrorshow, as Alex would say. Other than that, we have been trying to make this a home. Darien has even put up curtains, albeit some of them of the disposal paper variety. As I look at the logs in the evening, I have been thinking of a recent essay by Roland Sweet, in which he talks about how a log cabin makes it easy to understand the origin of the material you live in. There is no escaping the fact that our house once lived as a forest -- the walls are trees. For us, bringing nature into our house goes beyond the logs -- it is in the feel of the bluestone under our feet in the shower, in the piney knots in the floor, in the earthy smell of the clay on the walls. Some day it will even be the living, breathing roof alive with sedum.

Last weekend, we went next door to a fire pit and listened to Jonathan and Antonia take turns reading from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," a tale of a monstrous beast who terrorizes a New England town. We sat for hours feeding the fire next to the cabin in the woods in the heart of darkness, hearing the apocalyptic tale unfold, of death upon death and fear piled upon fear, until it was finally brought to its terrible end by a courageous, aging academic librarian. Really.

Afterward, Darien and I made our way across the dim path to our cabin that probably has its own tales that it is keeping deep in its logs. That night, we didn't start cooking our dinner until after 10:30. That, my friends, is true horror.

Home at Last!

2012-04-05T23:42:00.003-04:00

Yes, we are at Oakleaf, home at last in the Condemnation Plantation.

Our move was smooth, trouble free, and enjoyable, thanks to the skills of Moxie Movers (more on them soon).

Here are the loved ones and family that welcomed us to our new home with best wishes and gallons of liquid cheer.

Mr. Seals and his wife Robin arrived while the movers were still at work, with champagne and NEWCASTLE beer (get it?). What could be better than the first visit coming from the man who is responsible for the evolution of our new home? The blurriness of the photo attests to the quality of the champagne. When they finished moving us in and setting up our bed, Jesse and the rest of the Moxie crew seemed to enjoy the Newcastle even more than we did.

Robin & John

We neglected to photograph the next visitors. Antonia and Jonathan, back from a wedding gig, came by around 11:00 pm, ready to toast our new home with New Year's Calvados. (Every year we receive a bottle of this apple brandy from a special friend, but this year we waited until move-in day to uncork it.) Antonia packed us, unpacked us, and had the foresight to make sure that our espresso machine was the first item unpacked. We arrived ahead of the movers, and promptly fortified ourselves with espresso beverages.

Hit me with your best shot

Rachel brought us bagels for breakfast the next day, before we had even unpacked our food. We ate them with Rachel while enjoying the flowers she also brought. Pete and Sadie stopped by with a bottle of wine that had a log cabin on the label. They both were a huge help with packing and getting us ready for the move. Pete might possibly have had ulterior motives. Less than twelve hours after we were out, there was a pool table in the living room at Gotham and he and Kyler were preparing to hang the florescent tube lights that had been above John's workbench.

John & Rachel

Pete & Sadie

Arnold & Susan

Arnold and Susan brought a delicious dinner, ample for two nights and several people, along with champagne. This gave us less time to cook and more time to unpack.

Gabe came by to check out the adaptation abilities of pets and parents, and to go for a bike ride down to Pony Pasture with John.

Mary, our neighbor across the street and the wife of our stonemason Robert, brought Girl Scout cookies so that Mr. Seals will stay on the job with vigor.

Scott & Margaret

Scott, our architect, has a lot of responsibility for the beautiful design of our new home. He and Margaret stopped by for a tour. They brought a bottle of Italian wine, which we optimistically view as an omen (St. James's Choir 2013 Italy Tour).

Now it is time to get our new home ready for a housewarming at some indeterminate time in the future and a wedding rehearsal dinner in early June. What better way to make the Condemnation Plantation home? I am happy to report that kitty Hekla is comfortable in her new environment, battling stink bugs and epic inchworms with great success.

We've come full circle: Lita bought the house in 2000, and lived with John and me at Oakleaf until the place was habitable. Antonia, Jonathan, Gabe, and Rachel all lived at the Condemnation Plantation at various times. Now, twelve years later, we're here.

Life couldn't be better, thanks to workers, friends, and many people who are both friends and workers.

The condemned and the redeemed

2012-03-30T23:53:00.000-04:00

Spring in Richmond is certainly much different than in Boston, as least when I was there this past week. Whites and pinks and purples on fields of varying shades of green are everywhere, looking like a painter's exuberant palette after years of canvases. The dead of winter once again is resurrecting to life, just in time for Easter, as it always does, ever and ever.

I had a call from Dave at Verizon this morning asking me to meet him at the cabin: he was ready to bring in the fiber optic. Initially, I was only interested in having the Internet at the cabin. We got rid of our TV service years ago and were out of the habit of watching anything other than the occasional Netflix movie. We have had an Internet phone from Vonage for the last ten years and we thought we were ready to move completely to cell. That was the plan, anyway, before several weeks ago when Peter said he had a friend who could get us a good discount on my FiOS. When I finished discussing the options with Matt, I walking away with an Internet speed of 35 megabits in both directions, a stunning increase over the 5Mbs download and 2Mbs upload I had been using. Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with a TV and telephone.

When Dave walked in, he immediately commented on how much he liked the cabin. He told me he was going to make the FiOS installation "pretty." I was all for that. I have a temporary fiber optic cable in my yard now, but a crew will come out later and bury it. I'm in luck, since I had been anticipating running the cable through the trees. Dave and Mr. Seals came up with a place to bring the cable unobtrusively through the stone foundation. Dave affixed the main box in the utility room, then ran the coax cable into the laundry room to connect with the switch and TV box. I'm still working on a scheme to permanently mount all the equipment that is going to live down there.

