Tag: permaculture

What I did…

… over my Covid-19, um, “vacation.” Vacation in quotes in part to not take the situation in any sense lightly, and in part because we’ve kept ourselves quite busy. For myself, I am currently only working on the drawings for the gut renovation of our lake house, while deferring another job until I have our house drawings done. I am also fortunately not teaching this semester (i.e. I am not currently going through all of the craziness that every other professor is going through to move all of their teaching online). That gives me until the fall semester starts to focus on our own projects, which are requiring all of my attention at the moment. The brief update on our lake house is that work proceeded a couple of weeks ago and they now have the new basement walls poured! Here is what it looks like now:

lakehouse

That also means that we will be switching gears tomorrow from work on our tiny house/mountain retreat to work on the lake house. And as I say that, I have to acknowledge how incredibly fortunate I feel to have two amazing places- dream places really-  to work on, or with as the case may be. We are super excited about how things are evolving up on the mountain. At the same time, we know that the lake is going to be equally amazing and challenging and will also ultimately help us to feel deeply at home in the world. It’s a ton of work, but again, how lucky are we?

Shannon has been off of work for the last month as well, but is returning to work tomorrow. That doesn’t help so much with our house cause, but again, so much to be grateful for. I know that not everybody gets to say that they will be returning to their jobs. I know this disruption won’t be a simple blip in the map for anyone. In the coming rearrangement, I hope and hold intentions for everybody to find meaningful work that allows their true gifts to come through. 

In the meantime, we have used our free time tackling our long list of projects up on the mountain. This list, incidentally, will literally never be done. It’s already longer than two people could achieve in the time we have left on the planet, and it just gets longer every day. The lake list is equally long, so like… we are already seriously double booked! Ironically, I like being done, so my penchant for imagining more and more to create doesn’t really help that cause. Add Shannon’s penchant for the same, and well, let’s just say that we have a wealth of things to do for the rest of our lives! It’s a great practice for me to just be with taking one step at a time, enjoying the process, celebrating each little milestone, and watching it evolve as it does.

That’s the lead in. Now for the fun stuff we have been up to! First off, hats off to Shannon for the fruitful month that she has had. I am thoroughly enjoying the fruits! I honestly can’t believe how much she has done. What I really love is that she has loved every second of it. It started with a bunch of tweaks to the interior of Tiny Drop to improve storage and functionality. Then she moved to building the little shed that we needed to house the outside unit of the composting toilet. Then it was on to the big stuff. 

The first of these was the front entry to Tiny Drop. The way these things typically go is that we get an idea for something and then one or the other of us sketches it up. We have a pile of sketches. Fortunately, we had also already accumulated materials for some of these projects. That means we had piles of stuff we were wanting to get cleaned up, and the way to do that was to build! Did I mention Shannon is a champ??? Check this out:

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In the process of building the whole thing gets tweaked and new ideas added. In this case, what we needed was a place to get dry and take off our shoes before entering the house. We also wanted an outside bar to mirror the bar inside. That means that when the french casement window is open, we can have an intimate dinner for four! Of course there is shading and weather protection involved here, but the grand last minute act of creativity came from Shannon. She added a star gazing seat that we can access out of the roof windows from the loft (not to mention to help with egress in case of emergency). I mean seriously, how cool is this?!

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The other big building project Shannon completed is our first trail bridge. We are focusing on the trail up to the sanctuary, and this is part of that. We didn’t have a sketch for this one, but had seen something similar to this on one of our hikes last fall. Shannon used the materials that we had on hand to make it happen. I only provided peanut gallery consulting on this job. We love it:

Bridge

We really love that it beckons us to come up from the porch of Tiny Drop.

O.K., o.k. So you are probably wondering what in the hell I was doing as Shannon was doing all of that. It turns out my job might best be described as ditch-digger! At least digging a bunch of ditches was the prerequisite to putting these next visions into place. The first was part of what I have described previously as an effort to slow down water as it comes down the mountain. When I asked the mountain what it needed, this was the request. So I chose one particularly swampy spot to start a pond. This is still a work in progress as we give it time to see how it is working, but here is pond #1 in the works (which Shannon thankfully helped me to dig):

pond

This will ultimately be a micro zen garden along the path to the sanctuary. We are imagining many more spots such as this. Another such spot is just beyond the Moon Gate. I had started garden beds, a retaining wall, and the first steps of this trail to the sanctuary with stone left over from the Moon Gate, but hadn’t finished it yet. So that was next on my list. Here goes:

Front Garden

It went so smoothly and the garden made me so happy that I just wanted to keep going! I have long had a vision for a terrace garden on the slope just beyond the Moon Gate, but I thought that project would be a ways off because I envisioned needing a lot more stone for the project. But rather than wait we figured we would just see what we could do with what was on hand and what we might find as we started digging. 

