A NC Mountain Log Cabin Christmas

During this 2007 holiday season, it seems the children are all nestled asleep in their beds, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads… oh, wait. You say the “children” are all teenagers now, terminally bored with Christmas and expecting a 10-gig iPod loaded with every album too objectionable to be played in public, plus keys to a car and $400 worth of “Prison Chic” pants that hang somewhere around the thighs and show off their underwear?

Did the fudge never set, so you had to run to the store to buy enough ice cream to disguise the un-set fudge as super chocolate syrup? Were those tollhouse cookies hard as a rock, breaking grandpa’s dentures with the first bite? Did cousin Jim finish off the entire bottle of rum you’d brought for eggnog before passing out under the tree? Did the dog eat that perfect glazed ham before you could get it into the oven to heat? Did it snow during the night and hide all the firewood you’d stacked somewhere in the yard for the Christmas Eve fire? Are the in-laws insisting on watching Enemy of the State as a “Christmas Movie” instead of It’s a Wonderful Life for the 16th time?

Be of good cheer, enjoy yourself anyway, and…

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Filed under NC Living, Holidays, Timber Frame, Log Homes, Vacation Homes, Family Events | Comment (0)

Going Really, Really Green

The Ultimate in Vine-Covered Cottages

When my daughter was earning her theater technical degree at UNCA, she designed a set for a rather bizarre theatrical production of “Hansel and Gretel at Auschwitz” or something like that, which I never saw and didn’t really want to see. She brought home the ugliest of creepy metal trees made out of welded rebar and promptly installed it out by the footed bathtub from her production of “Hair,” which we now use as the final hole for the top nine disc golf course.

Now, we live in a lovely chestnut cabin on some seriously ‘graded’ acreage next to the Pisgah National Forest. So it’s not hard to imagine that I’ve no particular use for an ugly rebar tree. Yet that was six years ago, and today that ugly metal tree is one of my favorite lawn sculptures. The English ivy she planted around the base has grown up to cover the trunk in variegated dark and light green lushness. Wild pink roses and Japanese honeysuckle now compete for sunlight over the entire top and branches, trailing almost to the ground in places and spectacular in bloom.

So I’m not all that adverse to ideas about how to combine modern, recycled materials and technology with real natural greenery and flowers to make interesting homescapes. The eastern wall of this cabin is half rock, and when we moved in it was covered in ivy. Made for a really pretty picture, but we had to pull it all down when we discovered it was rotting the siding, providing shelter for a variety of stinging pests, and crumbling the rocks.

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Treading Lightly on the Earth*

Log and Timber Frame Homes
[*ee cummings]

October 15 has been designated “Blog Action Day”, when bloggers are encouraged to write about our environment and things regular people can do to reduce their environmental footprint on the planet and help steward the environment we depend upon to sustain our lives.

Here in beautiful North Carolina we are blessed with environments so spectacular and desirable that much of our drawn income over the year comes from visitors and tourists who just can’t get enough of us! This of course can cause some environmental stress, yet we’ve done a pretty good job so far of not urbanizing ourselves into depression and not so polluting our air and water that it’s struggle just to stay alive.

Out in the rural piedmont and mountainous west there is somewhat of a ‘housing boom’ going on. Despite overpriced land and housing in many areas of the country and a ‘bubble’ that is bursting as we speak, North Carolina still offers reasonably priced land and eco-friendly houses for young families, out-of-staters seeking vacation homes, and retirees seeking peace and a connection to the earth. A key to that housing boom isn’t just the relatively low price of land, it’s the popularity of log and timber frame homes and a sizable number of eco-conscious builders operating in our state.

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Filed under Timber Frame, NC Living, NC Land, Log Homes, Vacation Homes, North Carolina | Comments (5)