MY TO-DO LIST FOR 2010 IS DAUNTING.

In the past couple of months, I’ve come to a bit of a standstill on home improvements. Most of my list still lies before me. I wanted to do things fast when I first moved into this East Hampton cottage last May. On the other hand, it’s a good thing I waited on some of the projects, because I’ve changed my mind a lot.

Several months ago, I was thinking ’stone patio.’ Now I’m thinking ‘wood deck.’

I was thinking ‘flagstone walk.’ Now I’m thinking….well, something else. I bought three 2′x3′ pieces of Pennsylvania bluestone and set them down to get an idea of how they’d look as a walk from the future parking court (still a priority) to the front door. Didn’t seem to work. Stone doesn’t have much place in this environment. There’s nary a piece of rock on the property, unlike upstate, where you’ve got massive granite outcroppings everywhere. This is sandy territory (well-drained, yeah!) Two feet of snow pelted by steady rain this past weekend got sucked right up into the ground, with very little puddling.

The wood fence for screening that seemed a must-do in high season, when there was a fair amount of road traffic, has faded in urgency (probably to return in May). I’d still like more enclosure, but I’ll try doing that with shrubs.

I’m glad I didn’t spend $4,000 on a deer fence, which seemed top priority a few months back. I haven’t seen any deer lately

Moments after I wrote the above words, I looked out the living room window and saw three large animals in the front yard. They were casing, if not yet munching, my newly planted arborvitae and holly. I rapped on the window. The rattling of the screens startled them for a nanosecond. I shrieked “Go! Go! Go!” One of them, a still-fuzzy adolescent, made eye contact with me. “Ohhhh, you’re beautiful,” I said.

Then I went and mixed up a couple of gallons of homemade deer repellent (cooking oil, dish detergent, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder) and went out and splashed the vulnerable specimens.

Instead of a deer fence, I’m embracing the challenge of deer-resistant gardening. So I won’t have roses. Or hostas. Or many other things.

Other items I thought were absolute musts turn out to be not so. Like the Malm fireplace I bought months ago that’s sitting uninstalled in my living room, through no fault of my own. First the roofer was going to do it; then he realized it was outside his “area of expertise.” Sag Harbor Fireplace came to do an estimate. I’m still waiting for the estimate. It’s their busy season.

Anyway, my little cottage is toasty. I know from experience that when you have a well-heated house, you don’t use the fireplace much. There’s one in the bedroom of the duplex in Boerum Hill. In the years we lived there, after spending thousands to line the chimney properly, we used it about twice.

Ultimately, it boils down to evil money, or lack thereof. My preference would still be to barrel through everything as quickly as possible. Of necessity, I have to do things in dribs and drabs. Which may not be so bad, if I’m going to keep changing my mind about them.

Opportunity

Yes … you can own this Coastal Living 2002 Cottage of the Year and also enjoy the peace and tranquility of country living on your own 21 acres of secluded east central Alabama land.

Lots of Living Space

The House Plan is an exclusive design for Southern Living® by Moser Design Group. A 1-½ story design with influences of Colonial, Cottage, Country. Recreational/Vacation and Southern. With 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths and a half bath powder room, this house plan packs a lot of spacious room in a compact footprint. With a total of about 2800 SF, it’s not too big for a couple; big enough for a family with children; and plenty big enough for all those out of town guests who will surely come and visit once they experience the peace, tranquility and comfort of your new Alabama country living home.

Southern Living House Plan #593

We built this house from Southern Living House Plan #593. You can see the Southern Living page on the plan – click here.  We know of several built in coastal areas but none that were built in a country setting like this one.  The plan states the square footage at just over 2600 SF but as with any plans, we discovered some issues while building.  The foundation plan was larger than the construction plan so the Great Room ended up slightly bigger and the same went for the Master Bedroom. So we ended up with slightly over 2800 SF.

We made a couple of minor modifications:

One, since we were not building on the coast or near a beach, we made the attachment on the back of the Guest House into a Garden/Tool Shed. The original plan splits this area in half between an outdoor shower that has a door into the Guest House bathroom and the other half a tool shed.

