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Posted: Apr/25/2008 10:20 AM PST
I grew up spending a few weeks each summer in this cabin... My Pap built it in 1980 as a retirement home for him and Gramma; unfortunately, he passed away in 1985 and didn't get to enjoy many summers here with Gram. My Grandmother and her mom continued to spend every summer here until they both passed away. After my Gramma passed, this house was inherited by my father... but he isn't retired yet and couldn't come to North Carolina from Florida often enough to maintain it. He decided to sell it. "WHAT?? Pap built that house... with his own hands, you can't sell it Dad... it has to stay inside of our family!" "Well, what would you propose as a solution -- are *YOU* going to buy it and live there and take care of it?" "Well, I guess I am."  My husband and I moved in last year... the yard had been neglected since 2003... all but a few short visits my dad was able to make to get the leaves up and a few very basic things. We had our work cut out for us. I love how the yard here is laid out... as we started cleaning it up and repairing, weeding, we began making new discoveries every day -- I started to call this an "excavation"  I can see my Pap's vision... I know how he wanted this to look... he wanted nature to meld seamlessly with utility & necessity... he wanted the landscape to blend in. He wanted to attract birds & butterflies and didn't mind the squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits... There are large rock borders all over for help with erosion and also as borders for walkways, the driveways, and the flowerbeds. Over time the rocks had settled and moved and I have painstakingly been removing them and resetting them. My Grandma loved hummingbirds... of all other things, those were her favorites. I have put out feeders, just for her -- and I have learned that I also love those little guys... I have planted butterfly bushes and have cut back the rhododendrons and pine trees so that the yard is starting to look more as they had imagined. I have added colorful beds of annuals here and there and have carved out a special place for my garden... she had jam jars here still and I have been using those for my own peppers and tomatoes. I found 2 bird feeder/houses that had been covered with overgrowing tress and I carefully removed the nearby branches so that they were again revealed but still provide plenty of shelter for the feasting birds... I use her binoculars to watch them from our patio... I don't like living here really... to be honest. One day we'll move and use this as a rental property, because a bigger city is where my husband and I want to be. But this will always hold very dear memories for me and I hope very much that if Grandma and Pap could see it now, that they would be proud of the way it looks... and I hope it looks exactly as they had always wanted it to. |
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Posted: Apr/25/2008 11:46 AM PST
Welcome to GG April...so glad you were able to 'rescue' your grandparents place. How special that must be for you. And how close it must make you feel to them to be able to preserve their memories. We would all love to see some pictures of it!! |
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Posted: Apr/25/2008 1:00 PM PST
It's wonderful that you kept the place in your family. I would love to see some pics |
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Posted: Apr/26/2008 9:30 AM PST
Thanks very much you guys I'll have to post up some before/after pictures sometime soon... its been a lot of work, but at the same time such a great experience
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Posted: Apr/26/2008 1:46 PM PST
hey Frazzled.. i commend you for keeping the property in the family. I am sure your grandparents would be so proud of you!! Loved your hosta pictures.. keep up the good work, it will be well worth it! And welcome to GG! |
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Posted: Apr/26/2008 7:43 PM PST
I can certainly see why you wanted to "rescue" the cabin. How neat that you are trying to restore it to the way your grandparents would have wanted it. That is sooo cool. I love the idea. Send pics!!!! |
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Posted: Apr/27/2008 5:47 AM PST
What a lovely story. How I enjoyed reading it. I can't imagine that you want to move to the "big city," especially if that big city is Charlotte. I couldn't wait to get out of there and move out here to the woods (and that was twenty years ago). You know what that city is like now! Maybe you won't be able to leave it and decide that the commute is worth the peace of the country. |
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Posted: Apr/27/2008 11:01 AM PST
I'm waiting for the next sunny day to take some pictures... the last few days have been overcast and rainy  (but I suppose that's a good thing for the plants, lol)Witt... nah, we don't want to move to Charlotte... but I grew up in Orlando, my husband grew up in Los Angeles... and this town... well, the population is under 1000. This community is a retirement community where the residents are mainly snowbirds and so its all but empty for half the year and is very lonely up here. My grandparents loved it, because many of their neighbors in Florida did the same thing they did and were here for the summer, there for the winter. As for us, we'd like a little more access to a metropolitan area... a place to raise our children with a little more diversity, ya know? We're only in our 30's... not yet ready to retire BUT... this is a beautiful place in the summer and we do not intend to sell it. We'll rent it and come back as often as we can. We'd like to be closer to my family also... they are still in Florida -- so we're strongly considering Savannah, Georgia... somewhere just outside the city with a little land of our own, yet close to a bigger city and only 4 hours from my family
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Posted: Jan/08/2011 10:51 AM PST
Hello, Typed in Cottage of my own...and here you are. Would be interested in renting this forgotten garden cottage and helping to maintain it. Have taken several horticultural coureses and would love to put theory to practical use. Please provide more detail as to how one would go about renting your cottage for 2 weeks to 2 months in the summer months. I'm originally and am currently living in Canada but have lived in Germany and Australia. My parents have a home in Naples, Flordia. Thank you. |
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