While inspecting a property out in the country, my client took me around to the back of his house and showed me his little backyard retreat. He had fenced a section of the yard to separate it from the rest of the farm, installed a shallow in-ground pool, and put up this quaint wood arbor. I thought it was very artistically done, especially considering he is an auto mechanic.
Tags: arbor, backyard, farm, house, mechanic, pool, property
The best thing about January is that the Winters Solstice is behind us and every day is getting slightly longer. This is when the seed catalogues start showing up in the mailbox and I can get started planning my backyard gardens for the Spring.
We got started with some serious overhauling of the landscaping last summer and I think if the weather allows, I can get an early start on planting both a vegetable garden and relocating the shrubbery in the front of the house. I want to put in some raised beds and add some windowboxes across the front of the house. I have two windows in the living room, one window in the dining room and one window in the front bedroom that I use for my home office.
The one window in my home office is not suitable for window box planters because it is centered on the wall along my front porch. But the other three windows along the front would be great if I planted flowers that do well on an east facing wall.
I have imagined a row of three window flower boxes with lots of bright green foliage and perhaps some bright red geraniums. I know geraniums come in several different colors and shades of red. I want to get something bright, that shows up well against the red brick of the house and the fireplace.
As a kid, we would rake leaves into huge piles that lined the street and then run and jump in them. We would spend hours out in the yard helping Dad rake leaves. Then, after we had jumped around in them, making tunnels and covering each other up with leaves like you do with sand at the beach, my dad and our neighbors would light the leaves on fire and stand around in the street tending to the burning leaves. It was a big part of autumn and a big part of being good neighbors.
Somehow it is just not as satisfying to rake the leaves from the backyard into a pile and then have to dump them into oversized brown paper bags and wait for the county yard waste truck to drive through collecting the bags. It’s just become another mindless, isolated chore that has to be done. I miss the good old days of leaves burning and all the neighbors gathered around, telling stories and jokes and being part of a close knit community.
Have a good friend who is an actor and he lives in Philadelphia, which is why I titled this post “Always Sunny. . .” like the hilarious TV show. Keith loves that show and has actually hung out with the cast and is in a couple of scenes as an extra.
I would not think there is that much work for actors in Philadelphia. But actually, it is not far from NYC and is a lot cheaper to live in Philly than to live in New Jersey or New York. So when he gets work in NYC he gets a short term apartment in New Jersey. New Jersey is actually nice once you get away from NYC and the banks of the Hudson River. In fact, most of New Jersey has nothing to do with New York City.
My favorite spot in New Jersey is Atlantic City. Most people probably think of Atlantic City as a min-Las Vegas, but i think of it as the beach and the boardwalk. I spent many summer weekends on the beaches of the Jersey Shore, swimming is the surf and walking for miles up and down the boardwalk and the beach looking for seashells. And I promise you, my summers at the beach were nothing at all like the TV series, Jersey Shore.
Keith’s parents live in rural New Jersey, about an hour east of Philadelphia and that is too far for him to commute to NYC for acting jobs. They have a small dairy farm and we were out there visiting his family over the holidays. I flew into Philadelphia and Keith picked me up at the airport. Then we drove out to his family’s farm in Jersey. That was a nice drive – nothing but open fields and a lot of cows. It was nothing like the opening scenes in “The Sopranos” when Tony is driving from his home in New Jersey across the river into the city.
I’ve know Keith and his family since college and they are like a second family to me. I’ve been to their farm several times and they always make me feel like I am one of the family and very welcome. On this visit, we hung out with Keith’s dad a lot, while his mom was busy shopping and baking – getting ready for Christmas.
Keith’s dad was telling us about Arosa Energy, a company that helps homeowners, farmers and businesses with New Jersey solar power. He says that there are a lot of ways to be able to afford switching to solar power or adding solar power to your property. Now there are federal tax credits and rebates from the state, which really help with the initial cost of installation.
His dad is planning to work with Arosa Energy to add solar panels to the dairy barn and the farmhouse. He was told that there will be so much energy generated from that many solar panels that he can actually sell the excess energy to the electrical utility provider company. I think that New Jersey solar energy is going to prove to be a great investment for his dad and the farm. We might end up back at the farm in April to help with the solar panel installation. I wouldn’t mind going back to help – I think I would learn so much from working on it – and it would be great to spend time with Keith and his folks, too.
Tags: airport, Atlantic City, beach, energy, farm, installation, Jersey Shore, property, solar, utility
Even though the housing market is in a slump and the foreclosed houses are making it hard for people to get full value on the equity of their homes when they need to sell, people still need affordable housing in Chicago and other areas.
There are challenges for a lot of reasons. Some people are getting married and need a starter home. Other people are retiring and need to downsize from a large home that requires a lot of maintenance and high utility bills to something much smaller and easier to manage. Others have to move because of employment, like my friend, Wes.
Wes is a DJ and if you know about the entertainment industry, DJs tend to change jobs frequently. They are subjected to ratings changes, format changes, and flaky management at the corporate radio stations of today. Wes was let go from a large market radio station changing format and he found a job in middle Illinois. He needs to find affordable housing in Rockford and if he can’t find what he needs available now, he will have to find temporary housing and build his own house.
Wes already knows about manufactured homes in Chicago from living and working in the Windy City the past 6 years. Now that he is moving to Rockford, he doesn’t have a lot of money from the sale of his house. Six years is not usually long enough to build up any equity at all, and with the depressed real estate market, many people are underwater with their mortgages instead of having the equity they were expecting.