Big Update
Captain’s Log, Stardate 20061010……
(Sorry! Always wanted to start a post like that!)
I am approaching the end of a one-month sabbatical from work. What with all of the meetings I’ve attended for various groups devoted to improving conditions on this side of town… and with hand-delivering 200 newsletters to area homes, frankly, I think I overworked myself.
I’m setting aside Thursday as a day to do nothing, but even then, I’m committed to work at an area fundraiser for the police.
The last couple of weeks have been quite busy, but overall, quite productive.
New Garage Door Openers — Several months back (April?), lightning in the area managed to knock-out the controllers of BOTH garage door openers. We didn’t have the cash to immediately go out and get replacements. So, for several months, anybody could just walk up to our garage and lift a door opened.
In fact, our house was robbed during this time-frame (they pried opened a rear window in the kitchen), yet the thief didn’t touch the garage!
Well, anyways, I waited until we had the money and Sears had a great deal on garage door openers. So, now we’ve got two new 1/2 HP chain garage door openers with remotes and keypads.
The only bad thing about this is that the previous owners had low voltage lines leading from the old garage door openers to two switches in the kitchen. The Sears contractor pointed out that the wire lines for these that travelled between the garage and the house were severely corroded. So, we lost the use of those indoor switches. Now, those switches are just sitting there, rather useless.
Fighting Fleas — What is it about this year and fleas? There must have been a bumper crop outdoors. We only let one of our two cats (Sammy) out regularly. All he does is walk around from the rear of the house to the front porch, and then just sit there on a wicker table. Usually, we bring him indoors within 5 minutes.
Well, this was apparently enough to give us a severe flea problem. I tried inexpensive drops from WalMart but that didn’t cut it. I then read that if everybody in the house ate Brewer’s Yeast, that the fleas wouldn’t touch you. I started putting us on that diet, but quickly gave it up because it gave me gas and a queasy stomach all the time.
So, we finally resorted to a combination of flea bombs, plus Frontline for the cats. This seems to be working, though I noted seeing some young fleas again on my socks this morning. I may need to bomb again to be sure.
We’re not the only ones to have this problem, as our son’s girlfriend’s family got infested too, but they have several dogs that get a lot of outside-time.
Butterfly Garden success – Well, as I believe I noted here earlier this year, I had created a new bed in the yard this year… on the south side of the house, off of the dining room. I dug out all the grass and replaced it with about 5 inches of compost from Missouri Organic. I then planted several different plant species in there, including purple coneflower, columbine, bee balm, and a few other things. I just thought I’d record how things went overall.
purple coneflower — Early in the season, I had problems with rabbits eating up the smaller ones all the time. Thankfully, I had a few larger ones to make up for it.
bee balm — A lovely flower! I want to get some more and spread it around the yard a bit. It did fairly well, though I had to water it frequently during hot / dry periods in order to keep it from wilting.
columbine — Scorched in the summer sun, but in spring and fall, it seemed to do okay. But I only had two plants in the whole bed and I need to at least double this.
red salvia — This is the only annual I planted…and boy, was it a success!! In fact, a lot of times, when you looked at this bed, this was the only plant you could really see! That’s because all the tiny 6-inch specimens I planted are now very much waist-high and almost just as wide!! But they thrived in the terribly hot, dry summer we had. And the humming birds and butterflies just loved them! I really hope these reseed, but frankly, I don’t need quite so many and I need to move them farther back from the front of the bed.
black jack sedum — This was a newer variety of sedum with very purple leaves. I only bought three of them, two for this bed and one for a small bed of roses my wife has in the front of the house. Overall, success was mixed. Rabbits (or something) kept munching on one of the ones in the butterfly garden, but the other one bloomed very nicely. The one in the front of the house grew well enough, but didn’t seem to bloom very well. I would like a few more of these to experiment with next year.
As far as the butterflies themselves go, we only really saw a few varieties, but certainly August through October was the prime time for viewing them. I need to plant a wider variety of butterfly-attracting species of plant. The hummingbirds were a surprise bonus. Quite often, we’d see one of these and no butterflies at all.
