For me, this last month has been a strange one. Adjusting to the sudden death of my dear friend Jean Ann Rogers on May 2nd has been and continues to be difficult. She declined so precipitously, as I indicated in my post right after she died, that it seems unreal to me. A part of me expects to walk into Carver Realty and see her sitting at the desk, facing the computer screen and looking over her shoulder with a sly smile to greet me. I know she is gone but it is very hard to digest this information.

April is kind of a blur though, because besides getting more and more information about Jean Ann’s illness, I was also juggling a few other things. I accepted an offer on my house and decided to make an offer on a piece of land in North Asheville. If this all goes through, I am hoping, in about a year or so, to be living in a brand new house with a view of the Blue Ridge all the way to Mount Pisgah. The contract on my house calls for us to close in early July, which was the earliest, I could imagine being able to move due to the schedule of visitors to which I was already committed when I got the offer. The buyers have indicated that they now want to close in early June so there are still some things to work out, but I suspect this will go ahead.

The people buying the house are a couple from Highlands, NC, which is a resort area in the higher mountains Southwest of Asheville and about a 2-hour drive from here. My understanding is that they plan to continue to live in Highlands for a few more years while still operating their businesses (she designs houses, he designs landscapes) and then move to Asheville where they already have a substantial social circle. Consequently, they weren’t planning on using the house here for much more than weekend trips initially. The upshot of this is that, if we can come to an agreement on terms, they are willing to let me live here and rent the house back from them while I build. This would be great if we can make it work. They could use the money that I would pay for adding another heating and cooling system and some other improvements they plan, and I wouldn’t have to move twice.

The land I want to buy is about an 11-minute drive from my house now and about 8 minutes from downtown. It is in North Asheville and is still in the city limits but just barely. It consists of 3 lots of roughly an acre each, all sloping fairly steeply down from the street. There are views in all directions other than east. The lots are heavily wooded but some selective clearing and raising of tree canopies would create beautiful framed views of the mountains to the Southwest. I have been to the site on clear days and Mt. Pisgah is visible somewhere between 30 and 40 miles away. My plan is to sell one of the lots to my friends Amy Musser and Matt Vande. Amy is a mechanical engineer by training and is involved in certifying energy efficient buildings. Matt is an architect who works at a local firm and has been spending most of his energy on doing schools, so a house on a hillside in the woods will be quite a departure for him. They probably won’t build for a couple of years, but it will be nice, when they do, to have friends move in as neighbors.

The third lot, I will probably have to sell on the open market. Land is skyrocketing in value here these days so I am hoping to get enough selling these two lots to pretty much pay for my own building site. If I can pull this off, I might actually end up reducing my housing costs (if I can exercise some restraint in the design of my own house). Since I really loathe moving, I am hoping to do this right so I don’t ever have to do it again.

Literally, the day that I presented my written offer to purchase this land, Jonathan Boynton and Shaghig Kodbashian arrived from Sacramento for a 4-day visit. Jonathan, who was my principal assistant for the last 3-1/2 years of my architectural practice in Sacramento, was here very briefly about a year and a half ago when he drove over from the Norfolk VA area for a 1 day visit when he was working there. Shaghig, who has been dating Jonathan for 5 years had never been here, so their visit had to be crammed with as much of Asheville as you can get into a few days. We ate (seemingly constantly) at several of my favorite local restaurants, visited Biltmore, hiked the grounds, drove a stretch of the Parkway, toured Asheville both downtown and the residential areas, hit several of the art galleries and stores, and spent some time walking on the property I am trying to buy. Weather was almost perfect the whole time they were here and the timing of their visit took my mind off Jean Ann’s worsening condition. The day Jonathan and Shaghig arrived was the same day Jean Ann went into the hospital.

We had a really great visit and I was sorry to see them go. My old Design Review buddy John Febbo had planned to come a week later after attending the Kentucky Derby but he had to cancel quite recently so I didn’t have to launder the sheets literally the minute Jonathan and Shaghig left for California. My next visitors, Mary Anne Payne and her friend Jan (whom I have not met as yet) aren’t due until the 17th of this month so I have a nice break between.

Jonathan and Shaghig headed home on Monday afternoon the 30th of April and I went to the hospital to see Jean Ann after dropping them off at the airport. Her decline in just the few days since I had last seen her was astounding. She had been on a morphine drip since Saturday and was sleeping most of the time. I spent time in her room talking with her and telling her how much I loved her. I don’t know if she knew I was there or could understand what I was saying but I am thankful that I had the chance to tell her good bye and let her know how much she has meant to me in the 2-1/2 years I have known her. One of the things that has made my move to Asheville such a happy one has been the ease with which I have formed strong friendships. My friendship with Jean Ann was one of the strongest and while I am very glad that I had it, I will miss her terribly. As I said in the post earlier this month, Jean Ann died almost exactly two days later, the evening of May 2nd. She was a few weeks short of what would have been her 57th birthday and was a remarkable woman.

The weather here has gotten quite warm for this early in the year. Abner and I are already having to select our hiking times and locations based on the heat and the altitude. All the flowers that survived the three nights of bitterly cold weather we had in early April are now either blooming or close to it. The trees in Asheville are mostly leafed out now and my view of the mountains from my office window has just about disappeared. One of the things I love most about the winter here is the openness of all the views due to the mostly deciduous trees that surround us.

The house that has been under construction next door to me for the last 13 months seems to be progressing at a glacial pace. The house is quite large and certainly out of scale with everything else on our street. It has a very suburban look in massing and style. Personally, I think it looks like a tract house on steroids and I cannot imagine what could be taking this long to finish it other than the incompetence or inattention of the builder. I hear through some of my neighbors that relations between the owners of the house and the builder are strained at best. She had promised them that they would be in by October of last year. Since I haven’t been inside since the structure was enclosed, I don’t know how much is left to do, but the owners and their builder have managed to offend everyone whose property abuts theirs at some point or other during the process of construction. It will be interesting to see what kind of relationship they will have with their new neighbors if and when they ever move in. One advantage of the trees leafing out though is that they will partially obstruct my view of this house.

I suspect I won’t ever be invited to see the place from the inside, which is probably just as well. I am a terrible liar and particularly when it comes to making kind remarks about a house that I think is a mass of mistakes. There are only so many times you can get away with saying something is interesting before people realize that it is code for blecch!

I am really looking forward to Mary Anne and her friend’s arrival here but have one bit of trepidation. We are going to Charleston for a couple of days toward the end of their visit and it could be a somewhat intense experience. For one thing, Charleston tends to be something of a sauna by this time of the year. The weather will probably be quite warm (90s are likely) and muggy (100% humidity or close to it). While I am no longer a Californian, I am not really to the point where I can handle that kind of weather without it straining my resilience. And Mary Anne and Jan will be coming from warm dry Sacramento. It will probably be an even bigger shock to their systems.

The other concern I have is that we will be there a mere 2 days before the beginning of the Spoleto Festival. This is an annual performing arts festival that draws thousands and thousands of visitors to Charleston. From what I gather, many people come several days in advance so they can do the touristy things in town before the events of the festival itself tie them up. Consequently, I am assuming the town will be teeming with people everywhere we go. I love Charleston and really am glad I get to take my friends down there, but this particular visit will probably be more challenging than usual.

Well, I will report on all that in next month’s posting. I hope you are all well and enjoying the spring wherever you are. As always, the invitation to visit is an open one. The only difference is that for the better part of the next year, I may have to be living in rented quarters and possibly won’t have guest space. Once I complete a new house though, the guest accommodations will be better than ever. Until next month. . .