Two, we modified the Master Bedroom/Master Bath building. We eliminated the cut-backs in the plan and squared off the back of this building to give more room so we could build the Wet Room.  This modification also allowed for a back door to the patio where we had plans to put in a pool, hot tub or both.  The door makes access to this area very convenient and it is a modification we believe everyone will like – especially the addition of the Wet Room.

Dream Home

This was our Dream Home.  We built it to live in for a very long time.  We moved to the area from Atlanta in the summer of 2007 and started building. We moved into our home in December of 2007.  Our jobs are taking us away from the area.

This is a beautiful home.  It is simple and comfortable.  Comfortable describes it perfectly. It is very well constructed with lots of energy efficient features which I cover in detail in additional pages on this blog.  It is a place for friends and family to gather and have fun.  I call it the Big Chill house because of the breakfasts we have had with our many guests in the Great Room remind me of the morning scene in that great movie.

The 21 acres of old, rolling pastureland and the areas of hardwoods scattered about the property make for great strolls and places to ponder.  You’re only minutes away from Bull Gap in the Talladega National Forest and you can see the range off to the west from the property. Mt. Cheaha State Park is about 30 minutes to the north – the highest point in Alabama.  Most folks never realize how beautiful the Talladega Forest is in this part of east central Alabama.  Simply put … it is gorgeous.  And it is in your backyard.

Drake Creek that makes the northern border has run full since we have been here. The pasture along the creek is producing hay and we barter this off for bush hogging of the rest of the property.  We even have a target thrower ready for skeet shooting on the property when friends arrive for the weekends.  Doesn’t get much better than skeet shooting on your property and having no one complain.

Your closest neighbor is about ½ mile to the west on Pepper Road. The property east of our 21 acres was bought the same day we closed. They have 40+ acres and plan to build in 5-7 years.  There is over 100 acres across the road for sale and it is restricted, like ours, to not be subdivided.  So you may end up with 1-4 “close” neighbors one day, but that’s about it.  And believe it or not, we have high-speed interent service provided by CenturyTel.  I currently run my business from home and I’m on the Internet all day.  It is better service than I ever had in Atlanta.

And if you like to hunt, you can do it on your own property.  Deer and turkey galore. Big ‘uns. During the fall and winter, it is rare that we drive down Pepper Road and do not see a deer.  Same for turkey during season. Get to know the neighbors – and you will – and they’ll take you to more hunting areas than you have ever seen.  This is hunting country for sure.

Take some time to review the rest of this website to learn more about this beautiful and comfortable home in rural east central Alabama.  We want to find someone to buy it who will enjoy it as much as we have. Maybe it is you.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF…TWO!

I’m not saying these identical twin cuties — unwinterized 1BR cottages in the Maidstone Park area of Springs (East Hampton), N.Y. — are a steal or anything. The asking price for both, newly reduced, is 449K.

But there’s something tantalizing about them and their possibilities.

They’re on one-third of an acre, a five-minute walk from magnificent Maidstone Beach, a long, never-crowded white sand beach on Gardiner’s Bay that reminds me of the Greek Islands, and great kayaking/paddleboarding spots like the one below.

There isn’t much to them. They’re barely 400 square feet apiece. They sit on cinderblocks and have no fireplaces. But they’re well-maintained and tastefully appointed, with decent baths and kitchens. A pair of friends could share the property, or it could be a modest family compound.

Patios and landscaping would go a long way. They’ve been on the market for quite a while (I first saw them last winter, when the asking price was over half a million). You know what that means: negotiable!

For more info and interior photos, go here.

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

Here’s how my front yard, below, looked today, following the removal of a giant red oak. Yeah, pretty barren.

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

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

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

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

WHAT A SATURDAY I had. Just about perfect in every way.

• Color is peaking in my own backyard, above.

• Eric the Tree Man is almost done taking down the big dying oak in front, below. That, plus some huge limbs that overhung the house, and one that protruded unkemptly into the street, are gone. That’ll be it for major tree removal, hopefully ever. There is still one huge dead tree in the back, but it’s perfectly shaped. It doesn’t bother me aesthetically, so I’ve been in no hurry to remove it. It could fall down though, and that wouldn’t be good.

