Transition

In our first several months in our new home, I’ve watched our lot transform ever so slightly, as summer became fall.

We have poplar trees that loom over the rear of our lot, above our house. We have a lovely redwood grove in the corner. There’s also an oak tree at the front of the property, under which the tiny house is temporarily parked.

Here, leaves fall. I’ve never lived in a place where the leaves completely take over. Last month, when they fell throughout the day, I was first annoyed and frustrated. But when I realized this was really their lot, I let go. We swept when and where we could, but for the most part we let the dance happen. We let the leaves do their thing.

Little Leavenworth is doing just fine. He’s parked on our second driveway, waiting patiently for something to happen. I look at him from my kitchen window and think, he is lonely, and when I sent a picture of him to my parents, my dad said a similar thing — that we abandoned him, that he is bored. We’ve slowly settled in, and the interior of our home is coming along, but our half-acre lot is very much a blank slate. We’re in the process of working on a hardscape and landscape design, and soon this place will be a construction zone.

Pending the weather in November and our budget over the next few months, our hope is to excavate, grade, and prepare the lot for the winter, and move the tiny house to its proper location on the property so we can set it up once again — solar panels and all — and find someone to occupy it. He has accumulated a bunch of cobwebs, so I look forward to cleaning him up and placing him on a more permanent pad. This blog is pretty much dormant, but I plan to update everyone here on Leavenworth’s next steps.

In the meantime, I started a new blog of photographs and (really bad) haiku, Where the Gravensteins Are, about my new home and life in West Sonoma County in general. The Gravenstein is a sweet and tart apple and a symbol of this area’s history and agriculture. The tiny house will make occasional appearances there, so check it out and subscribe if you’d like.