my oasis

i live in mechanicsville, virginia, a small suburban hamlet in hanover county, outside the richmond city limits. it is a nice place to live, and i have good neighbors and feel safe. crime is low. i live in a subdivision near the interstate, but my backyard runs directly into the chickahominy swamp, so there is nothing beyond my yard but miles of wilderness. it is a nice juxtaposition of urban and rural. the back part of the property not only borders the swamp, but also a small pond with bass fish and snapping turtles that lumber through the yard in the spring to lay their eggs . they are menacing and ugly and tough, but not tough enough to secure the future life of their offspring. the birds routinely peck the ground and eat the eggs, or maybe it is raccoons that i have never seen. i guarantee very few turtles are making it back to the pond, but the ones who do live there have been there for awhile. they are pretty large, and i wonder if there are any bass left in this pond, which was stocked by the previous owner.

i moved here 2 summers ago with my son austin, the move a result of a divorce. his father remains in our old house, which is only a couple of miles from where we now live. however, there are worlds of differences between the two places.
on the surface, both houses have a lot in common. both are on about 1 1/4 acres of land, and take some time to maintain. the old house was fenced in and the previous owners had been passionate gardeners. there was a huge garden, with underground irrigation, and many established plants and trees in an orchard. for many years we were quite popular when the asparagus came in in april. but as the years went by, less and less happened in the yard. the garden dwindled to a few tomato plants. the asparagus no longer exist and the blackberry patch was dug up and disposed of years ago. trees have slowly succumbed over the years to blights and bugs and no longer produce much fruit, which was never eaten anyway. the horrid, stabbing russian olives that formed a hedge have finally been torn out, as have the boxwoods in the front of the house. my ex-husband has been on a crusade to wipe out all of the plant life in the yard because he doesn't do the upkeep. while living there, it was a chore to cut the bushes, burn the brush, water the garden and weed. the house is sort of a perfect metaphor for the marriage. it started out with lots of life and potential, yet finally withered and shrank because some things became too much work to maintain. in a lot of ways i was the lone gardener and even i gave up finally on both the yard and trying to water, reseed, fertilizer and weed the marriage. sometimes there is just too much crabgrass to take care of.

my new house is all of the things the old wasn't. the lady i bought it from was also divorced, and something of a hermit. yard work she didn't do, even hiring someone to mow the lawn. i doubt she ever saw or thrived in the environment. by all accounts, she just stayed inside and drank and smoked. when she moved, she left me with a house with 15 years of cigarette smoke in the walls and lots of places that seemed to say "angst." there is still a hole in the bottom of my bedroom door, apparently created by a foot during some sort of tantrum. it isn't something i can repair, and i haven't covered it up, although i did recently buy some bumper stickers with that aim in mind.

i gutted the house and spent $20,000 on reinventing myself there. i repainted the whole inside, tore out all of the dreary carpet. i had to buy all new furniture for austin and myself. when i left the marriage, i took only what was mine or what we had agreed upon to split up (one gets the washer, one gets the dryer, etc.) divorce forced me into a realm that i had never thought i would be in at 46 years-old, but things do happen for a reason. it gave me a chance to find out who i was and to, more importantly, express myself creatively.

the way i decorated was rather unique, but it works. my whole downstairs is painted "nacho cheese" color and each room has a theme to it. the southwestern living room has an albert bierstadt print, a van gogh and my pottery. the furniture is southwestern in nature, and there is no television there. the kitchen is done in a chilli pepper theme, with all of my framed crate art lining the walls and a wonderful hodge-podge of items lining the top of the cabinets. my bedroom, in contrast, is a zen retreat, with sage walls, a partitioned meditation area, and plants and a shoji screen. my brother decorated both the bedroom and the kitchen, giving each a unique quality. my sculpture is also on display in this room, and i burn a lot of incense, listen to tapes and new age music there and read. i try very hard not to watch tv there.

austin decorated his own room in hawaiian blue and tie dye, with all of his athletic trophies and medals all around the room. he has bean bag chairs, a tv and playstation, and a desk, which he never uses. most of the time the room is just a depository for dirty clothes and clean ones that never make it out of the clothes basket. it is a 13 year-old world.

i have one schizophrenic room, the san francisco room, which is where the tv and computer are. this was the hermit's master bedroom, where she lived. having seen it when she lived there, i was determined that i would blow out the bad vibes and make it something interesting. i collected street signs and framed posters from my favorite city, san francisco, and put them all over the room. i also have 2 walls lined in my albums from back in the day, and have hung my guitars up on the wall, flanking the albums. the closet i gutted and turned into a computer/audio equipment room. the cds line the top of the shelf where boxes once hid, and i have all sorts of personal stuff on the walls. it is sort of a little junk room with personality.

but what i love the most about my house is the freedom to do anything i want there. i have gardened and landscaped like crazy and i am working on a 5 year lawn plan. i have an abundance of wildlife around me...hummingbirds, tons of dragonflys that will land on my fingers and let me take pictures of them. i have deer who routinely come to the yard at dusk looking for food. last year i had a mother deer and twin fawns. i have big blue, the heron, and ducks on the pond. i have a fish in my waterfall/pond which i built for myself last summer, having made the clay vessels for the water to run in. i also brought rocks from my best friend pam's farm and used them to build the waterfall, which i had mortared with hypertufa, a combination of peat, perlite and cement. i have bought all sorts of exotic grasses and plants and now it is just coming together. i can sit on my back deck or front porch anytime of night or day and feel happy. you can't put a price on that. the whole place feels like a canvas to me, something i can keep creating on.