I had a lot of help from Shannon on this one too, first on the initial leveling of the ramp and digging of the first gardens beds, and then thank God as I started pooping out on day 3 of moving dirt on the next level up. For all of you Houston gardeners, you know how incredibly hard it is to work with gumbo clay. It’s hard! Most of what we were digging through here was also clay, and while not as hard as gumbo clay, it was hard instead because water is literally leaking out of every inch of this mountain! That means that I had to use my best permaculture tricks to dig trenches and build berms to get the water to go where we needed it to go. Good grief, I did a lot of digging. So far it looks to be working. From there I built stone retaining walls for the landings and beds. Then we ordered a truck of good soil and a bunch of seeds. Soil is now in place and here is what it looked like before and after:

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Ditch

upper garden

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We were going to plant the seeds on Sunday, but then it snowed Saturday night!!! When is it going to stop snowing on us?????!!!!!!!!! O.K., I just had to get that out. So seeds aren’t in the ground yet, but hopefully soon. 

That leads to our new favorite form of entertainment at Tiny Drop: movie night. Movie night consists of downloading movies onto my computer (only downside is that it takes way too long to do so down in town), setting ourselves up in the loft, pulling the blackout shades, sending the sound through our bluetooth speaker, and of course making popcorn, hot chocolate, etc. It’s the greatest! It’s like having the theater all to ourselves with the best seat in the house and surround sound. Of course this also has led us to thinking that we need to permanently install a screen on the ceiling that can tilt down for this purpose. And you know one of these days we will!

Our other favorite form of entertainment has become listening to podcasts. On that front, I have to give a shout out to Brene Brown’s new podcast: Unlocking Us. So, so great. So great that I am going to leave you with that tidbit and encourage you to take a listen:

Unlocking Us

Oh, one more thing- I just ordered a ton of books. The one I am most excited about is Glennon Doyle’s new book Untamed. More on all of this soon. For now, I hope you all are finding your own restorative, creative inspirations during this timeout.

This Place

It’s all so much easier when we are on vacation. Right??? I think maybe because our week in Big Bend was so in tune, this week by contrast felt like a disaster. It wasn’t, but that sure didn’t keep me from feeling like it was. The truth is that it was a mixed bag, just like just about every other week in life. There was some not so fun stuff, some o.k. stuff, some comical stuff, some infuriating stuff, some good stuff, and even some great stuff. Yet my state of being was brutal regardless of any of it. My best guess is that I finally crashed into the full realization that this phase of my life is ending. We are moving on. While that is super exciting, there is also a mourning that will have to take place… which I have been avoiding.

But with spring break having come and gone, the mad dash is now on. We are down to two months. There is not only an overwhelming amount of work and details that we need to take care of, there is also all of the emotions that are going to express themselves by hook or by crook. I found myself this week not even being able to deal with my self. So I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, got quiet, did a lot of self care (new skill!), and didn’t give myself a hard time about anything. Basically, I just gave myself space to be a mess. Internally anyway. Nobody who encountered me this week would have known I was a mess, with the sole exception of Shannon. And even at that, I tend to want to go through these moments alone and this week was no exception. I just need to sit with myself.

So let’s see, what can I tell you after a week of sitting with myself? The first thing I can say for sure is that my state of being definitely determines how I experience life. For example, on Monday something that should have been cause for joy and celebration barely moved me at all. As the week wore on this remained true although by simply being a witness to the phenomenon, I was at least able to register the good stuff like positive feedback, music that moves me, and a beautiful day. I have to say that the moment that began to break the ice came unexpectedly mid week. I had forgotten that a few of my professional colleagues were coming to campus for a Women in Architecture event that I was also supposed to take part in. I was reminded of the fact by the student organizer a half hour before the event was set to start.