Antonia dropped in with a cup of coffee for me while I was waiting for Dave to finish. I pointed out the gnome door to her and she reminded me that it was the same door that The Bird & Her Consort had used in their "Knock, Knock!" show at the Anderson Gallery. We continue to re-purpose, sometimes more than once.

Mr. Seals showed me the farm style lamp he installed by the front door. That evening Jonathan commented that the decorative street address sign next to the lamp was technically his, since we had given it to him and Antonia as a Christmas gift when they lived there. He seems willing to negotiate.

Mike came by and chainsawed some logs in the drive that Gabriel is using to grow a variety of mushrooms. Mike then worked with Mr. Seals to complete the dog run. Rather than stairs, they elected to lay in some ramps, which may make it easier for the little Shih Tzus to get up and down the hill. Maybe. Neither of them are very steady on their feet. We may ask Mr. Seals to come back and put in guide lines so they don't lose their balance and fall off. When I left, Mike was painting the laundry room door.

Since I was no longer in Boston, I had no more excuses for not helping to pack. Antonia had already gone over and was making good progress with Darien. I had promised to buy her lunch, but we compromised on homemade avocado sandwiches for lunch and Chipotle burritos for dinner. Sadie was there with Peter and Jonathan came by after working at the press all day. Rachel called as she was getting off work, so we invited her over as well. Gabriel, unfortunately, has the weekend shift at his new restaurant. It was our last supper at Gotham before taking up a new life on Oakleaf.

Darien and I carried a carload of fragile items over to the cabin, in advance of Moxie Movers coming tomorrow. It was a bit sad, knowing that this is the cleanest the cabin will ever be. Even in its not-quite-finished state, it is beautiful. The floors gleam like a still lake, the clay walls have earthy depth and movement, the cabinets beg you to run your hand over them, and the office glows gold like clouds at sunrise.

The first thing that Darien brought in was the condemned sign that was on the property when her mother first purchased it. The property had literally been condemned back then -- it was dead, a wasteland and an eyesore. Donna brought the cabin back to life and lived her last years there. The fact that she inhabited a formerly condemned property became a family joke. It eventually gave this blog its name. For years the sign lived tucked up in the rafters, but then it seemed to disappear. We thought it had been tossed out during the demolitions or maybe fallen to pieces from rot. I was surprised to discover it behind the piano after Gabriel and Rachel moved out. I didn't let Darien know I had found it, but surreptitiously had it framed. I presented it to her as a gift -- birthday or Valentine's Day, I don't remember which -- and it has hung on the wall at Gotham ever since. It is fitting that the sign is the first thing to be moved in, giving the cabin life again. Donna whispers to us, brought to life in the home she loved.

It is time to give the land new life. The dishonored is honored, the dead is risen, and the condemned is redeemed, ever and ever.

1 more day to go.

Lighting the way home

2012-03-29T23:57:00.000-04:00

Jimmy dropped me off at the cabin on the way home from the airport. Darien met us there and showed me what Mr. Seals and Mike have been up to -- mostly things that will enable us to live in the cabin while the rest of the work goes on around us.

Mr. Seals thoughtfully put up some plywood panels around the edge of the stairs so I'm not tempted to take an inadvertent shortcut over the edge. Since we don't have any closets right now, he also put up a couple for rods in the hall across from the bathroom; for good measure, he put one in the laundry room as well. The fireplace is cleaned up now. We just need to cement the Falcon Mist granite in place on the mantel shelf and put some trim around the bluestone hearth.

Darien brought a screwdriver to the party and installed all of the decorative light plates we have, including the one made from one of our photos taken in Iceland. Just so Jody knows, Darien has been waiting to do this for over a year.

It is fun to travel, but nothing beats coming home to the cheer of a large red number glowing brightly on the outside of your house.

2 more days to go.

The gnome and and the owl

2012-03-28T23:41:00.000-04:00

I spoke to Darien this evening after returning from my a dinner of striped bass with colleagues in Boston. I caught her at the cabin, where she had retreated after the electricity went out at Gotham following a sudden storm. This is a switch from the usual pattern of Gotham being the safe house during storms. She reported no leaks from the hard rain, which is good news, but we are still going to have the roofer come out to look at things. Scott thinks we need to put copper sheet in the gutter. When he told her it will cost a thousand dollars, Darien blanched. "What? Everything costs a thousand dollars," he consoled her.

Mr. Seals has added a few more finishing touches. He trimmed out the shelf in the office and shellacked the mantel on the fireplace. I haven't seen the mantel myself, but Darien reports that the dry wood is much improved now and gives the living room a finished look. Mr. Seals doesn't have time to construct the secret hidden door behind a bookcase beneath the stairs that Rachael so wants, but he did remain true to the history of the cabin by cutting down one of the old bedroom doors to a more gnome-like scale. Maybe we can pursue the bookcase when we have more time and more money.

My old friend from Norwalk, Jim S., read my post about the owl that haunts the property. Jim is a great naturalist and photographer. He sent me a very useful link from Cornell University that he uses to identify birds, including matching them by their calls. (I think ours is a Great Horned Owl.) I promised Jim I would say a bit more about the owl. The owl has become something of a totem on the property. When Donna, Darien's mother, bought the property in 2001, it was literally condemned. It had sat vacant for twenty years and was literally uninhabitable. To celebrate her purchase, we had an outdoor barbecue at the cabin, before she started work on her own renovation. Halfway through the party, the Great Horned came swooping by, gliding easily on the wind not twenty-five feet above us, like a jet plane on a fly-by. It was as if the somber predator was welcoming us, but also letting us know that we were only tenants on the land and that we must acknowledge prior claims.

Since that time, the owl has kept watch, alert and vigilant, occasionally swooping down from the trees, silent and deadly. It has proven therapeutic to Rachel, who is overcoming her disappointment over the hidden bookcase door by working on her owl imitation, silent and stealthy. Maybe it is a wedding dance.

3 more days to go.

Soft lights

2012-03-27T22:58:00.000-04:00

The neighborhood owl has returned. Gabriel spotted it on his property in the soft evening light. Darien has seen it as well. We can hear its haunting call echoing through the trees at different hours of the day. Many of the branches are still barren of leaves, so it is easier at this time of year to spot when it is perched high above us. Sometimes I will be looking at the ground and see its shadow sweep across my vision, even though I don't see the bird itself. I'm wishing it the best of luck in its hunt for field mice around the cabin.

Troy has been back at work, electrifying connections and hooking up lights. Our Thomas Lighting sconce is in place at the top of the stairs, adding its own soft light and drama to the space. The Whirlpool dryer from Cline's was delivered and connected to the gas line. We will bring our existing washer from Gotham when we move. The laundry room utility sink is in place and also connected, although there was not enough room to attach the little sideboard.

Darien picked up some door mats for the front and kitchen doors. They are made from recycled rubber from Rubber Cal and have the look of cast iron. Although we gravitate toward the genuine, we are not averse to a little deception now and then.

I'm still in Boston. I wished I had brought a knit cap this morning when I was walking to my meeting, but by this afternoon it had turned pleasant. I was content to deceive myself it was truly spring here while I wait out the time until we move in, like an owl in the naked oak branches watching patiently for its prey.

4 more days to go.

Two steps forward, one step back

2012-03-26T23:02:00.000-04:00

Mr. Seals is working on a punch list of things to complete before we move in. We don't expect him to actually have it all done, but the cabin should be livable.

That is, if we can keep the water out. We had strong, driving rains on Friday. Some of it came in under the door from the outside to the laundry room, pooling onto the floor, in spite of what appears to be a good seal. Part of the reason may be that we do not have a gutter up yet, and a lot of water pours off the roof straight down to the threshold. Mr. Seals tacked up a small wooden awning for the time being. More troubling was the water that came in the living room in a similar place as before. The roof is now the most questionable part of the structure; I'm afraid we may have to battle it until we are able to put a new one on.

I have fled to chilly Boston for the week, so Darien gets to do the heavy lifting on the problems.

Still, there is progress. Mr. Seals has painted the risers on the stairs, using the trim color from the den. We decided to use a different color on the north exterior than we have on the south. Sherwin-Williams Duration paint is supposed to be self-priming and only require one coat, but I don't think it is going to work out that way. We are using a flat green, called Herbal Wash, that goes well with the forest green trim and complements the dark logs. Mr. Seals is using some of the leftover paint in the laundry room -- Clear Creek pale blue from the den and the wake-me-up Zinnia from the office as an accent.

Darien began putting the floor registers in. Most of them are relatively inexpensive ones from allen + roth (available at Lowe's), but we stepped it up for the living room, using cast iron grates (also from Lowe's). I wish we could afford them throughout the house.

Mr. Seals took the old refrigerator to the Gotham house for Peter to use until Kyler inherits his parent's, then brought back Bill's sycamore bookcase and set it into the office wall. I haven't seen it, but the photograph Darien sent me gives an indication of how good it looks.

I stopped by the cabin before I left for Boston and had a pleasant surprise. It was almost two years ago that Mr. Seals took down an old dead cedar that was in the front yard. It was the long tall one -- 12 or 15 feet -- without any branches on it, but straight as a steel beam. It has been sitting out front. I noticed it under the porch, all cleaned up and with a nice coat of shellac on it. The conversation with Mike went something like this.

Mike: Did you see the cedar under the porch that we fixed up?
Me: No, I haven't.
Mike: We thought we would use it for the handrail on the stairs.
Mr. Seals: What do you mean "we" thought? It was my idea, not yours.
Mike: Well, I included you when I said "we" were the ones who fixed it up, so I thought you would share some of the credit with me for thinking it up.

5 more days to go.

Next to godliness

2012-03-25T17:14:00.000-04:00

7 more days to go.

We will have a variety of unfamiliar surfaces to attend to once we move into the cabin. Darien has been researching different cleaning solutions that have minimal negative environmental or health side affects. Here is what she has come up with so far.

Surface	Cleaning Agent	Use
Wood floors	Vinegar and warm water; rinse	1/2 c. vinegar to gallon warm water.
Linoleum	Vinegar and warm water; rinse	1/2 c. vinegar to gallon warm water. Spot clean with a couple drops of castile soap on damp cloth.
Stone	Warm water; hydrogen peroxide or OxiClean for stains
Soapstone, porcelain sinks, cutting boards	Hydrogen peroxide 3% and white or apple cider vinegar	Vinegar and peroxide in separate spray bottles. Spray on surface in either order, rinse with water
Toilet, tub, sink	Castile soap, baking soda, vinegar	Tub: sprinkle soda on tub, few drops soap on damp rag, scrub, rinse. Toilet: clean outside with rag sprinkled with soda; rinse. Toilet: 1/4 c. baking soda and 1 c. vinegar; pour into toilet and let sit for 5 min., scrub.
Copper sink	Castile soap	Copper has its own natural antibacterial properties.
Shower Tiles (unglazed porcelain)	Vinegar and warm water	1/2 c. vinegar to gallon warm water. If needed, saturate the tile with vinegar/water solution, leave for 5 - 10 min. Scrub with a brush in both directions. Rinse with warm water.
Mirrors, windows	"The Ultimate Cloth", or vinegar/water spray	1/4 c. in spray bottle topped with water

Virginia is humid and hot, a veritable Petri dish for mold. We have some specific attack plans to counter it.

