Our new home

Well. We did it. We bought a house. On a 0.2 acre lot in Charlottesville.

In most ways, it is not what we expected, nor what we originally sought. It is not 73 acres in the country. There is no room for goats or pigs or towering pecan trees. It will never house a large community, nor will it produce a bounty of food.

But that’s ok. The soil is lacking, the trees gone, but we have the sun and we have the ground. And now we have a pile of 7 cubic yards of compost, 20 cubic yards of mulch, a handful of trees, herbs, and seeds to plant, and our two souls with the enthusiasm to nudge our little corner into a beautiful ecosystem for the trees, insects, and neighbors.

And we have more than just the two of us! My parents and sister visited us last weekend — our first weekend in our new home — and contributed to our project with a love and energy that withstood the heat and humidity of a poorly insulated house in mid-August Virginia. From the moment they arrived, they helped organize our new home, tore bushes out, planted trees and garden beds, harvested almonds from a neighbor’s tree, refurbished an old table, added light to our living room, sharpened a push mower, and most helpful of all, added the love and warmth necessary to transform the poorly insulated house into a home.

So in Charlottesville we settle. For now. We will savor cycling to work, the grocery, and the market. We can see the UVA Hospital from our yard, and next week, the fall semester will welcome Lauren as a clinical instructor and newly enrolled graduate student.

In between work, the grocery, and the market, we will practice and we will build. We indulge ourselves with daily checkups of our trees, herbs, and compost pile. And we open our home. The house is funky, but has rooms for whoever needs it: friends, family, bicycle tourers, courchsurfers. Already, we’ve seen the openness reciprocated. Every few days, neighbors gift us a few cucumbers from their burgeoning patch or some extra grapes from the vineyard where they work. And we’ve received our first contribution to Lauren’s long-postulated “community compost pile.”

In case it’s not obvious, you are invited to visit (or, why not, live with us for a while!), announced or unannounced. We’ll prop the door open for you.