Life at Longacre, Part One

~A Virtual Tour of our Oregon Residence~
(Click on the photos to enlarge)

Hail and well-met, Gentle Readers! I’m popping back into the Blogosphere to give you a peek at the new home God led my family to in Southern Oregon last Summer. The pictures were taken in Fall, but due to Moving Madness™, Real Life and my infernal tendency to procrastination, I’m just now getting around to posting this. >Le Sigh<

Anyway, I call our new home Longacre because it’s set on 1.88 acres, but since it’s only ninety feet wide, it extends quite a ways up the hill—possibly half a mile. The name has a slightly Native American flavor to it, although a friend told me it sounds like something out of Jane Austen, too. Cool!

Our new home!

Our tour begins at the road we take to get home—a relatively quiet country road in a hilly, wooded area of Southern Oregon, with gorgeous views of nearby mountains, just a stone’s throw away from two of the three local rivers. As you can see from the picture, there are several trees (TREES!!!) on and around the property, many of them oaks (which don’t grow in Idaho and were sorely missed). The little building in the lower-left corner is the well-house, which not only supplies us with all our water, but with its bright-yellow sunburst decoration, makes a good landmark for friends to find us!

The Orchard

OUCH!!!
(How is this tree even still alive?!)

Further up the hill are the remains of an orchard. We think there are English and black walnut, apple, plum and apricot trees here. I say “remains” because many of the poor trees have problems (the apricots having hardly any wood left on their trunks--see pic at right), so none of them are very healthy. We may end up just putting them out of their misery *cue chainsaw noises* and start over…if we decide we can handle growing fruit.

The Meadow

The Pear Tree

Beyond the Orchard is the Meadow…a small meadow, with a baby willow tree growing in the center. There are also wild roses in one place, :-D and a pear tree at the far edge of the meadow (that bright green one under the golden trees in the upper-right)…which consequently is the healthiest fruit tree at this end of the property. We didn’t get many pears last year because the crows and ravens stole them all….

     

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the High Road (at right) is actually a little steeper than it looks

The driveway splits at this point into what I call the High Road and the Low Road (but unfortunately, neither of them lead to Scotland :-P). The High Road is lined by struggling members of the juniper or cypress family, with creeping juniper and young madrone saplings at their feet. If the trees were healthier, they’d lend a rather grand “manor-house” feel to our humble home, wot?

It ain't fancy, but it's home!

And now we get a better view of Longacre House itself. Note the big, spacious front porch (twice the size of the one at Prairie Cottage) and the lovely, soothing sage-green color the former owners painted it. There are the remains of some flower beds and an herb garden, and a wisteria vine at the left-hand corner (which went bye-bye in late-Fall because we’re all so allergic). The former owners had carpet laid out on the area in front of the house, to smother the weeds, and eventually we’ll probably spread some gravel and make this a parking area.

To our great delight, they left this lovely arbor-seat, and a grape-vine has already taken up residence on it. We’re really jazzed about this grape-vine because it’s a concord—and not just any concord; a highly-prized Dark Purple, to boot!—which means Lord willing we can find us another steamer, we can make homemade grape juice again!

This area has some real potential as a flower garden/thinking spot one day.

Shall we see what’s round the back of the house before we go inside?

"Two Point" (front) and "Three Point" (back)

Here’s the backyard…which obviously needs some TCL yet. But there’s a lot of potential! The little tree turning reddish is some kind of cherry (whether edible or ornamental, we’ll find out come Spring), and you can just make out the apple tree behind the blue spruce at the back of the lawn. We got some good apples off this tree, and what we didn’t eat, the local deer were more than happy to clean up (see picture).

A better shot of the back lawn, taken from about where the High Road connects with the Low Road. Yes, Gentle Readers, we have a circular driveway. *Ooh, vahz!* ;-)

The bushes to the left are rhododendrons and a camellia, with little dog-violets (yay!) at their feet, and some wild cyclamen from Aunt Betty nestled amongst them. I have to watch them carefully, otherwise these clowns will dig them up:

Turkey-turkey-turkey! (--turkey....)

*Ooh, vahz = An expression denoting something is high-class, or very proper. Usually uttered with dramatic sarcasm.

Source: A pronunciation of V-A-S-E, converted by Tasha L. (née H.) into an expression, which was adopted by our family in February 2012.

~Tom’s Dicionary of Whacked-out Terms and Old Family Sayings

The back acre. We were told there was a garden area back there, but now the wild blackberries have taken over. Peter thinks it won’t be too hard to reclaim, though…eventually.

Note the beautiful orangey-red vine maple at right. I don’t think we’ve ever had a maple tree before….

We have hiked up into the back woods a few times—earlier in the Fall before it started raining regularly—but I never got any pix. But Spring is coming, and they’ll be gorgeous when the oaks get their new leaves, and the madrones are in bloom. :-D

The Low Road. This shot gives you a feel for how the house is situated on the property. This one is prettier, however:

We’ll probably leave the creeping Saint John’s wart on the side of the hill to prevent erosion, but eventually we want to clear out what’s at the top of the hill and make some flower beds. You can’t really see them, but there are a couple sweet briars amongst the creeper! Rosehip tea, anyone?

Between the trees on the left, one can see the neighbors’ pond:

Late-October/early-November, 2014.
It's now twice that full with the Winter rains

  In Summer, this was nothing but a little scooped-out-looking hole in the hillside, where the deer sometimes rested under the shade of the trees. After the rains came, however, it quickly turned into a proper little pond. I call it the Naiad’s Looking-glass. :-) (Come Summer, however, it may become merely Deer Hollow when it dries up again.)

The Meadow and the Orchard, seen from the Low Road.

This is directly across the drive from the last shot. Mom and I have evil exciting plans for this site. Like terracing, some flowers, and steps leading from the Upper Level down to the Low Road and the Meadow….

Well, now we’ve come back around to the Y in the driveway, so that completes Part One of the tour. In Part Two, we’ll head back up the hill and see the inside of the house!

Until then, Gentle Readers,

God bless,

~“Tom”~