Jeepers Creepers

Highland Ave is a pedestrian boulevard. Hundreds of people make their way, up and down every day, to and fro the bus they go . . . the high school, the hospital, UW campus, the businesses on University Ave to the north and Regent St to the south. It's also a handy street for parking, especially in the evening, for the restaurants a short block away.

The house is only nine feet from the city sidewalk, and there's no visual or physical barrier of any kind. No fence, no shrubbery. So the backyard feels like a vacant lot or public property, maybe a small city park. Folks walk their dogs in it. They pick the flowers. One recent evening, a man got out of his car, strolled into the yard, stood there for a couple of minutes, smoking a cigarette, peering inside, then went on his way to the Blue Moon.

Those days are over.

Picking privacy details is as vexing as making any other selection. If a fence: wood or vinyl or metal? what style? how high? what color? pickets? a solid wall? barbed wire?? electric?? If plants: trees or shrubs or perennials or grasses? how fast can they grow? hardiness zone? deciduous or evergreen? shade or sun? flowering? poisonous?? man-eating?? And what combo of these elements? What arrangement? How many and where? What's the sweet spot between privacy and aesthetics? And what does the city of Madison have to say about it?

The whole backyard plan had always been contingent on getting the drainage right. But I'm tired of not being able to open the curtains and let in all that southern-exposure sunshine. Add the fellow smoking a butt at the window, and I've decided it's okay if there's still a wee bit of bog in the back. Maybe there won't be. But if there is, we'll just put in a legacy koi pond.

So let's start with the fence.

Step 1: stake the post placement

Step 2: auger the post holes

Step 3: lay out the panels

Step 4: install the posts (check out that 3D level!)

Step 5: install panels as you go

Fence finished: no more peepers

Next spring: a hedge?

Backyard Pools

Back when this terra was called 311 Highland Ave, it was known around the neighborhood for its koi ponds. Like Madison itself, with a trio of lakes, the yard boasted three water features that were havens for fish, flora, and feathered friends.

May 2013

The ponds were removed during the building process, but water didn't get the memo. Spring rain pooled against the back wall of the new foundation (see "Lakefront Property" post, June 2013) as if the gray concrete were the stone banks it once lapped against. "Fear not," said Dan, "the Landscaping Guys will take care of that." But after we moved in, the first rainstorm showed us who still had the upper hand in the battle with Mother Nature:

October 2013

The Landscaping Guys came out to view the backyard lake last November, a year ago. They mumbled a bit, kicked a bit of mulch aside. Months passed. Winter, spring, summer. In September of this year, probably after a contentious debate or two with Dan, they finally brought in more dirt and regraded the soil. Then the rains fell. And lo! The lake was no longer against the house. Instead, it was about 10 feet away. Which is a great improvement for the foundation and basement. But I don't really want a swamp for a backyard.

So following the old saw "Change the things you can, accept the things you can't," I hired new Landscaping Guys who say they are "experts in drainage." As of this week, we have new topography, plus a sweet little patio bonus. Time (specifically, next spring) will tell.

The Library

In fifth grade, I had my first dream job: assistant to Mrs. Carroll, school librarian, on Tuesdays during lunch. This was 1968, when checking in and checking out involved a little card in a little pocket affixed to the inside of a book cover. I filed those little cards in the check-out drawer, returned them to their sturdy pockets, shelved books (after Mrs. C decided my alphabetization skills were up to snuff), and—most deliciously—got first peek at new books. The job cemented my love of whole new worlds contained between covers. When I grew up I became an editor, a writer, a librarian.

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines – it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”—Robin Sloan

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”—Mark Twain

The early stages of designing a home are giddy, filled with what-ifs and maybes. For some: Maybe a swimming pool. Maybe a balcony. Maybe a workout room. Maybe an art studio. Maybe a Japanese garden. Maybe a horse barn. Maybe a kitchen with enough equipment to run a restaurant.

Maybe a library.

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."—E.B. White

I have a lot of books. When you've work for publishers and libraries for three decades, and when you love the look and feel and smell and promise of a book, it's easy to amass thousands. While packing for the move to Madison, I weeded the collection, reducing it by more than half. Friends took bags of them, the Mary Riley Styles public library took boxes. Still, more than 50 cartons made it onto the van to Wisconsin.

Some of my what-ifs didn't make it to the finish. A screen porch. A front porch big and friendly enough for a table and a swing. But the library is there. It's the first thing you see when you come through the front door.

Evening View. Note the cool light effect and the requisite librarian's cardigan on the desk chair.

