Back in Sept 2020, in the throes of canceling our big wedding celebration and planning to do a 6-person micro ceremony instead, we saw a listing for a perfect little home across the river from us in a town about 45 minutes north of NYC. At the time, there was a huge rush to buy homes upstate, what with the pandemic and WFH and all that. We didn't really have our shit together when we made an appointment to see the place -- it was just on a whim, just to see! -- and fell in love with it immediately. Then discovered that there were a ton of offers already, almost all of them from people looking to get a second home, some of them willing to pay cash (!!!), and that in a few hours the bids would close. So we just closed our eyes and went for it, made a bid -- and the owners accepted our offer, even though it wasn't the highest, and even though we had only scrambled that afternoon to get pre-approved for a mortgage. The owners hadn't lived in this house for more than 6 years, but they had taken such good care of it, created a wonderfully fertile vegetable garden out back, planted and nurtured some rhodies to life out front. The real estate agent told them that of everyone who saw the place, we were the only ones who, she could tell, actually loved it, saw the 'home'-ness in it -- and that was what pushed the owners to choose us. So now, two years later, as I watch my second season of tomato plants take in the sun every day from their perfect spot in the garden, I say my thanks to our predecessors, who made this joy and everyday wonder possible.
So very true. I’m 65 and have rented and moved so many times; but each new home I’ve planted and restored barren ground. It never mattered that it doesn’t “belong” to me. I knew that planting indigenous perennial’s belongs to everyone.
I LOVE this piece. To me it frames what's killing my Montana town, the *attitude* of too many second-homers and fly-by-night zoomers all to willing to gin up a place for show but not for good.
And I stress, it's an attitude, not a situation. There are good zoomers and bad boomers. My landlords are wealthy longtimers in this town, but my building is so unloved by them—and cherished by some of us rugrats who live here. I'm just a renter, who never thought she'd stay so long, but I've refinished floors, painted (well), and replaced janky crap with good stuff. Some of my neighbors maintain a little flower garden for all of us every year.
Maybe this is dumb, but I sorta feel like houses and buildings have souls. I like to think your house is a "rescue." My building isn't quite a rescue, since no one can truly save it (I wish—plumbing problems galore and we'll pry it out of our mean landlord's cold dead hands) but it's at least loved and cared for as best we can.
Thank you for this; I love this story so much. I became a first-time homeowner last year after moving from rental to rental for nearly 20 years. I wanted so badly to have a place of my own so I could garden and plant things. In the ground. That last for more than a year. And now that I have this place, I too can see the "seeds" that were planted by its previous owners and the fruits that they're going to bear for years to come. A small lilac tree by the front door that produced a few weak flowers last spring, but this year exploded with dark purple blooms that smelled amazing. A wealth of hostas, a sunny corner of the backyard that was filled with high quality soil, in contrast to central Indiana clay that we normally have. I don't know how long my family and I will live here, if it will be for a few years or many years, but I am currently transforming another shadier corner of the backyard into a native perennial garden with ferns, milkweed, wild foxglove and a dogwood tree that I planted last fall. We might be around long enough to see this garden flourish, and we may not, but I hope it does flourish, and provide some beauty to the next owner of this home.
Jun 5, 2022·edited Jun 5, 2022Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
First of all, loved this piece. It was very relaxing. Your house sounds gorgeous. I just planted my first rhodie! I've lived for 40 + years in this house my mom bought, and I inherited it when she died. It's in a small town. It was built by a craftsman and some things are backwards or done strangely, but it works.
In Dec. 2020, thanks to an inheritance, my husband and I bought our dream house, not the house so much as the property is what we dreamed of. It's a 1996 modular home and a pole barn on 20 acres, 4 miles out of town. It's got woods, clearings, a small stream, and a small pond. It's across from 1500 acres of State Land. We have deer, turkeys, all kinds of birds, raccoons, we even caught a bobcat on our trail cam! It's amazing and I love it. We don't live there yet; remodeling.