Surface	Cleaning Agent	Use
Porous surfaces	Tea tree oil kills all types mold; no need to rinse; antibacterial; strong odor	Spray a solution of 1 tsp. oil, 1 c. water
Nonporous surfaces	Grapefruit seed oil no odor and no need to rinse	Spray a solution of 10 drops oil, 1 c. water
Fabrics, porous and nonporous surfaces	Hydrogen peroxide 3%	Spray and let sit for 10 min, scrub, wipe. Store hydrogen peroxide in the dark or in a dark bottle.

If you have your own favorite non-toxic products, I'd love to hear about them.

6 more days to go.

Bad moon on the rise

2012-03-21T01:20:00.001-04:00

I watched Indiana play a few days ago and knew trouble was on the way for VCU. True enough, it was bad times on Saturday night, like seeing earthquakes and lightning and knowing the rivers would overflow and the hurricanes blow. Indiana took the life out of VCU in the NCAA tournament in a heartbreak loss that we could have won. My response?

"Wait until next year." Earthquakes and lightning will not hold us back or make us waver.

We aren't waiting until next year to fix the stumbles at the cabin, however. Sometimes things just go wrong, in spite of the best intent. The only thing to do is to figure a way around it.

After applying a second coat of tung oil and waiting a few days for it to dry, we put down the satin coat, which we had hoped would be the final one. Each coat soaks down and impregnates the wood rather than just sealing it on top as some finishes do. Successive layers fill any valleys so the surface gradually builds up to a glassy smoothness. The final coat has to ventilate for seven days and the final curing process requires a full ninety.

The crew had not used WaterLox tung oil before. It is worked differently than some other finishes, but the payoff is in the result. My amateur photographs do not convey how stunning the floors are. Rather than the shiny plastic sheen one gets when using a polyurethane on wood floors, ours has a warmth and depth to it that brings out the grain and enhances the color of the heart pine. It is almost liquid in appearance, and in certain light it is like an Irish-green moon rising over a still lake.

In spite of the care taken, we could see where the application is imperfect in a couple of places when we looked at it in certain light and from certain angles, with visible defects in the form of swirl marks and lack of feathering, looking a bit like a hurricane frozen on a weather map. As usual, the devil is in the details, though I sometimes feel I would bargain my soul away to make the problems go away. Mr. Seals was not pleased either, so he had the floors buffed out and a fourth coat of tung oil laid down. When I peeked in this evening on my way home from work, I didn't see any problems, although the floor was still wet so I couldn't walk inside. Bill had told us that ideally we should use four coats of the tung oil, and I guess he got his wish.

The long curing time for tung oil means that some of the internal work is going to have to wait a bit longer. Another consequence of the long curing time is that we want to be careful how we treat the floor for that first three months. Upon the manufacturer's recommendation, I'm spending time putting felt pads on our chairs and heavy furniture.

The other stumble we had was with the cabling. We have Verizon scheduled to come out next week to install our fiber optic Internet connection. Part of the cable has to work its way through the wall behind the shower. We have to get the cable through before all the wallboard can go up in the laundry room, so we thought we would get a jump on things by running the cable before Verizon arrived. We had a communication breakdown, however, and we put Ethernet through instead of coaxial cable. Mr. Seals is going to have to remove the wallboard and patch things up. On the scale of things, it is a minor irritant, but because we have given the movers a date less than two weeks out, minor setbacks loom large.

Between coats of tung oil, Mr. Seals got the ceiling fan installed in the den. It is simpler than the others, but still quite handsome -- a Quorum Soho in a oiled bronze finish. Since he can't get into most of the cabin anymore while the floors are still drying, he has been spending time painting some trim outside and getting the laundry room going. He put a sealer coat on the laundry room floor and he and Mike have put up most of the wallboard. Troy had some extra cans for ceiling lights, cutting short my hunt for the perfect low-profile fluorescent light. We are going to stick with the previously owned door that Mr. Seals found to divide the laundry room from the rest of the house. There is glass in the upper portion to let light through to the den, and Mr. Seals installed a cat door for Hekla. Mike took care of Wu and Foo by putting up a wire fence outside the kitchen for a dog run.

Bill finished the bookcase that we are going to slip into the cavity next to the utility chase in the office. As usual, we are enchanted with his work. He used quartersawn sycamore to build the outside frame, with a less expensive unfinished wood inside and for the shelves. The variation in the grain of the sycamore is striking, giving it a look and texture reminiscent of an animal's skin. He has notched the inside so we can place the shelves without using any hardware. We aren't sure how we will treat the inside yet -- leave it natural, stain it, or paint it. I'm leaning toward painting it the same color as the trim, but Darien is favoring a natural look.

Walking out of the laundry onto the bluestone landing before the den, the bathroom's on the right. There Mr. Seals managed to attach the old antique doorknob to the door, bringing a bit more history into the construction. I found out that Mr. Seals has his own method of remembering. It seems that when he works on a renovation, he keeps one thing around from the original state of the house; it becomes the last thing to leave the house when he finishes up. For the log cabin, it is a rock n' roll collage he found laying around, pasted up years ago by JV in high school. It is curling around the edges and the pictures are lifting up, like aging rock stars singing a voice of rage and ruin. As I am finishing this, the chorus to their song is the thunder and the lightening and the torrential rains that are again pelting us outside under a new moon rising, and I dare not go out tonight for fear of losing my life. I need the silver tongue of Daniel Webster to bring order to chaos and light to darkness, to brush aside the stumbles and see my way home. Wait until next year.

Two bottles closer

2012-03-11T16:33:00.000-04:00

I came back from the cabin to find Antonia and Darien taking a break from packing up the house. It seems part of their strategy is to finish off any bottle that had already been opened so we wouldn't have to move it to our new house. They were working on the dregs of a bottle of golden, smokey Mezcal when I walked in. It is hard to argue with success, however. They were making excellent progress going through the kitchen. They salted up a tumbler for me so I could toast their efforts. I declined the worm.

Ryan was back from skiing, so he and Josh spent the last half of the week finishing the floor in the downstairs den, which will be our temporary bedroom. They then started the sanding, making two cuts across each floor, one horizontally and one vertically, then followed up on the edges and hand-sanding the stairs. The tung oil was next. We looked at another product before starting, but stuck with our original decision. Ryan applied the tung oil on Saturday morning, after one final touch up with the sander -- he wants it to "look like glass."

We are forbidden from entering the cabin while the first coat soaks into the dry heart pine, but I was able to peek in through some of the windows. It is already an amazing transformation, with several more coats to go yet that should only increase the luster and depth of the reclaimed wood. We expect it to last for years.

Gabriel and I plotted out a strategy for the fence we will need to keep our two Shih Tzus close to home when we let them outside. It won't take much, since their little legs won't carry them far. Gabriel will see if he can recruit Mike to help him construct something out of the pieces we have laying around. The biggest challenge will be building steps down from the temporary deck off of the kitchen.

We walked the property, looking for evidence of bamboo. We saw a few plants beneath the dead oak leaves covering the ground, but not many. The next month will tell me how successful my attempts at eradication have been. I am expecting to go through one more season of aggressive control before it finally dies out. After that, I will just need to be concerned with encroachments from the neighbors' properties. Gabriel has a rekindled interest in working with bamboo to construct lights, vases, and other objects, so I'm encouraging him to take the culms from the periphery of Antonia's property to reduce its spread onto mine. As we walked the perimeter, I found that the earth had disgorged the broken end of a dark amber bottle (though not Mezcal). I am constantly finding new treasures on the property; they seem to rise up from their tombs with each rain. Like the other bottles that have have been resurrected at the cabin, each discovery brings us a little closer to moving day.

Mr. Seals isn't going to be able to work inside as much until the floor dries, so he will address the laundry room and some outside projects. We had been hoping to install Marmoleum (a brand of linoleum) such as we did in the kitchen, but the more we looked into it, the more obstacles we found. We were willing to pay the extra expense for the product, but finding a local installer proved difficult. It is thicker than vinyl--which is not an environmentally friendly product--and therefore harder to work, so having an experienced craftsman is vital. Fred, who laid the floor in our kitchen, took himself permanently off to Colorado, removing in one blow our expert on linoleum and clay. (To add insult to injury, he took his wife Stephanie with him, who was our local supplier for many green products.) We also began to develop doubts if the soft linoleum was the best choice to hold heavy vibrating appliances or if a major water problem might not ruin the backing used in many products.

We discussed some different options, such as cork and reclaimed tile. Finally, we talked to Mr. Seals, who came up with a deathly simple solution. He would finish off the plywood floor, prime it, then apply epoxy-based paint. Not only will this approach be faster and cheaper, but it gives us a bridge to the storage room that will eventually be built off the laundry porch under the master bedroom. When that day arrives, we can consider a single flooring solution for both spaces. We should be able to install flooring in the laundry room at a lower cost per square foot by piggybacking it on to a larger job, but we can also make certain the transitions between the two rooms work, avoiding any jarring changes or too many surfaces in the cabin. The paint should hold up fine for the near term; we can always repaint it if we have to.

While we worked on the floor for the laundry room, I also have been finishing up design for the cabin network. I had already decided I was going to continue to use FiOS for Internet access, but Peter has helped me find a way to increase the download speed from 10 megabytes per second to 35, and the upload speed from 2 up to the same whopping 35. This network should be able to handle anything I can throw at it for the next several years. The headiness of the glassy tung-soaked floor and a blazing connection to the outside is making me drunk with giddiness. At this pace, I will have a heck of a hangover when we move in two weeks. It may just put me in the grave.

Dos botellas de Mezcal

Cuando me muera, como te agradeceria
que pusieras en mi tumba
dos botellas de Mezcal,
porque se que de morirme de una cruda.
Sabes bien que es culpa tu ya,
por no poderte olvidar. When I die I will be grateful
if you would put on my grave
two bottles of Mezcal,
for I will die of a hangover.
You know it is your fault,
because I can't forget you.

*Dos botellas de Mezcal*
Cuando me muera, como te agradeceria que pusieras en mi tumba dos botellas de Mezcal, porque se que de morirme de una cruda. Sabes bien que es culpa tu ya, por no poderte olvidar.	When I die I will be grateful if you would put on my grave two bottles of Mezcal, for I will die of a hangover. You know it is your fault, because I can't forget you.

Waiting for the Tooth Fairy

2012-03-05T00:24:00.000-05:00

Ryan decided he would rather ski than lay floors, so we are letting our heart pine age another week in the cabin before he finishes off the den. However, Mr. Seals, in spite of suffering an abscessed tooth, has been diligently showing up at the cabin. Most recently, he completed cutting and fitting all the pine for the stairs. While he waits for Ryan to fasten everything down upon his return, Mr. Seals is using antibiotics and pain medications to manage his tooth. The pain is upsetting his normally sweet disposition.

Mike has been working with Mr. Seals this week. He offered to take care of the tooth problem at a discounted price, but Mr. Seals didn't see the humor in it -- never push a man with a bum tooth. The two of them have been working on the framing around the French doors in the den and remaining windows. The French doors are a challenge because of the way they butt up against the logs. When I stopped by on Friday, they were fitting in a board that they had scribed to follow the contour of the logs, making a tight box with the frame. Mr. Seals is working out a similar problem to manage the transition between the flat wall above the doors and the logs below; he is thinking of building a small display shelf underpinned with a triangular support piece. He wants the shelf to pick up on the design characteristics of the door and window frames.

Mike came over for dinner on Friday night, helping to test out Mediterranean food for the rehearsal dinner at the cabin. (Rachel, who is the only person who matters in this discussion, gave it a thumbs up.) He said that he has learned a lot from Mr. Seals, whose training methodology seems to be assigning Mike the things he doesn't care to do, reserving the fun stuff for himself. I guess that is why Mike has been taping off the rooms and painting and Mr. Seals has been designing stair patterns. Dipping his pita into fresh hummus and smokey baba ghanoush, Mike told us the other part of Mr. Seals' philosophy of training was "to blame Mike for everything that goes wrong." Since very little has gone wrong, it appears that Mike's training is lacking. I do believe, however, that Mr. Seals's bark is worse than his bite. He even admitted to me that Mike was better at carving out the contours on the boards around the logs and sanding because of his previous job shaping surfboards.

While the finishing touches are being put on the den and office, the first wallboard has gone up in the laundry room. Progress is being held up a little while I decide what sort of housing I want for the computer and media equipment that will live here. My current thinking is to install metal shelving that can be moved later to the storage space under the future master bedroom, at which time we will install a more permanent and functional electronics closet. Darien decided on the dryer that will replace the one we will leave behind for Peter. The washing machine is only a few years old, so replacing the antique will give us a chance to match models and switch from electricity to less expensive natural gas. She went back to our trusted Cline dealer and chose a Whirlpool Duet, but without the $120 steam option that I'm still trying to figure what we would ever use it for. She probably spent more time deciding on a cat door for Hekla, our Nebelung cat with Icelandic literary and volcanic roots.

We have been adding a few things to the bathroom -- two rubbed bronze tension rods for towels in the shower and bamboo shower curtains -- ironic, given the epic battle I've waged against bamboo on the property, but I would rather have it hanging on my shower than coming up through the floor. We were disappointed to find that the Civil War era rosettes for the bathroom door did not fit the way we wanted, so we went to Governor's Antiques, a salvage yard that Mr. Seals had recommended. The outside of the store in the midst of Mechanicsville looked like a wrecking yard, but the inside was well-organized and tidy, with more artifacts that would work in the cabin than we will ever be able to afford (including a $4,500 polished brass naval binnacle that stoked Darien's current craze for everything Jack Aubrey).

Courtney dropped by to look at the mantel shelf. We love the giant stones of the old granite fireplace, but the shelf is beat up and flaking its ill-mixed mortar. Courtney had a few suggestions, but our favorite was Falcon Mist, a variegated granite veneer stone. We are hoping Robert can install it before Ryan sands and puts the tung oil on the floor. Mr. Seals is thinking of using some of the heart pine to form a transition cap between the Falcon Mist and the wall behind the fireplace, now a warm tan Truffle that complements the granite.

Lately we have been like kids waiting for the Tooth Fairy to arrive. Our current running joke is that we will move within the next three weeks. We've told this joke for the past two months. It is beginning to wear with a gnawing vengeance, like a tooth gone bad.

My curse upon your venom'd stang,
That shoots my tortur'd gooms alang;
An' thro' my lugs gies monie a twang,
Wh' gnawing vengeance;
Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang,
Like racking engines!
--"Address to the Toothache", Robert Burns

Not fade away

2012-02-24T22:58:00.001-05:00

Call it global warming if you like, or maybe climate change, but this has been an odd winter in Richmond. The only real snow of the year started last Sunday midday and came down in wet clumps for hours, sagging telephone wires and tree limbs. As we should have expected, the cabin neighborhood lost power. We've designated Gotham as our safe house in case of emergencies -- it is bigger than a Cadillac-- so Rachel and Gabriel came over to spend the night. Antonia and Jonathan decided to ride things out in the cold. The next morning the power was still out in the neighborhood. Darien's school was canceled, so to prove her love has got to be real she made buttermilk waffles for our guests. I borrowed Peter's four-wheel drive and went to pick Antonia up for work. The main highway wasn't bad, but a large tree on Cherokee drove me back and I had to get in another way. At least the power crew was on hand, fixing the lines. By the next day, the snow was starting to fade away.