Mary Collins, 1930 - 2014

Mary, of next door's Bob and Mary, the best neighbors in the world, the nicest people on earth, died unexpectedly on Wednesday, February 5. As Bob said, she was a giant heart with a big smile.

Mary with Bob and Dinky, last May, at the old house:

Hell Freezes Over

My parents are laughing. "All that complaining you did about the cold when you were a kid, and now look at you! Wisconsin!"

I grew up in Colorado, where it snowed before Halloween and spring didn't come till the next May. One morning in June the year I graduated from high school (and left the state), it snowed four inches. The day I would choose a climate like this would be the day hell freezes over.

View of our street, 1973

So people change.

My brother Vince attended UW-Madison his sophomore year and because of the bitter cold called it the worst year of his life (note "year," singular form). My best friend from childhood spent just one semester here before she bailed. Another friend, one who came and stuck it out, described buying fur-lined boots one day for the sole purpose (heh-heh) of walking across a street. I knew all of this. And I came anyway.

January 6, 2014, was officially the coldest day of my life, with wind chills around 50 degrees below zero. Here's a photo of a bolt on the inside of the front door that morning:

Actually, I don't mind cold the way I did as a kid. It's convenient being able to use the garage as an auxiliary refrigerator. And sleeping at night in a frigid room, buried under quilts, is pretty great (although getting out of bed is admittedly less so). My husband Allen used to find the Colorado cold "exhilarating"; now I know what he means.

BUT. The snow is a different matter. And now, harking back to my Colorado childhood, I see history repeating itself.

The driveway back then was legendary. The house was perched on a mountain, accessed by a long driveway with a steep grade. It was flanked on each side not by grassy lawn or other terra firma, or even a protective curb, but by open air. More accurately, on each side of the driveway yawned a ravine filled with barbed-wire-like scrub oak and spear-like conifers. The driveway started its life as gravel; within a couple of years, thanks to the scrabbling of tires seeking purchase, it developed bumps and undulations that in winter became expert ski slope moguls. Eventually my parents had it smoothed out and paved. They had to.

The driveway, 1973

Regardless of season, regardless of surface, getting up the drive required both courage and skill. The successful ascent involved making a running start and maintaining speed all the way up. If you were tentative, the car would stall, and you would have to guide its dead weight backwards between the twin chasms. Heaven help you in winter. Many a car had to be hoisted out of the Ditch of Death, the Maw of Mayhem. Indeed, my parents bought an old Army jeep with a winch on the front for this purpose. I was the first to topple over the edge, and my parents were furious when they saw their Buick Skylark in the ditch, its hood pointing up at the sky as if trying to claim its eponymous destiny. But then visiting relatives did the very same thing the very next day ...

Fast forward 40 years. Although the driveway at 2425 Kendall Ave is shorter, it's about as steep as the one of my youth, and the stories are already accruing, the legend is forming. A couple weeks ago, Mary parked near the top of the drive, and an hour later when we glanced outside, her car was gone! Oh my god! It's been stolen! Um. Wait a sec. What's it doing halfway out in the street? Physics lesson: If the weight of an object exceeds the traction afforded by the surface on which it sits, gravity wins. Life lesson: Don't park in the driveway in winter. It's been snowing non-stop for two months now, and I've gone through so many bags of kitty litter, it's fair to say that the once-paved drive is now gravel, a reversal of family history. Thanks also to daily shoveling, the snowbanks on each side of the drive are so high it looks like a luge track. Call this an inversion of history. There's no way to slide off into the conifers.

The driveway, 2014: Olympic practice track?

Then there are the sidewalks. The City of Madison decrees that residents shall keep sidewalks free of snow and ice. Keeping the 110 linear feet on Highland, the 55 feet on Kendall, the two curb cutouts at the corner, and the fire hydrant in front of the house cleared of all signs of winter is the ultimate Sisyphean task. Every morning Lena and I shovel. Every inch, side to side, by law.

The Highland Ave side

The Kendall Ave side

And shoveling isn't always sufficient. Here's the warning I received when the sidewalks were shoveled edge to edge and sprinkled with salt and sand but not ENOUGH salt and sand:

The good news: Shoveling snow is a meditation practice—repetitive and peaceful, one stroke after another. And it keeps you buff, with trapezii of steel. These are the things we tell ourselves in Wisconsin when faced with the combined consequences of geography and season. Also, though it seems impossible today, we remind ourselves that one day we'll be able to open our windows again, and when that day comes, everyone will swarm onto the sidewalks, wearing bright colors and flip-flops, greeting one another like long-lost friends and lovers. It may be frozen now, but one day soon it will be like heaven.

Moving Day: October 11, 2013

The house:

The team:

Rooms ready to fill: