PUTTING THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE

I have a new/old friend who found my blog several years ago when she and her hubby were still living in California, but had bought a house here in Wimberley. They were planning to move here when her hubby took early retirement from his law enforcement career, and had rented their Wimberley house out in the meantime. We became friends through her comments on my blog, and met for lunch a few times when they were here, but she had already been reading my blog for several years before she ever saw Seasonality (the name of my house as well as my blog) in person. When she finally did, she was totally discombobulated. Nothing was as she had pictured it! At first, she couldn't put her finger on it. Then, drawing on her editorial background, she figured out what the problem was. She said that most of my photos were taken either from close up, or using my zoom, in order to give readers a better view of whatever I wanted them to see. But, with no distance shots to ground them, and tie them into the house or the spot where I was standing, it was impossible to put things into perspective, or to tie all the various parts into one another. 

So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to give you a little tour of the place and explain a few things, lest anyone else is in danger of discombobulating. Take that little church house in the picture above. I've posted tons of pictures of that over the years, but rarely without using my zoom. Our house is two-stories on the side that faces the roads, but that's not really the front of our house. That's the back. Notice I said "roads", not road. First is the little gravel driveway which branches off from the paved one, running right up next to the house, and leading to a tiny parking area on the far side. Then just beyond that big grassy area that we have left au naturale, there is the street we live on. The far edge of that street is a cliff that drops straight down to the creek, which is hidden in that clump of trees. Our property ends in the middle of the creek. On the other side of the creek are a couple of houses tucked up into the trees, and the church house complex. Unlike ours, their properties are flat, so they keep them nicely mowed. Beyond their little meadow is the street they all live on, and beyond the next clump of trees is the highway. Got it? OK, let's climb back up the hill to our place, and take a look around.

This is the thing that confuses people the most. If you are looking at our house from the main road, it looks like a single, massive building up on the side of the hill. However, if you follow our driveway around to the rear, you will see that it's actually two smaller buildings, one directly behind the other.

Here's the house on the right. This upper level is the part where we actually live -- just three rooms across and one deep -- and has no interior connection to the downstairs rooms.

Behind the house is our garage and utility room, with a hay loft style storage area up above.

At the end of the driveway you step down onto a little gravel pathway that leads to the pump house. To the right of the pathway are John's flower beds, which are held up by a huge cinderblock retaining wall that drops straight down to the lower parking area I mentioned earlier. To the left of the path is a nice stone patio that John added a year or two after we bought the house.

See? That's the edge of the flowerbeds, looking down over to the lower level.

Now, if you want to get to the downstairs rooms, you have to go back to the other side of the house and come down this outdoor staircase, which leads to the lower porch. No, we don't actually have outhouses here. The people who built this place just thought it was funny to put little moons on all the outbuildings. This one is where we would put a propane tank if we wanted a gas stove or fireplace. Right now it's home to a million wasps, and who knows what else. We've always been too chicken to open the door.

This is the downstairs porch, which faces onto the terraced Cantina Garden, our only fenced in space. The first door on the left is to the guest room, and the one on the far end leads to John's man cave, which has a little office space and a small storage room behind it. In between are the bathroom and another large storage/mechanical room. At the far end of the porch is that little gravel/weedy parking area, the rain tank, and a couple of deer tracks leading off to the edge of our property.

Here you see the infamous half-painted retaining wall and half-dead shrubs, with the stone patio and pump house above, and parking area below.

And here is the view from the lower porch, out through the garden gate, and beyond to the hills across the highway.

So there you have it. Hope you've enjoyed your little tour, and that it has managed to tie all the bits and pieces together for you -- put things more into perspective. Questions anyone?