Thursday, January 15, 2015

Around-Town Houses

Here's a catch-up on Oriental, for those of you who like to know what's going on. Here's a house (a brick one!) that's about to be moved.
The location for it has been prepped, just a few hundred feet away. Its back will be against a little creek.
Below, you see the garage of the house on the ride side. If you peer at the photo, you can see some little structures in the background, behind some small trees -- those are Rotary Club trailers, and the new location for the house is just to the left of those.
However, the home-owners do not own the property between the house and the new lot; someone else owns it who would prefer not to have the house dragged across their lot. So the house will have to come down the driveway, down the street, around the corner, and into its new spot. Should be exciting!
Immediately down the street from that house are FOUR houses in a row, all for sale. You can see all four signs -- the last one is a tiny brown one. One of the houses, at last, is under contract.
For a while I assumed these four houses were all flooded in Hurricane Irene, and thus hard to sell, but that's not the case. They're all selling for various reasons. Oriental, as a retirement town with many second homes, always has lots of places for sale. I don't worry about it anymore.
Remember the cute little cottage I've showed you before, being redone? It's nearly there!
Here's a back view, with the little pond off the back porch. The builders have tarps enclosing the porch temporarily, because it's cold.
It really is lovely. I would have picked a color other than white, but it's very pretty.
They've done some fine stone work on the side steps -- also coming down both ways from the porch in the background.
On our rather-chilly bike ride today, we met up with Goldie, whom you met in my short story recently, "Billy, the Sailor Dog." In the story, Goldie has a bit of a rough personality, but the real Goldie is a sweetheart. She was out with her owner, taking a walk, hunting pecans.
Miss Faye, Goldie's owner, had some interesting tools in her golf cart.
These are pecan picker-uppers :) In the Deep South, it's helpful for one's back to have a device for this tedious job. You roll them around on the ground where the pecans are. The metal loops are flexible, allowing the pecans inside the ring. When the ring is full enough, you dump them into a bucket. Miss Faye had a couple of buckets full. We discussed the excellent pecan year.
Humorous boat name of the day: "Private Idaho" I wonder what that means.
We came home from our bike ride. Adam wanted to take a nap. He was just heading down the hall when I said, "Where's that water coming from?" Always a bad thing to say. A little puddle was dripping onto the floor mat.
Sure enough, when we checked, there's a leak under the kitchen sink. I keep some cleaning supplies in a plastic tub there ... so the tub was full of water and the bottles were swimming. Sigh. Pretty nasty. You can tell I don't get into my cleaning supplies very often - haha! I took one fuzzy photo because when one's husband is doing plumbing, one does not make a pest of oneself, taking photos. One will become persona non grata. He patched it up, and we'll call the landlord tomorrow.

So there you have it! I successfully did a blog post without a single photo of yarn! Oh, and let me give you a recommendation for online viewing. Adam and I love to watch Time Team -- a 20 year TV series about a group of British archeologists who travel around the U.K. (mostly) digging in people's back gardens, looking for remains. It's charmingly done, fascinating, and good history. There are lots and lots of full episodes on Youtube, and you can subscribe. Choose the youtube subscription with the Indian sounding name -- that fellow has more episodes.

8 comments:

Kezzie said...

I like Time Team (more so because one of the team has the same name as me and there aren't many famous people with my name!)
HOW are they moving the house?! Surely it would collapse?
And I am going to read your stories but I keep meaning to sit down at the weekend with them to read all in one go! xxx

Pom Pom said...

Oh no! Leaks are NO FUN! You're so funny as you point out that you don't mess with your cleaning supplies much! Ha!
I love the deo and I gave my Jenny the other bar today, so I'm going to be buying some more. You had better brew some up for our family!
xo

Pom Pom said...

You did a beautiful job drawing the golden, by the way!

Mary Ann Potter said...

Thanks for the nifty tour today, M.K.!

Nancy said...

Hunting pecans? Pecan pickers? Now that made me laugh out loud! Who knew??! Here in the NW we have walnuts and hazelnuts...and they all have to picked by hand, squatting down to get each one. Or waddling about to pick several before getting up, moving, and squatting again. Quite a workout. We need one of your contraptions!

M.K. said...

Kezzie, just the other day I was listening to a Time Team, and heard her (your!) name, and i said, "I know somebody with that name!!! That was cool :) I don't know how they'll move the house b/c it is a brick house, and it's really tricky, evidently, to move such a house. Plus there's a garage extension on one side, and another extension on the other side. Perhaps they'll do it in sections? Please do read the story :) It's in 2 different posts, but I put links in to help you go from one to the other. Get a cuppa and relax with some doggie fun :)

Lisa Richards said...

Time Team sounds fascinating! I will have to look it up on YouTube. Hey, I don't even crochet or knit, but I like to look at your yarn projects!
I like the little white house. It's looking good!
I'm sort of sore and creaky tonight after a long day at work. I think I'll watch a little something (Time Team?) and fall asleep in my chair. Hee, hee! :)

Dasha said...

I was interested to see the For Sale sign on that first house - we have Century21 here too. Small world.
I absolutely love Time Team. Some of the episodes were aired last year, and I made sure that I watched them all.