Mr. Seals has been spreading his work around a bit, dividing his time between some painting, some molding, some carpentry. It has been a joy observing the back stairway come together. It is like watching a jigsaw puzzle being built, with each piece of the heart pine carefully selected, cut, and fitted in next to another. The stairs make several turns, so Mr. Seals has chosen to angle the wood to follow the curve, suggesting a running stream tumbling down rocks, drawing your eye along its watery path. The flooring under the window facing Antonia's cabin melts into the stair structure, with softly rounded edges to soften the break. Mr. Seals has cleanly fitted tongue and groove pieces along the edge so there are no harsh lines. The geometry of the structure is daunting. This is real love.

Since Mr. Seals is using the reclaimed heart pine on the stairs, we ran out of what we need to finish off the den. Luckily, when Darien spoke to Rodger, he told her he had some more of the pine flooring already milled, so Mr. Seals and Mike drove out to Prince Edward County on Wednesday to pick it up from Vintage Pine. The wood is now sitting in the dining room, where it will adjust to its new surroundings for a week before we ask Ryan to come back and finish laying it.

Bill came out to check on progress and talk to Mr. Seals about the office. The two have been discussing the cutout next to the utility chase where Mr. Seals wants to build some shelves. They decided that Bill will build a box insert, with notches for wooden shelves similar to what he did for the bathroom. The box and shelves will be simple painted pine, but Bill wants to use a dressier wood on the outside edge to frame it. He suggested either walnut or sycamore. I think we will go with the sycamore. Bill says it is generally not that pretty of a wood for cabinetry, but he has some that he has quarter-sawn so that it shows off a starburst pattern. That is intriguing enough to make us want to try it.

Bill and Mr. Seals have the craftsman's respect for each other. "Whenever he has a choice to make," said Bill, "he always makes a good one." I hope so -- I'm counting on it.

Troy must have been by the last few days. The ceiling fan and light in the living room are now working, which they hadn't been earlier. Evidently they need to be re-set after a power outage, so I better read the manual. I also noticed that some more light switches work and some of the receptacles are hot. Darien had asked that the thermostat be moved to a less obvious place in the office to give us more precious wall space to hang art; that has been done as well.

Darien is so convinced we are close enough to moving that she ordered the new mattress for our bed that I promised her five years ago. Strange to say, she doesn't let go of some things like that, but it is worth it for being loved night and day. Our packing and organizing in preparation for the move may be wearing her down. She decided not to go to the Listening Room with me on Fat Tuesday. I didn't get the Baby Jesus in the king cake, but I did run into Kristen from Minima, who has been helping us get organized. Just seeing her made me feel guilty about not being home packing, so the Lenten season must be working on me. I'm even seeing evil turn to good. Gabriel harvested some bamboo from Antonia's place and is fashioning some fencing with a tool his grandmother gave him for Christmas

By Thursday, four days after the snow storm, the temperature hit the mid-seventies. By Friday, we were watching for tornadoes, with the thermometer up to almost 80 degrees. Is this what we can expect as the planet warms? Maybe so. When we move we plan on leaving Peter behind to live at Gotham. The love we have for the cabin will last more than one day and won't fade away as quickly as a February snow, but we still want a safe house.

I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be

You're gonna give your love to me

Love to last more than one day

Well love is love and not fade away

Small places

2012-02-17T21:33:00.000-05:00

Every day, it seems, there is more to see in the cabin. Mike has been helping with painting and other things, while Mr. Seals works on framing the windows and doors and on finishing, bringing definition to each small space. He has a base coat of clay on the walls. They are white now, so we have to squint to see their future color. Pale blue paint is going on in the den and russet brown added to the trim on the fireplace landing.

Ryan Harlow has been in and out, working on the floor. He has almost finished laying all of the heart pine, but we are going to be short in the den because we decided to use the same wood for the steps on the stairs. Mr. Seals has been fitting those pieces in on the diagonal, which gives them a very dressy look. The step down to the landing outside the bathroom was especially tricky, but Ryan's father Ronnie and Mr. Seals came up with a very smooth, flowing line that is a pleasure to look at. The next challenge will be the serpentine stairway down to the den.

Fortunately, when Darien spoke to Rodger at Vintage Pine, he told her he has enough pine already milled to finish our job. It is even of variable widths, so we can fit it neatly into the random pattern already established. After it arrives, Ryan wants to let it sit for a week in the cabin to let it acclimate before he nails it down. The final step will be sanding everything smooth and then lots of tung oil.

We are not very adept at antiquing, so I was pleasantly surprised when Darien came home with a steel doorknob for our tiny bathroom from Caravati's salvage yard. You can still see a bit of the former brass plating on it and the raised nubs around the edge give it a fine decorative look. I'm not certain of its age, but I would place it around the turn of the century. Darien also found two matching rosettes in a nearby bin -- the little plates that the knobs' spindle goes through and that protect the wood of the door. These pieces have Civil War era dates. The stamped patent reads 1862, with the manufacturing date several years later -- 1864.

One of the challenges of this move is reducing the bulk of our lives by about a third, into a house with literally no closets whatsoever. Deciding what to bring and how to arrange it presented us with a conundrum, so we asked Kristen Ziegler from Minima to help us. We have seen Kristen at every edition of the Listening Room, but never really spoke with her. It was Antonia's idea to bring us together. Kristen spent a long time at the cabin last Saturday, asking us questions and measuring, then an equal amount of time at our Gotham house looking at what we have to contend with. She gave us a number of inspiring ideas and storage options -- and maybe the confidence to know that we can get this done and squeeze ourselves into a smaller space.

As we were leaving the cabin, Mr. Seals followed Kristen out. He had been looking at her, trying to place her. Finally he asked her if she was the one who had sold him a camera on Craigslist a year ago. Sure enough, she was the one.