• I went to 4 yard sales. The number has shrunk since Labor Day, but fall around here means people moving out of houses. I got nothing at the first three sales. At the last, I got a load of gardening books for 25 cents apiece, terracotta saucers for under flowerpots 3 for $1.00, a clear glass urn perfect for a pillar candle $3, and an unused mint green rag rug, about 4′x6′, for $2. Whoopee do. Almost makes up for the grocery prices. Nothing is going to touch my yard sale triumph of two weeks ago, but I can still get a thrill from a Le Creuset pot for $2 or wicker chairs for $5, below.

• My daughter painted the front door. Can’t get enough of that Sailor’s Sea Blue.

• I took a drive down exquisite Further Lane, below. There are parts of this area I haven’t yet discovered, and I’m glad. I don’t want the sense of wonder to end, so I’m taking it slow. Further Lane is quintessential Hamptons. You can buy a lot of landscaping and, well, land — acres of meadow stretching down to the dunes — given enough millions. The houses are plenty big but you wouldn’t call them McMansions. They’re too good. They’re mostly hidden behind magnificently sculpted hedges.

• I went stone-shopping at Southampton Masonry on Springs Fireplace Road, below, looking at cut bluestone for a walk around the house. My thinking: buy the stuff, have a palette or two delivered, and then, one by one, whenever I’m feeling strong or help is around, move the stones into place, laying them directly on the compacted, sandy soil. My hope/fantasy is that they’ll settle in perfectly from people walking on them, and I’ll never have to go through that monstrous excavation/crushed rock/gravel/edging process that probably wouldn’t yield the kind of informal look I want anyway. (Next thing ya know, I’ll be having crushed stone dumped at the front of my property for a parking court without excavating there either. People do it, I’ve noticed, and life goes on.)

• No trick or treaters came to my door. I did nothing to encourage them, admittedly, but laid in a stash of lollipops just in case.

MY NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE ROAD came for tea yesterday, bearing a copy of a 1946 decorating book as a housewarming gift. Couldn’t be more apropos, considering my house was likely built in the 1940s.

The book, Inside the Home by Dan Cooper, with chic line drawings by Teresa Kilham, is an illuminating view into the mind of the postwar homeowner. Cooper (1901-1965), best known as a textile designer and creator of a ready-to-assemble furniture line called PAKTO, exhorts his readers to ignore fads and get back to basics. Here’s his list of what a home needs:

“A place to sit

for reading

for talking

for games or such relaxations as you prefer

A place to sleep

A place to eat

A number of places to put things in or onto”

That’s it!

Inside the Home is an opinionated, tongue-in-cheek handbook on how to live the modern life. “There have been too many calls to lead the good life by using this period or that period, by combining blue with fuchsia, by pickling wood or padding headboards…Like sheep, we have followed one another from Gothic to Colonial to Mission to Regency. It is time to cut through all this claptrap and free the mind.”

Not, in other words, this:

Integrity, simplicity, usefulness are Cooper’s watchwords. Avoid reproductions. Never buy sets of furniture (“oppressive monotony”). Save by doing without rather than buy poor quality. What timely advice.

“Spend your money on a few lovely things and cobble up any other necessities out of inexpensive materials. Your extravagances will warm your heart every time you look at them.” Yeah!

Discard, discard, discard! “Empty spaces are delightful. Clutter is your worst enemy. Do not buy as much as a spoon for which you do not see an immediate need.” (Yard sale aficionados, take note.)

A home should suit the people who live in it, be “mentally and physically cheerful,” “clean and fresh and easy to keep that way.”

Something more along these lines:

I like his message, which Cooper drives home with some crazy anecdotes. Here’s how he illustrates the point that a home should please all its occupants:

“Not long ago in one of our large cities. there was a strange epidemic among school children. In first one home and then another, the offspring piled the furniture in the middle of the kitchen floor and set fire to it. Naturally this practice was frowned upon….In the subsequent investigation, it was found that in each case, the child felt ashamed of his home and did not like to bring his friends back to it.”

So make sure your kid likes the decor, or you might have what Cooper calls an “incendiary moppet” on your hands.

There are other chuckles. “If you have to suppress a scream when a guest lowers his weight” onto one of the “dear old chairs on which the family has been trained not to sit, it is possible you are on the wrong tack.”

My parents got married in 1946. I don’t know if my mother was aware of this book, but she would have loved it.

