Chairs from the Home Place

When our first child was just six weeks old, my grandmother died unexpectedly of heart failure.  She was 88, so it wasn't as tragic as that might sound, but I still miss her greatly.  I still remember trying to get to central Arkansas from Orlando, where we lived back then, and hoping I could introduce her to Gracie before she was gone.  We didn't quite make it.

She and my grandfather were married for half a century, and she lived on almost 20 years after a heart attack took him from her as he tended to an Angus bull on their cattle farm.  They built every bit of that farm themselves-- cedar post fences strung with barbed wire, an enormous pole barn, a one-room cabin later replaced by a 1950s ranch that she lived in until the weekend she died.  Granddaddy's family had owned the land since the 1850s, but they started their life together penniless and turned their piece of the land into a beautiful little farm, bisected by a creek, rolling with hills and good pasture.  None of us wanted to farm cattle, though, and so when she passed away, we knew we'd have to sell it.  It was a difficult decision.  It's a bit ironic that their success with the farm led to college educations for the rest of their descendants, and therefore the end of the family's long history in Dardanelle, Arkansas.

A few months after her death, I was at her farm with my parents, trying to sort through the accumulation of 88 years of belongings (of a couple who'd survived the Depression and therefore hated to throw away anything remotely useful-- including items as mundane as ketchup packets and used envelopes).  I chose just a few big pieces to welcome into our home:  her secretary desk, a full size bed for the guest room, and-- best of all-- two old green metal lawn chairs that had sat in her backyard throughout my childhood.

They're big, sturdy chairs, simply made and slightly bouncy to sit in.  I can't count the number of times I saw her or Granddaddy sitting in those chairs while we played in the yard.  As I loaded them up, though, I saw some rust and signs of deterioration.  The bolts that held them together were crusted with rust and corrosion.  I knew that someday, I'd have to fix them up if I wanted to save them.  I'd seen how metal lawn furniture of this vintage can quickly chip and flake if carelessly spray painted, so I wanted to find a more permanent solution.

We moved back to Arkansas and bought the beloved but time-sucking house.  Another baby showed up.  Life began to get impossibly busy.  Four years pass.

This summer, I found myself promised to host a women's brunch and was a little embarrassed about all our home's "rough edges."  When you get pregnant unexpectedly a month after moving into a restoration/renovation project, plans tend to get delayed a bit... and we'd let that excuse ride a little too long.  I spent a couple of weeks before the brunch doing a number of other little projects around the house.

...This project is my favorite, though.  Grandma's chairs had been sitting on the front porch since we moved in, and once the house was painted, they started to look really out of place and shabby.  (You can just spot their two backs behind the shrub in this photo from last October.)  One day in June, I loaded them up and visited an auto body shop down the road, one owned by an older gentleman whose eyes lit up when I told him why I wanted them refinished well.  He charged me $100 to repaint both chairs and the little side table-- and I consider that a great bargain.  These chairs are now custom-painted to match our house and coated with nearly indestructible automobile paint.  New steel bolts, nuts, and washers completed their transformation, and I put them back together myself. 

It's surprisingly satisfying to see them on my front porch as we enter and exit each day, or to sip a cup of coffee in them with my husband in the morning before the kids wake up.  I feel like a piece of the Fulton Angus Farm lives on, right here on my porch.  The chairs from the Old Home Place have found a new life at what we hope to be our family's Home Place; perhaps someday my daughter or granddaughter will be hauling them off to her house, just as determined to save them as I was four years ago.

It's a tad silly, but I hope Grandmother and Granddaddy have a chance to see them somehow, and that they make them smile.

(If God let Grandmother see me writing the check to the autobody shop, though, I'm gonna hear an earful someday.  She'd be horrified that anyone spent $100 on those old chairs.)

Garden beginnings

Last spring about this time, I was busily trying to build us a small kitchen garden out behind the house.

As the same of the blog indicates, we live on a hill-- a rather steep, rocky hill.  Ruth Wilson, the original lady of the house, was a prolific gardener, and we have a number of things to thank her for-- mature flowering shrubs, a giant sprawling dogwood in the center of the backyard, and several gorgeous lilacs, for example.  But my favorite isn't these... it's the fact that she had some low concrete walls installed so that there is a garden-able spot just off the back (kitchen) door.

Because her husband J.O. inscribed and dated it, I even know how long it's been there:  90 years.

J.O. Wilson 3-7-1920

Thanks, Ruth.

Last year, I marked off a 4x16 spot near the southern edge of the flat area and created our little garden.  Some copper plumbing pipes created a trellis.  A roll of wire fencing created the first of several compost and leaf bins, and some compost, vermiculite, and grass clippings amended the soil via mulch.
 
This is the third garden I've built.  Ironically, we've always moved after one season in each of my gardens... so I've never had the chance to monitor and adjust, to try something different in the same spot the next year.  This will be the first year for that!

I'm pleased with the site, with the earthworms that have showed up to reside in the garden, and with the cottagey look.  I love that I can access half the garden via a low retaining wall-- so easy to pick low lettuces and such from there!  (Accessing the other side is more difficult because of the trellis, but I can live with that.)

However, due to an abundance of rain and a lack of sun, I'm not really sure how great of a spot this is.  My tomatoes barely sputtered along last year, and other hot-weather veggies never really came into their own.  We're trying again this summer and seeing how it goes.  If the giant oaks nearby do shade the garden too much for a good veggie harvest, we'll take down the trellis and make it into an herb area, and create ourselves a veggie garden in a sunnier spot.  (That will require a retaining wall on a slope, though-- I'm really hoping that our current garden will produce this year.)

I do want to take a soil sample into our county extension service for an analysis, to see if there's anything I need to add.  I hear that our area's soil is almost always short of magnesium, for example.  Whatever it needs must be added this year, so that we can give the garden every chance to succeed here.

Here's to more sun, a little less rain, and a greater harvest this year!  (I'll post on this year's garden soon, but wanted to get these pictures from last year shared before I dive into recording the 2010 efforts.)

Exterior paint job... finished at last.

Daniel, our excellent, meticulous painter, has finally completed our exterior paint job.  Here's a before:  (I think the house has always been white or off-white)

And here's an after:

 

He found surprisingly little rot considering how bare some of the window woodwork was.  We chose colors from Benjamin Moore, Daniel's paint of choice.

(Woodwork:  Shaker Beige.  Walls:  Great Barrington Green.  Door:  Country Redwood.  I love BM's Cottage Red, but with the door in the shade of the porch so much of the day, we went a few shades lighter to get the same effect from the street.  Very happy with the results!)

Our dog, naturally, has cheerfully begun to wear the paint off the front door with her nails, right through the new red AND old white paint, right down to the wood.  I want to kill her.

Still left to do:  stripping off the ravenous garage-eating ivy enough to repaint the eaves in the Shaker Beige.  (No immediate plans for this, unfortunately; we have more pressing matters to attend to inside.)