It's beautiful, except for the trash. We didn't see the trash when we bought the place; it was snow-covered. So a big part of what we've been doing is picking up trash, recycling what we can, and putting the rest in a dumpster. Some of it we had to bury. I can't believe how these people treated the land. It pisses me off. I view it as a mission to clean it up as best we can, while also gardening, planting trees, and remodeling the house.
Your story resonates deeply with me. I spent yesterday afternoon walking around Down Gardens in Midland, MI, with my 87yo aunt (more nimble than I, despite the 20+ year age difference—another lesson there). She has been visiting these gardens for over 50 years, and remarked on the changes over time. Clearly, the family that started these gardens (while very wealthy; yes, it’s the Dow Chemical folks) had the same long view in mind that your lipstick lady did. (We talked about things societal and political as well, and the society we hoped would yet be built.) As we drove around, my aunt pointed out all of places where she is connected and engaged in community (my words, not hers). At the end of my visit she offered me a hunk of red violets from her garden—the original plants had come from the Nebraska farm where our Swedish
immigrant ancestors had settled in the 1870s. I’m taking many a life lesson home with me.
Once again AHP I feel as if you are speaking directly to me.
We bought our home, built in 1945, in Sacramento in 2013. It had been long owned by a family and put up for sale after both elderly parents passed away. When we bought the house, one of the adult children emailed us and explained the history of the fruit trees and the jasmine growing in the yard. How beautiful!
We had some minor upgrades made to the yard before we got married back there in 2015; what I remember is that every contractor we spoke to wanted to tear out the cracked sidewalks bordering the fence, to take out all the details we found charming and a testament of its history.
We refused, and every so often I go out to explore the evidence of occupants past: the faint carvings of “Smokey, Dee and Bobby” in that cracked sidewalk. The 1965 penny that was embedded in the concrete. The homemade cross and grave for Pepper, a dog or cat that we never knew. In the garage, there are ID tags still hanging on a nail where they were left for their animals, and a novelty license plate for David, who I have pieced together grew up there.
I love this house. My baby was born in one of its rooms, we were married here, my best friend and forever fur baby Tiger Bear took her last breaths in my arms in this yard. I want to honor all of the experiences and people and animals that have lived here, and to not erase their history for a trendy aesthetic.
My mother was the first owner of a condominium built to her specifications almost 30 years ago. It’s beautiful inside and came with a front garden bed containing a few shrubs. I could see lots of potential for an English border, so we started digging, and hit - rocks. Rock after rock. The builders left rubble in the bed, and covered it with top soil. It took us years to get it all cleared out, a section at a time, and plant in roses, lavender and hydrangeas. I curse those builders for leaving that gift behind.
I'm in a rental, but there are a few of us who are "long-timers" in the building. Its an old plantation house from the 1830s, we think, that has been converted into a dozen apartments. We like to call it a crumbling mansion, because the landlord is very hands off. People had started doing a bunch of gardening years ago, but we all really got into it during the pandemic. The soil is old, hard clay so it takes a lot of conditioning and at least a year of composting/mulch to really get results, but everyone's veggie gardens look amazing this year, the flowers are all happy, and my little pollinator garden is VIGOROUS. One of the other long-time residents is a Master Naturalist, and has brought home native saplings a few times, so we've planted a line of red buds that will look amazing in about 10 years, and a few other things. I've never lived in a rental where people felt enough ownership to invest in the yard and gardening, and I love it.
This is in contrast to the landlord/property manager, who don't really do any maintenance. They'll come through with a weedwacker when the city gets mad about invasive plants taking over the sidewalk, they've made some very strange decisions about cutting down trees (there's a silver maple that's half dead next to the house that hasn't been touched, but they cut down a catalpa that wasn't near the house or power lines and was perfectly healthy). There's ivy and thickets of invasive crap taking over parts of the yard and a steep hillside. I periodically spend time ripping out ivy that is climbing up the house, and sometimes even getting into my apartment through the old, not-well-sealed windows. They just don't see value in the yard, itself, while we find the yard to be the best part about living here.