WELL, OCTOBER’S ALMOST OVER, and I owe Long Island an apology. I jumped the gun last week when I called its fall foliage show a “dud.” Last week, there wasn’t much in the way of color. But this week is different. The woods behind my house are glinting gold in the late afternoon sun as I write this [that's not the woods behind my house, above; that's a stolen photo from hamptons.com], and there’s even a smattering of red from the burning bush that strains toward my neighbors’ sunnier yard. Though not the glorious blaze of the Hudson Valley (why must I keep comparing?), the roadsides around here are a pleasure to drive along these days. So, sorry, Long Island, you’re very pretty in fall.

Then there are the Montauk daisies, left. There are stands of them everywhere and they are welcome indeed, to be flowering so abundantly in late October.

Today, feeling rural, I bought the Farmer’s Almanac for the first time; I needed something to read in parking court (they reduced my ticket from $60 to $30 just for showing up). Strange little book. Published in Lewiston, ME, since 1818 (there are two competing farmer’s almanacs; I bought the one with a Colonial homestead on the cover), it seems to appeal to old people on both left and right. It’s got ads for everything from organic fertilizers to air guns, plus knee braces, Depends, and various supplements and snake oils.

I’m glad to have the frost dates, the gardening tips, and the Moon calendar (I always like to know when the moon is in Aries, my sun sign, said to be “green light” days for making things happen), but the weather forecast for this three-day period in the Northeast (“rainy skies”) is already wrong.

I’ve been paint-happy lately, and there’s no end in sight. With all the trim and moldings in my house, above, now painted Sailor’s Sea Blue — a wonderful, easy-to-live with French blue that I absolutely love (more pictures when my camera comes back from the shop), I’m thinking of adding some yellow for warm contrast. I’m inspired by Margaret Roach’s yellow painted floor, below,

perhaps for the back hall, and thinking I’ll have some fun painting the bedroom and bathroom doors. They’re horrible hollow-core doors, but until I manage to find some old panel doors and have them installed, I think red or yellow doors — or maybe wallpapered doors! — would be an uplifting stop-gap.

Last seasonal observation for today. The Fall ‘09 Hamptons Look (female version):

• skinny jeans (most likely brown)
• high boots (ditto)
• long, loose sweater belted at the hip
• long scarf around neck
• sunglasses on head

I can do that!

FOR FIVE MONTHS, I’ve been scouring local yard sales and thrift shops for something that would serve as a pantry/additional storage in my Springs, Long Island, cottage kitchen.

I was thinking maybe I’d find a 1920s Hoosier cabinet, or something more modern that I could paint up and be done with it. I knew I wanted closed storage on top and bottom, with an open area in the middle that would be a handy ’staging area’ for keys, mail, radio, etc., and could be used as a bar or buffet for entertaining.

But nothing had turned up in all this time…until last Saturday. As usual, I bought the East Hampton Star, and one of the yard sale classifieds advertised a “rustic, handmade hutch.” I made a beeline for that sale, and was there before 9 in the morning.

The hutch, located in the basement woodshop of Leo Snyder, a longtime local resident, is a beaut. It even comes with a legend: it’s made of old barn wood from an 18th century barn in East Hampton that was demolished in the 1970s. Leo took some of the old pine, which certainly looks like it could be 300 years old, richly colored and gnarly, and made this seven-foot-tall cabinet, with leather hinges and handles. He and his wife used it for over 30 years, and now, even though he said it was like “parting with a family member,” they were ready to say goodbye to it.

I paid $500 for it, gladly. Leo and his son-in-law delivered it yesterday, and it absolutely makes my kitchen — elevates the whole house, as a matter of fact.

TODAY I’M SENDING YOU ELSEWHERE, to an adventures-in-renovating blog called A Brooklyn Limestone in Progress, which I much admire for its creativity, enthusiasm, graphic design, and general professionalism.

As part of an extended guest-blogging series, I’ve contributed a post about my cottage fix-ups that begins:

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST COLOR CLICHÉ IN THE BEACH COTTAGE BOOK? That’s right: blue and white. Sorry, but that’s what I wanted for my first house at the beach, a fixer-upper in Springs, N.Y. (a hamlet five miles north of East Hampton waaaaaay out at the end of Long Island) that I bought in May 2009.

