Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Everett's Place And The Garden Princess

We want to thank everyone who follows our blog.  We appreciate your interest, your questions and your comments.  Let us know if you want to know anything in particular about the house, its history, our town or anything else and we'll do our best to answer.

We have met quite a few people since we got here a little over a month ago and many of them have a story or a memory about our house and about its last Tash family resident, Everett.  We're no longer Kevin and Ann Mutschler (even though it says so on our mailbox), we are now the folks from California that bought Everett's place and that's OK with us.  As we share with people what we are doing and what our plans are they often tell us "thank you" and they explain how much it means to them that we are doing it. More than once someone who knew Everett well has gotten choked up about the project and said that Everett would be very happy to know what we're doing.  That is the best compliment we could receive.

Yesterday afternoon Ann, Bonnie and I went over to the house to take a walk.  Nick isn't a fan of the heat and decided he'd rather watch TV than walk and sweat.  Ann and I had taken turns working at the house earlier but wanted to go over and look around.  I don't know if I've mentioned it but there is a large barn on a hill behind the house that was once the place where Everett milked his cows.  It was part of the farm but is now owned by the school district.  I want very much to talk with the school district about bringing that piece of land and the barn back to Everett's place.  I've reached out to the school board and will update everyone if I hear anything.  Anyway, yesterday I mowed a path all the way up the hill and into the old barn so that Ann and Bonnie could walk up there.  We walked up about sunset and took a look around.  It's quite a place.  Here are a couple of pictures:



So after we came back down from the barn we went out in the garden.  Ann planted this garden right after we got here and yesterday she took her first cucumber from it.  It was delicious.  Everything is growing like crazy and doing great.  Bonnie went and got her garden hoe and wanted to work in the garden.  Earlier she had asked Ann to put a number of clothes on her (pay close attention to the skirt) so I said she looked like the garden princess.  Take a look:


Well, that's about it for me today.  We are in the process of cleaning up the inside and outside, cutting brush and enjoying all of it.  Each day we discover something else we love about being here.  Sometimes it's the river, sometimes it's the quiet and sometimes it's the people.  We will continue to keep you all updated and look forward to what we discover next.  I'll close with a couple of pictures from a walk I took down the river across from our house the night before last.  Yes, it is as peaceful as it looks.

Kevin


2 comments:

  1. Love the updates! I'm living vicariously through you. And look at little miss fancy-britches. Cute skirt ya got there! xoxo

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  2. So exciting that you found poplar flooring and lovely 1x6's on the kitchen walls. That house is beginning to breath again after being linoleumed for years. Kevin, Paul and I always remember the work you did to get us settled in our Vancouver house, and remain grateful for your many skills. We (me mostly) restored a 1922 house in San Antonio over a 20 year stretch, and I loved doing it. But my strength to tear up linoleum and all is gone. We would still be half-moved in without your help. Thanks again, dear friend.
    Now that you and Ann have the house of your dreams, we hope the process of restoring the house will be a joy (if a lot of hard work). I can almost hear the crickets and frogs by your river. The pic of Nick holding Bonnie, barn in background, says it all.
    Hugs to all of you------Melinda Loomis

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