“…a literal wall of hydrangeas…” Me, to myself: that’s a climbing hydrangea. 😄 I’m an obsessive gardener, clearly, and have planted something everywhere I’ve lived (barring a few apartments after my divorce). My current house is a tiny 50s ranch, and I knew when I bought it that I wouldn’t be staying forever. Even still, I removed the terrible foundation shrubs, carved out flower beds, planted trees, and put in raised beds in the back. My mom asked me if it was worth it, considering I plan to move, and I blinked in surprise. Of course it’s worth it! It brings me joy for the time this house is mine, and it will (hopefully) bring any future owners joy as well. The right plant in the right place is pure magic, and for me, gardens are what make a house a home.
This is so good, & makes me think of my own rustic dwelling & its odd history - for starters, it was built in 1928 not as a home, but as a cabin to house the guard(s) for the adjacent prison work camp, which is now a county park abutting my .44 acre. But what gets me, other than the almost physical pain I feel thinking of all that choking plastic - is that even putting in that took work. It took time, work, some sort of sloppy attention. Something was accomplished. Why? I have never had the energy to do what I want with my cherished plot of land. If I had even that much energy, I could have made one beautiful thing, & left the rest. So it is with our physical environment, so much of the earth itself. Why do we put so much energy into that which is unworthy, superficial, destructive? At least, other than taking care of fire abatement & basic maintenance/safety, I have loved my piece of earth, and largely let it be.
We bought our condo in the spring of 2021, in the height of the housing buying frenzy, yet there were only 3 offers on our place (another place we looked at had 27 offers!). I think part of it is that people couldn’t look past the circa-2000 big box store kitchen cabinets and laminate countertops, when most other places around here have been recently flipped with fancy finishes. But what people didn’t see is that the previous owners, here for 20 years, has invested in unglamorous infrastructure: waterproofing the unfinished basement, upgrading the heating system, fixing the front porch. They were stewards of this little 100-year-old condo and I hope we can do the same.
Ooh my yard has a similar story. First owners really invested in the yard and gardens. The house passed down to their daughter who grew old in the house and wasn't able to keep up with maintenance. And then a buyer had it for 4 years until we got here. I am not a gardener by calling but I have become one out of necessity. I do my best to take care of the roses, fruit trees (including avocado!), and the various dahlias, begonias, camellias, etc. throughout the property. I like to curse the previous owners too who clearly didn't take of the place for the 4 years they were here.
We are doing a community outdoor workday this weekend in my cohousing neighborhood. Kvetching about our plants, digging, removing invasive vines, swearing together (at the rocks in the dirt, not each other) and yes, cursing the previous short-sighted residents of our homes--it struck me that all this sounds like bitching, but it's a powerful bonding activity. It's better for my soul than any blue-sky visioning nonsense about the ~future~. I love listening to folks lovingly complain about plants and make incremental improvements for next season. I love getting mulch in my nose and hollering about jumping worms. I didn't expect that this was what community could look like!
My family moved around a lot while we were growing up. My father always spent time and money planting trees and flowering bushes, and improving each piece of land with good soil and attractive walkways and walls, knowing full well we’d move sooner rather than later. That’s always stayed with me. Not long ago, I drove by one of the houses in Montreal, and there was my father’s spectacular cedar hedge, which he had planted 35 years ago and had to water and fertilise so attentively in the first years - now tall, green and dense. I wish I could have shown him!
I feel this on both the micro level you describe and a macro level as well—I live in the college town of a big land grant university and the hostility of the pass-throughs, the zoning choices of government, just a lot of choices that may have short term windfalls are so damaging long term. It is really frustrating and sad. I’m ok with progress and change, but, like you say, so many choices seem so short sighted.