It was a speed meeting sort of thing for our female students to meet as many female architects as possible- which is awesome. The plan in my head prior to this realization was to get the heck out of dodge as soon as studio was over and go home for some self care. I was dealing with the change in plan o.k., even though it required me to ignore the fact that I was not feeling well physically. As I headed to the event, two of my colleagues were already there and the other arrived shortly afterward. Now here is the important thing to know about this- these aren’t just three colleagues, they are actually three very close friends. One of them was my classmate at Princeton and my roommate during grad school. Two others have been our partners in crime on the green scene in Houston for many years, and our relationships transcended professional bounds a long time ago. All three are people who know me very well and have supported me in all ways. I didn’t let on to them that I was a mess either. We just chatted as normal prior to the start of the event. Then it turned out that the event didn’t need me because we had gotten enough outside architects to talk to our students- which was great. Without a single moment of hesitation, I decided to head home for that self care. I said my goodbyes to each of them and was off.

It wasn’t until I was driving away that I realized that just seeing the three of them had made a difference. A pang of sadness hit me that I wouldn’t be hanging out with them, catching up, definitely laughing, and maybe even going to a spontaneous dinner later. Of course the pang was intensified by the realization that we will soon live 2,000 miles away and doing such things are suddenly not quite so easy. But you know what? I just let it be. The truth was, I needed the self care. And instead of being sad about it, I was happy just for the opportunity to unexpectedly be in their presence even if for only a moment. Just that one moment made me realize that I am in no way alone in the world. In fact, I am surrounded by an abundance of people who love me, even when they may not be in my presence or in my awareness. It also brought to my attention that we will need to make space to spend time with friends before we go! That hadn’t even registered on our massive to do list yet.

Thank God the end of the week has been beautiful here, because you know something else- beautiful days just help. The Universe was so kind to me that It actually locked me out of my classroom yesterday, forcing me to take my class outside. How awesome is that?! I always loved it when a professor would take us outside on a perfect spring day. It was just what the doctor ordered. As for today, I mixed a little self care with some of that to do list. I don’t teach on Fridays, but instead use them to catch up on my professional work. I had an unusual opening in my schedule this week though, so I decided I was going to dive into our yard work and enjoy the beautiful weather in the process. We have put a ton of tender loving care (aka work) into this house, yard included. But not having spent summers here for the past five years, it had gone almost completely wild (seriously) and we have been slowly working to tame it.

This is another one of those emotional goodbye moments for me, because our yard was our big permaculture project of nine years ago. We transformed the front yard into organic shaped beds to grow our veggies, installed a drip irrigation system, and planted numerous fruit trees: satsuma, meyer lemon, star fruit, fig, papaya (long gone), and another that hasn’t produced anything so I can’t even remember what it is. The above photo is what it looked like right after we finished the initial install. The back yard has a spiral herb garden, a banana grove, peach trees, and a grapefruit tree. One of the peach trees is right outside of our kitchen window and is always gorgeous. We are hoping the peaches make it in time for us to enjoy them one more time. The rest of the back yard is xeriscaped with rocks. Shannon built the coolest trellis structures, one to support vines right outside our master bath, and the other to provide cover over the deck off of the master bedroom, which I imagine one day might support grape vines. It is all still a work in progress as we are moving toward at least somewhat completing the vision.

What I hope is that the future owners of this home thoroughly enjoy all of the love that we have put into it. I hope they love taking baths surrounded by vines outside the picture windows. I hope they love their feet being massaged by the rocks that form the floor of our walk in shower. I hope the kitchen- cabinetry, finishes, appliances and all- enriches their everyday lives. I hope they love the wood floors throughout, especially since we had to replace them twice! I certainly hope they appreciate their lower energy bills thanks to the high performance systems we have installed, not to mention me making Shannon crawl on her knees for days as she sealed the sill plate to the foundation. She seriously thought I was nuts… at the time. I would love for the new owners to continue using the meditation room as such, but that is too much to ask. Putting as much as we have into this house was never the smart thing to do. Any financial advisor would have strongly discouraged what we have done. But I just can’t. I can’t be with a place and not do everything within my creative powers to make it the best place it can be. If we aren’t here to make the world a more beautiful place, then what on earth are we doing???

I knew when we started all of this work that this day would come. I actually thought it would come sooner than it did. For me, it was an act of love from the get go. I knew that as much as we were doing it all for us, we were doing it for the next family that will live here. This house has seen its share of troubles. It has not just been an act of physically transforming it, but also energetically transforming it. The latter has been harder. I would swear that the three (yes 3), internal flooding incidents that this house has had in the past 12 years were it doing my crying for me. So as you might imagine by now, I have regarded the transformation of my self to be one with that of my house. That we will be passing this on a happy place is testament to what is possible and what is still yet to come. There is a whole world out there. But we will only ever transform it one place, one heart, at a time.