Richmond is very much like our cabin. Small and intimate places, with surprises hidden everywhere.

Heart and hearth

2012-02-14T23:57:00.001-05:00

Darien has been telling everyone we would be in the cabin by Valentine's Day and she was right. Sort of.

I always feel pressure this time of year over what to do. Taking my cue from Mr. Seals, who had fashioned a ruby colored heart out of lights for the front of the cabin last week, I gathered some onions and vegetables, a few brown and white eggs from Antonia's chickens, a dry red wine, and hard Manchego cheese. Fortunately, Evrim decided to bake bread today, which we have been missing while he works at setting up his oven in Richmond. I told Darien we were going out and picked her up after work. She dressed fancy and I scrambled the eggs on our new stove baptizing the cabin with fire for our first supper. We sat at the kitchen peninsula on hard plastic chairs that were too short, enjoying the play of shadows on logs and ceiling. She insisted on washing up and I dozed off in my green chair.

It is true that we didn't spend the night at the cabin, but home is where the heart is, is it not? Happy Valentine's Day, world.

Spy your way home by the cedar wall’s heart,

watch worlds spark on the rough stone hearth.

From floor to ceiling

2012-02-08T00:28:00.000-05:00

Ryan: "How soon do you want to move in?"
Darien: "Soon. Sometime between the fifteenth and the end of the month."
Ryan: "Of March?"
Darien: "No, of February."

We had gone over to the cabin to bring Mr. Seals some coffee and donuts on Saturday. Ryan Harlow of Harlow's Floor Service was working, along with his helper Josh. They were occupied sawing and trimming the reclaimed heart pine floor boards that Rodger Childress had delivered, methodically filling in the space behind the fireplace and working their way up to the office. They were fitting our job in on the weekend, since it was hard for them to find the time to do the job during the regular week. They were able to finish the entire fireplace landing and will turn their attention to the office next. Part of the reason for the donuts was that Darien wanted to be certain we are all on the same page on how to finish the floors. Ryan agreed with Bill Vick that four coats would be good, with two or three of them as the sealer. "The more the better," he observed.

We were talking to Molly at last Sunday's Bluegrass Mass. Molly has been going through her own renovations recently, so we often compare notes. When we told her we were using tung oil on the floor, she asked what seemed a simple question -- what is tung oil? Although Bill had explained it to me once, I was stumped to give her a response. I had a vague notion it came from a plant, but beyond that, I couldn't give her a good response, so I did a little digging.

It turns out that tung oil comes, surprisingly enough, from the nut of the tung tree native to South Asia, hence the extract is sometimes called China wood oil. Botanically, the tree is named Vernicia fordii or Aleurites fordii, but it is called tung after the Chinese word for heart because of the shape of its leaves. When exposed to air, the drying oil hardens to give the wood a tough, protective surface. It has been used in this country for the past hundred years, but the Chinese are known to have used it at least as far back as the time of Confucius. Chinese shipbuilders used tung because of its ability to repel water and its hard, durable finish. It is more difficult to work with than varnish, requiring multiple coats, but its finish is just as tough and it allows the natural beauty of the wood to come through better. It is a deep penetrating oil that will not darken with age, nor require stripping the wood in the future (although a touch-up coat can be used if needed). We are using a resin-modified tung oil manufactured by Waterlox. Tung oil has a variety of other uses, such as coating electrical cables and sealing concrete.

No wonder Bill likes tung. It is what he used on all of our kitchen cabinets. And in spite of owning a large dog that roams freely in his house, one can barely notice any wear on Bill's own floors that he sealed with tung oil several decades ago.

While Ryan was cutting and sizing and tapping in the grooved flooring, Mr. Seals has been busy painting, starting with the so-called Vapor colored ceilings. He then turned his attention to the walls, starting with the deep golden orange Zinnia for the office. Darien is so taken with the color that she nixed the plan to use a more subtle color on half the office walls and told Mr. Seals to splatter it everywhere he could. The family is divided on this color choice -- a few of them have raised their eyebrows upon seeing it. We expect the color to tone down after we get the furniture in and some art on the walls, but there are still skeptics. Right now, both Darien and I are loving it, as is Mr. Seals. Besides, painting a wall later is about the easiest change we can make if we decide the choice was a disaster.

Robert Hall came over to finish up setting down the granite paving stones to support the front of our Eden fireplace insert stove, which was a little too deep to fit completely in the fireplace. Buying lots of Girl Scout cookies from his daughter Bailey may or may not have had something to do with it. We had enough pavers that had been laying around the property for years that he was able to scavenge more than enough to do the job and pick and choose among them. They had probably come from one of the old riverside quarries near by to pave parts of Richmond before being torn up and replaced by asphalt. They may even have been used as ship ballast at one time, which was common among sailing ships arriving in the Richmond port before being turned into cobblestones to pave the roads. Robert epoxied the stones in place, then filled the spaces between with mortar. We are very pleased with the results.

Almost as an afterthought, the frosted glass door to the bathroom arrived and Mr. Seals hung it. He has not finished it yet, but he suggested we look at glass knobs to help set it off, so Darien is poking around. She also finally located a laundry room sink that will work for us. Without a bathtub in the house, she wanted a place where she could wash our pair of Shih Tzus. It is not the reclaimed stainless prep sink I had envisioned, but the plastic is a whole lot cheaper.

It is unlikely we will be moving in next week. But sugar and caffeine are certainly one way to keep up the pace, and so are Girl Scout cookies.