Back in Sept 2020, in the throes of canceling our big wedding celebration and planning to do a 6-person micro ceremony instead, we saw a listing for a perfect little home across the river from us in a town about 45 minutes north of NYC. At the time, there was a huge rush to buy homes upstate, what with the pandemic and WFH and all that. We didn't really have our shit together when we made an appointment to see the place -- it was just on a whim, just to see! -- and fell in love with it immediately. Then discovered that there were a ton of offers already, almost all of them from people looking to get a second home, some of them willing to pay cash (!!!), and that in a few hours the bids would close. So we just closed our eyes and went for it, made a bid -- and the owners accepted our offer, even though it wasn't the highest, and even though we had only scrambled that afternoon to get pre-approved for a mortgage. The owners hadn't lived in this house for more than 6 years, but they had taken such good care of it, created a wonderfully fertile vegetable garden out back, planted and nurtured some rhodies to life out front. The real estate agent told them that of everyone who saw the place, we were the only ones who, she could tell, actually loved it, saw the 'home'-ness in it -- and that was what pushed the owners to choose us. So now, two years later, as I watch my second season of tomato plants take in the sun every day from their perfect spot in the garden, I say my thanks to our predecessors, who made this joy and everyday wonder possible.
So very true. I’m 65 and have rented and moved so many times; but each new home I’ve planted and restored barren ground. It never mattered that it doesn’t “belong” to me. I knew that planting indigenous perennial’s belongs to everyone.
I LOVE this piece. To me it frames what's killing my Montana town, the *attitude* of too many second-homers and fly-by-night zoomers all to willing to gin up a place for show but not for good.
And I stress, it's an attitude, not a situation. There are good zoomers and bad boomers. My landlords are wealthy longtimers in this town, but my building is so unloved by them—and cherished by some of us rugrats who live here. I'm just a renter, who never thought she'd stay so long, but I've refinished floors, painted (well), and replaced janky crap with good stuff. Some of my neighbors maintain a little flower garden for all of us every year.
Maybe this is dumb, but I sorta feel like houses and buildings have souls. I like to think your house is a "rescue." My building isn't quite a rescue, since no one can truly save it (I wish—plumbing problems galore and we'll pry it out of our mean landlord's cold dead hands) but it's at least loved and cared for as best we can.
Thank you for this; I love this story so much. I became a first-time homeowner last year after moving from rental to rental for nearly 20 years. I wanted so badly to have a place of my own so I could garden and plant things. In the ground. That last for more than a year. And now that I have this place, I too can see the "seeds" that were planted by its previous owners and the fruits that they're going to bear for years to come. A small lilac tree by the front door that produced a few weak flowers last spring, but this year exploded with dark purple blooms that smelled amazing. A wealth of hostas, a sunny corner of the backyard that was filled with high quality soil, in contrast to central Indiana clay that we normally have. I don't know how long my family and I will live here, if it will be for a few years or many years, but I am currently transforming another shadier corner of the backyard into a native perennial garden with ferns, milkweed, wild foxglove and a dogwood tree that I planted last fall. We might be around long enough to see this garden flourish, and we may not, but I hope it does flourish, and provide some beauty to the next owner of this home.
First of all, loved this piece. It was very relaxing. Your house sounds gorgeous. I just planted my first rhodie! I've lived for 40 + years in this house my mom bought, and I inherited it when she died. It's in a small town. It was built by a craftsman and some things are backwards or done strangely, but it works.
In Dec. 2020, thanks to an inheritance, my husband and I bought our dream house, not the house so much as the property is what we dreamed of. It's a 1996 modular home and a pole barn on 20 acres, 4 miles out of town. It's got woods, clearings, a small stream, and a small pond. It's across from 1500 acres of State Land. We have deer, turkeys, all kinds of birds, raccoons, we even caught a bobcat on our trail cam! It's amazing and I love it. We don't live there yet; remodeling.
It's beautiful, except for the trash. We didn't see the trash when we bought the place; it was snow-covered. So a big part of what we've been doing is picking up trash, recycling what we can, and putting the rest in a dumpster. Some of it we had to bury. I can't believe how these people treated the land. It pisses me off. I view it as a mission to clean it up as best we can, while also gardening, planting trees, and remodeling the house.
Your story resonates deeply with me. I spent yesterday afternoon walking around Down Gardens in Midland, MI, with my 87yo aunt (more nimble than I, despite the 20+ year age difference—another lesson there). She has been visiting these gardens for over 50 years, and remarked on the changes over time. Clearly, the family that started these gardens (while very wealthy; yes, it’s the Dow Chemical folks) had the same long view in mind that your lipstick lady did. (We talked about things societal and political as well, and the society we hoped would yet be built.) As we drove around, my aunt pointed out all of places where she is connected and engaged in community (my words, not hers). At the end of my visit she offered me a hunk of red violets from her garden—the original plants had come from the Nebraska farm where our Swedish
immigrant ancestors had settled in the 1870s. I’m taking many a life lesson home with me.
Once again AHP I feel as if you are speaking directly to me.
We bought our home, built in 1945, in Sacramento in 2013. It had been long owned by a family and put up for sale after both elderly parents passed away. When we bought the house, one of the adult children emailed us and explained the history of the fruit trees and the jasmine growing in the yard. How beautiful!
We had some minor upgrades made to the yard before we got married back there in 2015; what I remember is that every contractor we spoke to wanted to tear out the cracked sidewalks bordering the fence, to take out all the details we found charming and a testament of its history.
We refused, and every so often I go out to explore the evidence of occupants past: the faint carvings of “Smokey, Dee and Bobby” in that cracked sidewalk. The 1965 penny that was embedded in the concrete. The homemade cross and grave for Pepper, a dog or cat that we never knew. In the garage, there are ID tags still hanging on a nail where they were left for their animals, and a novelty license plate for David, who I have pieced together grew up there.
I love this house. My baby was born in one of its rooms, we were married here, my best friend and forever fur baby Tiger Bear took her last breaths in my arms in this yard. I want to honor all of the experiences and people and animals that have lived here, and to not erase their history for a trendy aesthetic.
My mother was the first owner of a condominium built to her specifications almost 30 years ago. It’s beautiful inside and came with a front garden bed containing a few shrubs. I could see lots of potential for an English border, so we started digging, and hit - rocks. Rock after rock. The builders left rubble in the bed, and covered it with top soil. It took us years to get it all cleared out, a section at a time, and plant in roses, lavender and hydrangeas. I curse those builders for leaving that gift behind.
Love hearing about your garden and its history!
I'm in a rental, but there are a few of us who are "long-timers" in the building. Its an old plantation house from the 1830s, we think, that has been converted into a dozen apartments. We like to call it a crumbling mansion, because the landlord is very hands off. People had started doing a bunch of gardening years ago, but we all really got into it during the pandemic. The soil is old, hard clay so it takes a lot of conditioning and at least a year of composting/mulch to really get results, but everyone's veggie gardens look amazing this year, the flowers are all happy, and my little pollinator garden is VIGOROUS. One of the other long-time residents is a Master Naturalist, and has brought home native saplings a few times, so we've planted a line of red buds that will look amazing in about 10 years, and a few other things. I've never lived in a rental where people felt enough ownership to invest in the yard and gardening, and I love it.
This is in contrast to the landlord/property manager, who don't really do any maintenance. They'll come through with a weedwacker when the city gets mad about invasive plants taking over the sidewalk, they've made some very strange decisions about cutting down trees (there's a silver maple that's half dead next to the house that hasn't been touched, but they cut down a catalpa that wasn't near the house or power lines and was perfectly healthy). There's ivy and thickets of invasive crap taking over parts of the yard and a steep hillside. I periodically spend time ripping out ivy that is climbing up the house, and sometimes even getting into my apartment through the old, not-well-sealed windows. They just don't see value in the yard, itself, while we find the yard to be the best part about living here.
“…a literal wall of hydrangeas…” Me, to myself: that’s a climbing hydrangea. 😄 I’m an obsessive gardener, clearly, and have planted something everywhere I’ve lived (barring a few apartments after my divorce). My current house is a tiny 50s ranch, and I knew when I bought it that I wouldn’t be staying forever. Even still, I removed the terrible foundation shrubs, carved out flower beds, planted trees, and put in raised beds in the back. My mom asked me if it was worth it, considering I plan to move, and I blinked in surprise. Of course it’s worth it! It brings me joy for the time this house is mine, and it will (hopefully) bring any future owners joy as well. The right plant in the right place is pure magic, and for me, gardens are what make a house a home.
This is so good, & makes me think of my own rustic dwelling & its odd history - for starters, it was built in 1928 not as a home, but as a cabin to house the guard(s) for the adjacent prison work camp, which is now a county park abutting my .44 acre. But what gets me, other than the almost physical pain I feel thinking of all that choking plastic - is that even putting in that took work. It took time, work, some sort of sloppy attention. Something was accomplished. Why? I have never had the energy to do what I want with my cherished plot of land. If I had even that much energy, I could have made one beautiful thing, & left the rest. So it is with our physical environment, so much of the earth itself. Why do we put so much energy into that which is unworthy, superficial, destructive? At least, other than taking care of fire abatement & basic maintenance/safety, I have loved my piece of earth, and largely let it be.
We bought our condo in the spring of 2021, in the height of the housing buying frenzy, yet there were only 3 offers on our place (another place we looked at had 27 offers!). I think part of it is that people couldn’t look past the circa-2000 big box store kitchen cabinets and laminate countertops, when most other places around here have been recently flipped with fancy finishes. But what people didn’t see is that the previous owners, here for 20 years, has invested in unglamorous infrastructure: waterproofing the unfinished basement, upgrading the heating system, fixing the front porch. They were stewards of this little 100-year-old condo and I hope we can do the same.
Ooh my yard has a similar story. First owners really invested in the yard and gardens. The house passed down to their daughter who grew old in the house and wasn't able to keep up with maintenance. And then a buyer had it for 4 years until we got here. I am not a gardener by calling but I have become one out of necessity. I do my best to take care of the roses, fruit trees (including avocado!), and the various dahlias, begonias, camellias, etc. throughout the property. I like to curse the previous owners too who clearly didn't take of the place for the 4 years they were here.
We are doing a community outdoor workday this weekend in my cohousing neighborhood. Kvetching about our plants, digging, removing invasive vines, swearing together (at the rocks in the dirt, not each other) and yes, cursing the previous short-sighted residents of our homes--it struck me that all this sounds like bitching, but it's a powerful bonding activity. It's better for my soul than any blue-sky visioning nonsense about the ~future~. I love listening to folks lovingly complain about plants and make incremental improvements for next season. I love getting mulch in my nose and hollering about jumping worms. I didn't expect that this was what community could look like!
My family moved around a lot while we were growing up. My father always spent time and money planting trees and flowering bushes, and improving each piece of land with good soil and attractive walkways and walls, knowing full well we’d move sooner rather than later. That’s always stayed with me. Not long ago, I drove by one of the houses in Montreal, and there was my father’s spectacular cedar hedge, which he had planted 35 years ago and had to water and fertilise so attentively in the first years - now tall, green and dense. I wish I could have shown him!
I feel this on both the micro level you describe and a macro level as well—I live in the college town of a big land grant university and the hostility of the pass-throughs, the zoning choices of government, just a lot of choices that may have short term windfalls are so damaging long term. It is really frustrating and sad. I’m ok with progress and change, but, like you say, so many choices seem so short sighted.