A house on my own

One day, mom told me that there was the real Rio at the doorsteps. The abandoned garden across the street was inhabited by some tramps who set the garden shed on fire so there was the police, fire brigade, ambulance, noise, onlookers, journalists.... Real Rio.

I don't really know how the idea sprang up. That we could buy the garden. We discussed the technicalities of buying a part of a really large plot that stretches along the railway.

A day later, mom was ready with catastral maps.

Yet another day later, we were knee deep in planning how to use the garden.

On Friday, I was meeting a friend with whom I meant to discuss basically two things. Well,three, gossips and rants included, we're friends since forever, after all. Thing two was the library catalogue. He said that a friend of his asked him for something similar just recently and that it may not be a totally lousy idea so we happily developed it into further details and thing three was the future of my potential garden.

I probably mentioned in this place and elsewhere that I have a thing for trains. I would love to live somewhere nice and calm with a view of a railway. So, the garden is between a calm blind alley and the tracks. I admit, I rather meant a nice picturesque valley on whose other side I could see the trains going; on the other hand, it's a very local railway... and yeah, the idea of building a house there offered itself. Due to local regulations, it won't be likely possible – within a certain distance from the railway, no permanent constructions are permitted. On the other hand, many a temporary construction lives for generations and I obviously recalled the old joke that 'temporary' is a tricky phenomenon, which is however measured in exact units, one temporal being 21 years. And garden sheds are considered temporary constructions anyway.

In the debate, some underlying thoughts began to surface. The words shifted from 'habitable shed' or 'small wooden garden house' to 'urban recluse', 'sorta Japanese teahouse', 'high-tech hermitage', 'self-sustainable low-energy' and I'm afraid that we stuck to an architectural concept that will be published in major magazines. And my Savonarola chairs will look well in that one, too. The funny thing is that the garden needs to be acquired first (I hear it will be worked on very soon, just in case someone got the same idea). Then, a large amount of non-combustible trash will have to be removed, the place served as a local rubbish dump for quite a time. After that, the opportunist vegetation will be dealt with – the dead walnut tree will probably heat up the future conceptual garden shed for a few winters. And... then I'll plague the place with all the plants I wasn't allowed at home. Paulownia, to start with, the only inthe town since they cut down the one in the botanical garden. And such.

I should need to note that my utmost wishes for the next few years are to be somewhere else than hometown.