As a longtime city person and Brooklyn resident, I’d never done the beachy blue-and-white thing…

Go here to read the whole thing, and check out the rest of Mrs. Limestone’s groovy blog while you’re at it.

Ummm…not terribly, I’m afraid.

I try. I finally started a compost pile about a month ago. The delay was in deciding where it should go. I finally put it way in the far corner of my lot, 200′ from my back door. So it’s inconvenient, but it will get me out in the woods every day, where I can say hi to the deer that don’t come right up to the house to say hi to me.

I would never dream of mixing newspaper with cardboard when I go to the town dump. They have separate containers for each, with stern posted warnings not to even think about throwing plastic bags in any of them, but to put those in the Non-Recyclable Materials dumpster. We separate glass, metal, and plastic here in East Hampton, whereas New York City is happy just to get it all in one bag.

I got the last remnants of the previous owner’s oil-based paints and boat engine fluids and pesticides to the dump on toxic-waste disposal day last month.

I remember to carry a cloth shopping bag most of the time. Even so, I amass far too many plastic bags under the kitchen sink. Plastic bags are a scourge, along with unwanted catalogues. At my last address, I managed to staunch the flow of catalogues eventually, but that was a) time-consuming (they want your customer # for each retailer), b) took ages to take effect, c) never fully worked anyway, and d) resumed in force when companies caught wind of my new address. I haven’t ordered from Neiman Marcus in 10 years, but somehow I’m back in their good graces. I get several catalogues a week from them, along with Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Victoria’s Secret, etc., and I don’t think I can be bothered to go through it all again.

I hand-painted, painstakingly, a rattan sofa, which took three days, but I just couldn’t see using a dozen cans of spray paint, knowing that much of it would be released into the empty spaces between the sticks of rattan, and thereupon into the atmosphere (and my lungs).

Still, and I’ve been researching this question for months, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get a handle on thirty years of rampant wisteria growth without Round Up, and even then, only time will tell if my finicky ministrations with a sponge brush to the cut ends of the vines have made much difference.

And although I use compact flourescent bulbs outside, I haven’t found any as warm as incandescent bulbs for indoor use. Soft, warm light is very important to me. I’m exquisitely sensitive to glarey, harsh, cold lighting. It depresses the hell out of me. I’ve tried numerous CF bulbs but found none I’m happy with.

In general, moving house increases one’s carbon footprint to Sasquatch proportions. All those packing materials. All the stuff that’s left behind or thrown away. The mountains of garbage I found in this house and basement and had to discard. The old appliances that went into landfills somewhere. The quantity of cleaning supplies you go through (I rarely spring for the very expensive ‘green’ ones).

Green guilt: it’s even worse than garden guilt (for not deadheading the rhododendrons, not washing out the clay pots before putting them away for winter, etc.)

Do you have green guilt, too? About what? Please tell me I’m not the only one.

SO HERE I AM, trying to renovate just one cottage, and along comes an e-mail from Jane Coslick, who has bought, fixed up, decorated, sold, and/or rented some three dozen of them!

“Luscious Little Cottage,” above.

She’s well-known as a cottage preser- vationist on Tybee Island, Georgia, near Savannah, where tiny workmen’s houses and fishing shacks built in the 1920s, some as small as 400 square feet, would have been pulverized in the name of development if not for Jane and others like her.

It’s the exuberance and care with which she does it, and her free hand with color, that has made her work a staple of such magazines as Coastal Living, Southern Living, and, before its recent demise, Cottage Living (I pictured one of her cottages, the bright blue ‘Fish Camp,’ on a blog post of my own some months back).

Jane has a website with links to all her press coverage, of which there’s been no shortage. Her vibrant cottages are like honey to magazine-editor bees. She just started a new blog, too. You can find it here.

This month Brian Coleman, author of Classic Cottages: Simple, Romantic Homes writes about Iliana’s latest project, an historic property atop New York’s Catskill Mountains. The article appears in October’s Old-House Journal Magazine.

]]> http://casacara.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/snow-day/ Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:56:26 +0000 cara http://casacara.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/snow-day/

REMEMBER THAT BLISSFUL REPRIEVE, AS A KID, in the aftermath of a big snowstorm? Waking up to find out school was – YAY!! – closed?

We had 24″ of snow here in East Hampton Saturday night – a record for Long Island, according to Newsday. Sunday was gray and surreally quiet. The guy who plowed my driveway cut a wide, brutal swath from road to front door (so much for the carefully sculpted planting beds I’d been laying out). That evening there was an incredible Solstice sunset.

On Monday, I was determined to conduct business as usual. So I went to the gym – the ride took 1/2 hour instead of 10 minutes, over partially plowed roads – and found I was only one who showed up for the 9:00 class. Then I went to the hardware store and found they were out of snow shovels (and had been for days). Then I went to the supermarket, but there were orange cones in front and I was unable to park. Then I came home. It wasn’t very satisfying. So today, Tuesday, I decided to give myself a snow day.

I turned my holiday lights on first thing in the morning. Never got properly dressed, never got in the car. The farthest I went was to the mailbox. I made soup, watched Running with Scissors, filed a few papers. For exercise, I dug a path to the cellar and did laundry. I watched the birds peck away at the seed bell I hung outside my back door. I saw a big brown dog plow chest deep through my backyard, loving it.

The roads are clearer now. Tomorrow it’s back out into the world. I can’t justify a second snow day. Anyway, I’d go crazy.

HOW’S THIS FOR EASY, CHEAP, AND FABULOUS?

A few dollars worth of fruit, some sprigs of boxwood and spruce (or pine or yew or arborvitae), a footed bowl or platter, and you got yourself a real festive display.

I saw it in the front entry hall of one of the houses on Saturday’s house tour in Orient and just had to share it. I mean, Martha couldn’t do better.

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY:

The ideal time to search for a country or beach house?  When the property looks its worst: between dreary November and mud-season March. First, you can really see the lay of the land when trees are bare. Second, if it looks halfway decent in a sleet storm, think how gorgeous it will be in May. Third, there’s less competition. Fewer people are thinking about summer houses in winter.  It’s only when the weather warms up in spring that they suddenly snap to.

MY HOUSEPLANTS ARE THRIVING indoors for, like, the first time ever.

A huge split-leaf philodendron, an asparagus fern, a peace lily that never bloomed, a variegated ficus I thought had a ‘weeping habit’ because it was so droopy — all struggled for years in Brooklyn, with weak light from north-facing or obscured windows.

Put them under skylights on Long Island, and all hell breaks loose! The peace lily is blooming, the ficus standing tall.

One of the things I feared when I bought this house was an excess of skylights. They turn out to be a boon in these short end-of-season days, for my state of mind and for the plants.

And my amaryllis are such fun to watch; they grow an inch a day. I ordered three bulbs this year from White Flower Farm and potted them up. I don’t remember which is which, but I’m really looking forward to ‘Evergreen,’ below, a new offering from South Africa, smaller than standard amaryllis, but what a great, unusual color.

C.1920s glass door bookcase, found on Clinton Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

SULLA STRADA: that’s the title, in Italy, of Jack Kerouac’s best-known book, On the Road.

To Adrienne Grande, a reader of this blog who recently bought a fab 1810 Greek Revival house in Greenport, Long Island, it means something other than a drug-fueled cross-country road trip. Adrienne e-mailed that she has been furnishing with pieces “collected here and there or found sulla strada, i.e. on the street.”

“Sulla strada sounds so much more refined,” she wrote, “than ‘Someone threw it out and I took it!’”

I love the phrase and I’m stealing it. Some of my favorite things have been found, over the years, sulla strada. See these pictures for proof.

Four-piece rattan sectional sofa, marked Ficks Reed, plus matching armchair (not shown), found on Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

Antique Caucasian kilim, found among the trash cans on Henry Street, Brooklyn Heights

1930s enamel top kitchen table with carved base, found on Henry Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

One must never be too proud to go dumpster-diving. People throw out the most amazing things. New York City sidewalks are famous for great trash.

What about you? Ever found anything sulla strada?

IN ANOTHER LIFE, I might have been having lunch at Balthazar. In this life, I am sculpting with leaves.

Using a hose or rope to lay out the curve of a path hasn’t worked for me. They just didn’t stay put, or make the kind of curve I wanted. I tried neon paint; that was a disaster. The line I managed to draw bore no relationship to the sweeping, natural curve I had in mind.

