But will you love the pear trees?

When we decided to put Pilcrow Cottage, our Snohomish home of two years, up for sale, the first order of worry for my sister was the care of the two-year-old pear trees.  She wanted to know (and was rather insistent about knowing):  What will you do with them?  Will you take them with you? Will you leave them here? Will they, the new owners, love them?

We turned these questions over in our heads (or, at least, I did), asking whether we ought to take money or love: what if the best owner turns out to be someone who can’t offer as much?  What if the higher-offer people had plans to tear down the house and build seventeen more? What-what-what…if?

It turns out these questions were answered to satisfaction in a matter of days, a matter of minutes, really, once we got the offer (many, actually, but that comes later) and once the future owners were free to tour the property in our presence.  It turns out they love gardens, fruit trees, old houses (a must, as Pilcrow was built 1915), and the charm of the original single-pane windows.   But we didn’t know that when we accepted the offer, and we really weren’t prepared to answer my sister’s questions until after we signed the papers and sealed the deal (preliminary deal, but still).  So it was with faith that we chose the highest and best and not the heartfelt or sentimental; we trusted that the trees, the gardens, the greenhouse, the porch and its new rail were going to a couple who really, really wanted to live here and–here’s the most important detail–were willing to pay for it.

For as I mentioned above, we had several offers.  Seven in three days, as a matter of fact, and our agent began telling people after the first evening: highest and best will be accepted.  And so, having been out of town the day we would have legally had to review them, we sat down with the stack on a Wednesday evening and began the elimination process.  In reality, this really proved no difficulty whatsoever, as ‘highest and best’ meant little to four of the seven.  While inventory in Snohomish is low, their offers did not have to be.  As Maureen, our agent, said: “Don’t insult me.”  There you go.  The top three, however, understood that to make inroads and forge paths, one must come prepared.  A pickaxe and a heavy pair of boots, yes.  A jar of lemonade and a rocking chair, no.

So when the future owners of this little blue cottage stepped up and told us they would pay 20K over asking price we knew we had a deal.  We didn’t ask whether the pear trees would make it, but we had a hunch.  Anyone who was willing to make it worth our while financially had to know that the yield of the fields was included in the added Ks.  And they were right.  Since then, we  have tended to our little trees and flowers and gardens as though they were still our own, weeding the beds, watering, pruning, intending to leave Pilcrow in good condition before handing it over to the couple who saw a good thing and refused to insult us over it.

We are closing the deal in the next few days and will miss a great many things about this little historic home, such as the fruit trees and the way the garage doors make the south side of the house look like a barn, or all the workspace in the nice, cool basement.  But despite all this, we know it is our time to move.  We knew this when we put it on the market,  that our days as owners of this cottage were coming to an end.  But what we learned between Listing Day and Now is that we were right to ask for–and accept–highest and best, and equally right to defend the fate of our pear trees.   For it truly was ‘the fruits of our labor’ that led us to receive such an abundant offer: we put sweat and tears and money and blood into our home, and we have come to realize that a developer would never pay top price to rip down a house, nor would a careless or irresponsible person pay more in order to trash it.   Quality costs; it has a price, and if we want it, we must pay for it.  Otherwise we sell ourselves short.  And if we don’t ask others to pay top price for the goods we value, we shouldn’t be selling them at all.

End Paragraph New

Whilst browsing websites in search of a name for our new cottage, see photo, I came across the term pilcrow, or rather, the item pilcrow, for a pilcrow is a thing not an abstract.   In fact, it is a literary event in Tennessee, a blog post in three parts, and the potential future name of our abode north of Seattle.

Cottage from the Road

Should you be at all confused about this decidedly delicious bit of grammarian wit, a pilcrow is the backward P with which teachers mark your papers to indicate you changed the subject in your writing without alerting the reader by starting a new… paragraph.  The Wikipedia entry is quite enlightening, but I assure you, this post is better.  Much better.  But only if your eyes grow all blurry and your tummy flutters when you think of the origins of the English language.  So, the four of us who understand this feeling will enjoy reading about the origins of the humble pilcrow.

Small Changes Equal

What it was

There is perhaps a lot to be said for the statement “Less is more.”  Take for example a shot of espresso, or  a small handful of marbles dropped in an a quiet cathedral.  Like Twain said, The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  The difference is huge, to put it bluntly.

Over the past year John and I have transitioned from my small downstairs apartment in West Seattle to the tiny village of Pedro Bay, to our newly purchased house in Snohomish.  A year ago we were loading up his daughter’s wares from her mother’s house and taking it and her with us to Alaska.  The need to be there full-time was pressing and so we let our landlady know that we would be out by the middle of October.  When we were next in Seattle we boxed up our lives, sparing the few items we needed in the village, and put all of it into some kind of storage–with my parents or friends or the Goodwill.

Holidays looked a lot like those movies you see about family reunions and everybody living all over one another in one big house for a condensed period of time.  But it was nice.   Nice to be around family and nice to be close to groceries, other cities, and friends.  Slowly we were realizing the toll that living so far afield was taking on our emotional welfares.  We missed people. Really missed them.  But there were commitments to be held to in Pedro Bay and many a loose end to be tied, so returned after each holiday longing ever more for balance.

Months of life and alterations exist between our loose ends and our new home, but like I said: less is more.  Small changes equal grand results.  Enormous changes often result in earthquakes that rock people out of their homes and away from their families, and are difficult to patch up later.   Small changes let us believe we are living the same life, quietly going about our ways and duties, performing monumental feats of ordinariness while all the while the daisies grow taller, the hardwood floors take on a soft patina, and the curtains rustle just when they need to against the slanted, incoming sun.

What it is