Today was gorgeous. And the sunset tonight over the suburbs was incredible. I took a drive down route 424 yesterday to hit up Homestead Gardens. What an awesome place that is, I always feel somewhat out of my element there. I've always lived in small spaces and the extent of my foray into gardening has been small house plants-- of which I have killed many...and when I go to Homestead Gardens I feel so out of place, as if at any moment someone will find out that I really have no business being at a high end garden store, and will ask me politely to leave.
So on this drive, I'm passing the usual bizarreness of 424; a once beautifully untouched country road. You pass new builds, old builds, farms, condos, long winding lanes, ponds, mansions, gas stations slash quickie marts and fields of corn. Stretches of 424 are really quite beautiful still, but then there is that strange development of closely clustered homes that seem to be intruding on the bucolic fields, where animals graze and crops are brought in year round under the warmth of the Maryland sun. My friend Steve calls these homes tissue boxes. That is what they look like. As if the earth cracked open and spit out this monstrosity of a house, a huge tissue box on a hill.
I have severely mixed feeling about such places. First of all they look so out of place- I almost don't know where to begin. It would be like if, George Hamilton showed up to the Vanity Fair party sans tan-- very out of place. But the other part of me has been ingesting architectural digest and Elle Decor design mantras for years and I have come to realize that I too want a palatial playground to lay my head.
I saw this home in one of my Architectural Digests, it's in Connecticut I believe. I'll have to get the real info about it, but I saw this reconstructed barn and thought YES. This is living. This is life... and in the words of someone very dear to my heart, Liz Lemon,"I want to go to there." Now I realize that four walls made of lumber and dry-wall do not constitute a life but I bought into the magazine. This house is gorgeous and I have it pinned to my vision board which is another story for later. But I am no different than those people living in the tissue boxes on 424. If I had the money I would say you betcha, where do I sign? I think the 424 homes are a little Stepford wives for me-at least the Connecticut barn has some history, and is isolated from the pack. I guess the only think separating me from them is that they have what I want, but I wonder, can they really afford it?
May 31, 2009