I think I may dig the bed a little further out next spring and move some of the plants around.
Road Project underway — Well, just a few days ago, on October 5th, the contractor (and the city) finally broke ground on the street improvement project we’ve been waiting on !! This project will result in that crappy-looking “extra lane of asphalt” in front of our house, which is a left-over from “trolley days”, to be repaved. Plus, it will be isolated from the main traffic lines by a new median. They will be adding nice nostalgic green tear-drop street lights, plus some landscaping, to the median as well.
Then, across the street, they are going to run a sidewalk all the way from Ash street, which is a good 8 blocks away, up to Truman Road.
The sidewalk is being funded entirely by TIF funds. As for the median, we got together with 18 other affected homeowners and voted to raise our own property taxes to help finance the project. The rest of the money is coming from a Community Block Development Grant that we won. (See my www.winnerneighbors.org website if you’re curious for more details.)
The entire project will not be completed until next April, but we are oh-so-happy to finally see it get started!
We spoke with a workman yesterday and he said that as they dug, they were running into old railroad ties from the streetcar system that used to run right where the main traffic lanes are now! He did confirm that the ties all seemed to be encountered as they dug along the side of their trench that was closest to those traffic lanes. So that just confirms other evidence I’ve seen that suggests the streetcar actually ran right there where the traffic lanes are, and not where this “extra lane” in front of our house is.
This Old House — I’ve had SOME success with researching the house’s build-date. After spending several hours at the County Courthouse’s Records department, nailing down just who owned the property when, I went across the hall to the Assessment Department.
And within 30 seconds, they told me “Oh yeah, 1889 !” Just as casual as you please…
They gave me a screen-print of their computer’s screen, but their word is probably NOT going to be enough to win the house either Local Historical Designation….or win it a special plaque via a program the city has for 100-year-old-plus houses.
So, the research continues.
Meanwhile…. 95% of the asbestos siding on the house is finally removed !! (Yippee!!) I did most of the work myself, with my father-in-law and my wife helping out. ( Click here to go to photos showing how the house looks now! )
I’m expecting a more accurate quote back from the contractors regarding wood restoration and painting costs…..any time now.
The good news is that several Greek Revival features were revealed on the house. Besides the obvious columns, there were several column-like features called “pilasters” on each second-floor corner of the house, plus some on the bay window on the north side.
The squarish green triglyphs that one sees currently on the front of the porch actually were once present all over: There were two of them above each window on the second floor. (Our contractor will be attempting to replicate these and put them back into place).
When I read that the “Greek Revival” style ended in 1850, I became confused. Did this mean that the house was actually 50 years older than I had thought? What about all of the “Foursquare” style features that the house has?
Well, then, while in a dentist’s office, I read in a magazine that the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island had the world’s largest portico (Greek Revival porch) and that it was built in 1887.
So, that pointed out to me that the Greek Revival didn’t really end here in the Midwest in 1850. It was still being used much later than that.
Further research told me that on early Foursquare houses, the owners would often exclusively decorate them with Greek Revival features. I also read that the “balloon frames” that were common to Foursquares were made possible by the invention of the wire nail in the 1850′s.
So, since our house has a balloon frame, that suggested to me that our house was one of these “early Foursquares” produced sometime between 1860 – 1900 and was decorated at that time in the Greek Revival style.
And, in retrospect, when I think back to my initial impression of the house…. that it was just a big white, block-looking old farmhouse…. I now realize that a lot of farmhouses were built using simplified versions of the Greek Revival style. Yes, in my mind at the time, that equated to “plain” and “boring”. However, the non-simplified Greek Revival style is turning out to be quite interesting.
My only regret is that it’s proving to be so difficult in getting enough proof of the house’s build date to satisfy an application for local historical designation. I need to spend more time doing the research… and I’m almost out of sabbatical time.
Oh well, perhaps during the winter months, when the weather turns lousy, I’ll be able to make some headway on this.
Thanks for stopping by !!
-= Dave =-