“Sunflowers, tall as cherry trees, wave in the wind next to garlic, enormous leaves of kale, basil, hot peppers, plump tomatoes, hops, and pawpaws. Grapevines on the trellis in front shade the house in the warmer months but let the warm sun through in the winter. Inside, a masonry heater fired once a day heats the whole house, while solar panels on the roof provide electricity and heat the water.This is the house that Todd and Laurie built”
It looks beautiful (those pops of dark yellow against the green leafiness, and the gray-black wood trellises with their house number, and those steps — and I love the idea of their garden. Streetview was no help when I wanted to sneak a peek at the back and sides of the house — they were set so that the house was largely occluded from the street — though that amazed me too — it was a perfectly ordinary residential street in a small town. And as it happens — friends of S, who’d helped them a little with the house, too — perhaps he’ll take me to call on them? (Once I’d also thought that S lived somewhere rural — it never occured to me until I saw it on Streetview that he lived in an ordinary neighbourhood on an ordinary street and the houses next door would be completely ordinary and how simply extraordinary it was. Seeing it on Skype for the first time, with the light streaming through the house and hitting the xylophone of wood colour in the ceiling — I And I’m not sure I would not burst into tears the first time he opens his door, we step across that threshold.)
Peonies, I must ask him if we can plant peonies.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird