In Their Own Words

A wonderful entry in our Guest Book from Debra, Avery & Co. Thanks!

Around the Cottage, "Real Time": A New Series

Footbridge of Celestial Blue to the Cottage, following curve of Lost Reef.

As has been said, the only constant is change. That seems especially true around our places. Between Alan and myself, the gardens are always evolving, and the mad variety of wonderful, mostly vintage furniture and stuff (or objet d' art, if you prefer) and my original "homegrown" paintings are all always in rotation. The places are already impossibly sweet, for we have worked hard on playing with possibilities for a few years, now. Yet they keep getting better.

The loft as of Saturday afternoon, August 16, 2008.

Here is one of the ways in which Alan and I make an excellent team, and complement one another: I am the kind of guy that sees interior design, and all of the effort required to make something worthwhile really happen, somewhat like work. Most of the time. Certainly not without its pleasures, but still... I feel GREAT just to have gotten it right (or honestly, in some cases even halfway decent) with respect to the design and arrangement of a room or whatever given area the first (or even second) time around. If things are looking good and it all works together, and all the better if there's a sense of quirkiness or forgiveable madness animating the spirit of the place some real color or "texture," you'll see me with a smile on my face and kicking my feet up, sitting down to have a nice cold one. I am so DONE!



Not so with Alan. He has an unnatural gift for scanning a room and its contents, and with a sudden "click" seeing a whole range of possibilities for different ways in which the room could be experienced and enjoyed. And if he sees it in his mind's eye, he will gladly move "mountains," again and then over, just for kicks. So he is always and forever rearranging things; it really is quite extraordinary. Typical question in casual conversation: "So Paul, how did you like what I did on the front porch? They're cool there, huh?" My response, eyes like Little Orphan Annie's: "Huh?"

Alan has enriched my life, in so many ways. He is different, I mean from anybody I have ever known, and where one of us is weak the other tends to be strong. Let me start by sharing with you an image I snapped in a second, before Alan's friends had time to giggle and disappear. I wasn't supposed to post this; he wouldn't even tell me what sort of mischief they had been up to.


With his friends Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. He greatly enjoys the company of both, but has an especially tender spot in his heart for little Piglet. Whenever Alan sees him "he is always smiling right back," and "looking at him makes me happy," says he.

And the same wonderfully restless creative spirit shines out in his love of landcape lighting. At first I thought he was nuts when he mentioned his plans to hang a vintage chandelier on a cable about direct center of the side garden to the Cottage. But he did, and then moved the patio table just underneath it. And in so doing he created something of a sensation. It really is cool. And I have seen guests enjoy themselves tremendously there and elsewhere all about the property, inside and out. It's a truly wonderful thing, I think, to find oneself amazed, and then awed, and then again. And again.

Alan, conducting light

Lighting is one of Alan's great and driving passions, and music the other. His creative spirit always keeps him moving forward, though he's already far ahead of the pack, and a big part of the experience for him is in the sharing. I suppose that is the essence of the artistic spirit, in a nutshell. In any event, that is just his nature; there's no sense in asking "why." Yet here is an excellent insight into this man called Alan. He is willing to go to heroic lengths to make this troubled world a bit more of a festive place, if only in this one small slice of a surrounding huge metropolis, and one season at a time. Life can indeed be overwhelming at times, and where are we to begin with so many everyday fires always popping up in so many places, all around us? Perhaps right here at home. Maybe Voltaire was right, and the best thing that we can do, any of us, is cultivate our gardens.

And then, most certainly, share them.

Alan and my other favorite person in the world, our boy "Hoppers." He loves to help his Daddy with the lighting.

It could not be more plain to see, and you will if you come: that wonderfully restless creative spirit quite literally shines out everywhere in his love of landcape lighting. At first I thought he was nuts when he mentioned his plans to hang a vintage chandelier on a cable about direct center of the side garden to the Cottage. But he did, and then moved the patio table just underneath it. And in so doing he created something of a sensation. It really is cool. And I have seen guests enjoy themselves tremendously there and elsewhere all about the property, inside and out. It's a truly wonderful thing, I think, to find oneself amazed, and then awed, and then again. And again.

It opens something in people sometimes; I have seen this. But mostly it's just a good feeling. As I told Alan the other day, "Holiday Inn we're not. You won't catch us advertising "No Surprises!"

But that is a good thing. Please stay tuned. More pictures to follow, fewer words. I like that.

In Certain Places Green and Well-Tended...

...Serenity, Grace, and Hope tend to come calling. Their step is light, their touch gentle, and we cannot know how we've thirsted for their arrival until it happens.

TO him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.

Wm. Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis