Homes

My grandmother used to say (in Italian), “Casa, casarella, la casa mia è la casa più bella,” which means something like, “Big house, little house, the best house is my house.” In other words, home is were the heart is, and any house can be made into a cherished home.

Canada

This is the back yard of our home in Canada, which is on the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario. It is a very special place to all of us. The object in the lake is “Dog Rock,” and the depth of the water as seen in this photo is about three feet at this time of the year (mid-summer). In the early spring the rock is usually covered over by high water, but as the season progresses the water in the lake starts to lower. The structure on the left is the world’s biggest (well, deepest anyway) sand box complete with a tower! Now that the kids are older and have moved on to other places for their amusement, it has become the world’s biggest cat litter box!

However, I eventually placed the home on the real estate market, and it was sold in the fall of 2008. Everyone has has left town and renting it, or using it as a summer home, or using it as both a rental and a summer home for Jean and I wasn’t a viable option for various reasons. And although everyone in the family was in agreement that we needed to let the house go (some, more than others), it still saddens me to have done that. Hopefully, though, we all have and are able to share the wonderful memories for which the home has been the catalyst. I realize more and more that I am letting a house go, not the “home.” I hope that the memories of “home” continually serve to unite us as a family, and that these memories will stay with us all the days of our lives.

The United States

    When we moved into our new California home in March of 2004 there was a lot of work to be done on it.  I remember telling Jean when we were thinking of purchasing the property, “You don’t know what’s down the pipe in order to fix up this place.”  Well, to be sure, there was a lot “down the pipe,” and a  lot of money “out the window,” and “down the drain.”  Besides having all of the outside hardscape and softscape work done, we did quite a few renovations inside the house including the addition of a 500 square foot master bedroom, bath, and walk-in closet, as well as putting in a basement (and spring fed well!).

    Although it’s finally finished after working on it for a few years, we could still say it is “almost” finally finished as there is always more we could do.  However, for the most part it’s done.  To be sure, I know we are!

This is what the house looked liked on the outside when we first purchased it, and without the addition, of course, towards the back on the left facing the house. The inside in many respects required a lot of work as well as the outside. However, Jean loved the architecture of the house, which in known as “mid-century, post and beam modern,” built circa 1965, and our goal was to preserve the original architectural design as much as possible.

And this is what the house looked like on the outside after the hardscaping and some of the softscape work. In this photo you see the house all dressed up for Christmas 2006. The plaque on the light pilaster reads, “Villa Collina dal Mare,” which is Italian meaning, “The house on the hill by the sea.”

The vegetation is much more established now than as it appears in this photo. Now the house appears as being more established, or set into the surrounding landscape. I’ll have to add an updated, current photograph. But in this older photo you can see we planted a lot of red and white cyclamens for the Christmas 2006 season. Now the cyclamens are long gone and instead many other types of plants which were placed around the house are establishing ( I should upload a current photo). A home, it seems, is always a “work in progress,” but as of late things are pretty well done.