So I’ve been working a kind of negative space thing, building up future planting beds on either side of a projected flagstone path — which will run from my future parking court to the front door, then onward to the back, a distance of about sixty feet — with piles of scavenged oak leaves, leaving bare what will be the path. (The leaves, I hope, will be the basis for soil by next spring. I know I’ll have to add loads of amendments.)

Not having many leaves left on my own property, I’ve been dragging a tarp and stealing from my neighbors’ roadside piles, left out for the town to pick up (luckily, not for another 10 days). I dump them roughly where I want them, then fine-tune the line with a rake, contemplatively, like a Zen monk.

Amazingly, the leaves stay more or less where I put them, through wind and rain.

TODAY I BROUGHT in from outside a few tender garden plants I think might survive the winter in a corner of my unheated porch, above. I have an old storm window and plastic sheeting at the ready if the temperature really drops.

That variegated vinca vine has been known to survive in Brooklyn window boxes, and I got so much pleasure out of that annual grass I bought at the Amagansett Farmer Market, below in August, I might as well give it a try.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, yesterday’s New York Times had an article in the Real Estate section about rare wood-frame houses in New York City. Living in one of these often-freestanding relics can feel very much like living in the country, the article points out, with a porch, perhaps; a backyard; and often a garage or other outbuilding.

Of course, I relish the few wood-frame houses remaining in Manhattan and Brooklyn whenever I see them, but I was interested to read a lot of things I didn’t know:

• In Brooklyn, where groups of wood-frame houses were built by developers in the mid-19th century, they’re somewhat less rare than in Manhattan, where they are serendipitous one-off survivors of a semirural past.
• Wood frame houses were banned for fire-safety reasons as the 19th century progressed.

• There’s one on the market now, on East 53rd Street in Manhattan, for $3.54 million (it’s the yellow one, above – tiny!)
• Another sold recently on Adelphi Street and Lafayette Avenue in Clinton Hill, after its asking price was knocked down to $795K (it needs a lot of work, but so what?)

If you want to see lots more pictures of DK Holland’s darling wood-frame house, below, in Fort Greene (she’s interviewed in the Times piece), you’ll find them right here.

WHEN I SAY I LIVE IN EAST HAMPTON, I wonder if people envision a fake chateau behind an impenetrable hedge, or a modernist cube in the dunes with an infinity pool and a five-car garage.

I’m pretty sure “the Hamptons” doesn’t conjure up the cottage at right (‘cottage’ is pushing it — it’s more like a shack). It’s not totally atypical of the Maidstone Park neighborhood of the unincorporated village of Springs, 5 miles north of the picture-postcard Village of EH, but very much in the Town of East Hampton, with an East Hampton ZIP.

I enjoy fantasizing the possibilities for fixing up these humble 1940s summer houses (some now occupied year-round), should they ever come on the market. They rarely do — they’ve been in families forever — and when they do, it’s with unrealistic price tags.

Some of them probably wouldn’t even need fixing.

There are a few that feel to me like Northern California.

NOT LONG AGO, my driveway looked like this, a straight run from road to house:

For the past couple of weeks, an hour here, an hour there, I’ve been laying the groundwork, literally, for a walking path from my future parking court — a gravel square approximately 25′ x 25′, yet to be built — to the front door.

My plan is to replace the straight-ahead dirt driveway with a gradual, curving, S-shaped path of cut flagstone. And since the path will be only 4′ wide, and the existing driveway is roughly 10′ wide, that leaves lots of room on either side for generous planting beds.

Because there was nothing but compacted, sandy dirt where I hope to grow a variety of cottage garden perennials next spring, I’ve been moving leaf mold — chopped leaves piled in the woods behind my house by the tree man who recently took down several large oaks — wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow (and then, when the wheelbarrow’s axle broke, by garbage can on hand truck) from the pile in the woods to the front of the property, where I’m using the partially decomposed leaf mold to sculpt curvaceous new beds. Essentially, I’m composing on the spot.

Looking toward road from backyard, late November

I was inspired by an article in an organic gardening magazine that said if you pile chopped leaves and other organic matter in fall and let it break down over the winter. come spring — voila! Lovely planting medium.

I’ve run out of chopped leaves, and am now using whole fallen leaves, less desirable because they take longer to decompose. While my neighbors rake their leaves to the roadside for the town to pick up, I’m hoarding mine (and coveting theirs) to add to my newly sculpted beds-to-be.

MY GO-TO WEBSITE when I miss the Hudson Valley– a real blogazine — is Rural Intelligence.

Wouldn’t want to chance missing the recent post in which a dilapidated 850-square-foot Columbia County cottage at the end of a dirt road is bought and made chic by a pair of NYC-based Australian stylists and set decorators “whose job it is to make things look fabulous — and fast.”

As it turns out, it wasn’t really all that fast…go here to read more of the saga and see more pix.

I adore this. Such a modest cottage treated to such a stylish makeover! I wonder when the house was built and how much they paid for it?

Photos by Dana Gallagher

PRIME HOUSE-HUNTING SEASON is almost upon us. With cold weather, the dilettantes and Sunday shoppers disappear. Most won’t think about country real estate again until April. Meanwhile, the serious players remain in the game, knowing that winter is the best time to look, find, and negotiate.

I combed the listings and turned up three properties I would check out, were I in the market right now with half a million to spend.

Click on the live links below for more pics and info on each property.

• This early 19th century house in Springs, above and below, is owned by a young couple in the landscaping business. They bought the house 6 years ago and renovated it, even jacking up the house so its old foundation of locust posts could be replaced with a modern steel one. 2 BR, 1 bath, 1,100 square feet, 1/2 acre, wood stove, separate studio, 595K.

• This cedar-shingled 1959 cottage in Noyack, near Sag Harbor, below, was featured in a recent issue of Ty Pennington at Home magazine (amazing that it’s still publishing!) 1,500 square feet, 3 BR, 1.5 baths, 1/2 acre, water view, mooring rights, 595K. Taxes: $3,739/year.

• Got farm animals? The 100-year-old Amagansett cottage, below, is on almost an acre and has been twice reduced. 1,000 square feet, 2 BR, 1 bath, wood stove, detached garage, 570K. Near the RR tracks, but there are only a couple of trains a day. Anyway, whaddya want for half a million plus? This is Amagansett! (Also only a mile from the ocean.) Taxes are $1,008/year – can’t beat that.

THERE ARE VERY FEW EMERGENCIES IN DECORATING, but I have taken a rare misstep. I might as well burn a $100 bill. Plus, it’s consuming an entire evening of my life, an evening I could have spent, oh, painting something.

I got tired of looking for the perfect yard sale or thrift shop coat rack. It’s jacket season, and I have no closet in my front hall, so I succumbed to the temptation to buy a new standing ‘coat tree’ off the internet. That took some searching, too, but finally I ordered this, from Urban Outfitters, not even thinking about whether it would come assembled. I forgot to check – but anyway, the site doesn’t say ‘Assembly Required’ in large letters. All I thought was: it’s beachy, it’s fun. Not everything has to have gravitas.

I guess I assumed it would come assembled, that the UPS man would jump from his truck with a 6′ tall box and I’d take it out of the box and plunk it down in the front hall.

But no, it came all the way from China in a box only 2 feet square and 2 inches deep. Inside: 14 metal pieces and 21 screws, and two pages of instructions like “Attach part (F) to post (D) with screws (G).”

In the past, my son might have put this thing together for me in a flash. As it is, me bein’ alone and all, I figured, I’ll give it a shot. Got nothin’ else to do. It took probably 20 minutes just to get everything out of its wrappings – bubble, cardboard, tape, baggies — and then to figure out what went where. I picked up the screwdriver, and 30 minutes later, grumbling to myself all the while (“not exactly precision engineering, hmphh”), I had the bottom half put together. It seemed pretty sturdy. And tackier by the second.

Then I got to the midsection, where you screw 3 foot-long rods together to make the main support. Rod (B) would not go smoothly into rod (C). There’s half an inch of threading showing. I’m ready to just stick this thing in the basement.

I’ve still got the whole top to do, and it’s too big for the corner I planned to put it in.

In short, I hate it. I could return it for a refund, I suppose, go through the whole process in reverse — unscrew, re-wrap, pack. It would take just a couple of hours. And then the shipping.

For the moment, I’ve stopped. I’ll sleep on it. Face The Thing again in the morning light.