Beauty berries beginning to turn their glorious deep purple.
In case you ever thought rich people didn’t live in a completely different universe while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet, a rich guy in Houston who lives on River Oaks Blvd., the place for the obscenely wealthy, just bought this 15,000 sq ft mansion next door for 15.5 million dollars and plans to tear it down because…he never liked that house (though I hesitate to call it just a house).
He plans to combine his property, an acre, with the newly acquired acre and put in an English garden and build a pool house. An English garden in Texas, on the Gulf Coast Plains. We do not have the climate for an English garden though I suppose if he went with native perennials he could get something comparable. Whatever, the guy can buy a $15.5 million mansion just to tear it down he definitely has enough money to hire a slew of gardeners to maintain it. The only saving grace is that he plans to donate $4 million in usable materials to Habitat For Humanity, that and one less mansion and more flowers and trees.
Baby steps on the new shadow box which I still haven’t received. I ordered it last week and thought it was supposed to come on Monday, but apparently not until the weekend. Meantime I transferred the individual drawings to watercolor paper.
White wing doves continue to mob the bird feeder on the days I fill it. Anywhere from 5 - 8 crowded on it with just as many on the ground and twice as many in the trees above it and when they’re not mobbing the bird feeder they’re mobbing the birdbath.
I have to go out there every now and then and shoo them away so that the little birds have a chance. I’ve had two unusual visitors to the bird feeder today, a blue jay earlier and just now a flicker.
This is my favorite little water sprinkler. It gets moved all around the yard and when I remove it from whichever hose and am through watering for the day I try to put it back in the empty pot in the barn that I keep small misc yard stuff in so that I know where it is the next time I want to use it. I don't always remember to do that and so I spent Saturday looking all over for it. I looked in all the places in the yard it could possible be and could not find it. So Sunday I got online and ordered a new one after searching for it again even though I figured it would turn up eventually. I walked out Monday morning, turned the corner around the garage and there it was in plain sight on this overturned bucket right next to a pot with a plant in it I water nearly every day. I must have walked right past it a dozen times. Well, now I have two.
I was laying in bed last night thinking about Dolly Parton dying at 80 yesterday, the 25th (I already did one eulogy this week and so many have already written about what a shining soul Dolly was). She was only 4 years older than I am. It was a very sobering realization. And now this morning we learn that Tim Curry also died yesterday, also 80. Do I only have four more years left? Or seven, Joanne was 83. Eighty seems to be a threshold I am rapidly approaching. I looked in the mirror the other day, something I don’t really do that often besides just a glance, and I thought I looked older than I did just a few days previous. It seems that’s how it goes, maintaining a look and then overnight new wrinkles appear, bags under the eyes not there one day are there the next. While my hair still has more color than gray, the gray continues to creep in. Even so, I’m aiming for late 90s and have two women on my father’s side that bode well for that.
And last a little green tree frog hanging out on the moon. The moon being that part of the carved glass set of windows in my bedroom.
That does indeed look like a handy little sprinkler.
ReplyDeleteI just don't want to talk about getting older today. Some people handle it with grace. I fear I don't. And I'll die when I die. I'm shocked I've lived this long.
We have all plain gray doves at our feeder. They are selfish little things, aren't they?
Yeah. I'd tear that mansion down too. It's sort of ugly. Hahaha!
I think we are handling it with grace. I mean what's the alternative, go to bed and never get up? And yeah, no predicting when our lives will end.
DeleteThat mansion looks more like a palace to me and the inside was just outrageous including a big indoor swimming pool, interior straight out of Architectural Digest, cold, unwelcoming, no comfort to be seen. How do people live in an environment like that?
Bill Gates did the same thing 20 or so years ago. He bought a very expensive house on Lake Washington in Medina and then bought the two on each side then knocked them all down and built a Northwest Contemporary house into the bank of the lake extending the full length of the property’s. It is a very nice house but it is very big. You can see it from the scenic boat tour on the lake. You first see the house and say “that’s a nice house”. They you go a little further and say “that’s a nice house too… no that’s the same house”. Then you go a little further and say “that’s also a nice house too… no, that’s still the same house”. It’s nice to have money.
ReplyDeleteI see an enormous palace like places like that and wonder...why? Why do people want places like that when they probably live in just a handful of rooms. Do they have an entourage that travels with them that they have to house? I wonder how long it takes Bill Gates to walk from one end of that house to the other.
DeleteIt's natural for losses to bring those sorts of thoughts. I think especially the loss of Joanne has hit everyone hard, and now these celebrity deaths have accentuated that. (I hadn't heard about Tim Curry!) Two favorite sprinklers are not a bad thing!
ReplyDeleteNormally I rail against billionaires, but I gotta say that guy is right to tear down that hideous mansion and put in a garden. More power to him, especially if he gives to Habitat in the process.
That house is just as cold and unwelcoming on the inside as the outside. I'm all for less house and more garden.
DeleteCan probably see that mansion from space! Looks very like a cult compound. 15million probably does not go far these days of absurdity- it's like twenty bucks is now a dollar! Bully for the buyer with high hopes of an
ReplyDeleteEnglish garden in the desert as climate change robs us of even. more water. , frying the planet to a crisp. Brilliant.
A sudden. death is what I am hoping for- age doesn't really matter, just let me blow up spontaneously, please. Aging is no different than any other stage of life- adjustment is challenging as the wheels fall off and the paint rusts..It is something new to us especially having been so vital and beautiful all of our lives- right?
Especially when we don't feel old on the inside. Death comes to us all whether we're ready or not, just don't make it long and drawn out.
DeleteEnglish garden. Made me laugh. No amount of money, no army of gardeners is going to make that happen when the climate says no.
I have lost two baseball caps this summer. Somewhere in the house. Maybe I should just buy two more and they’ll turn up. I’d tear that house down, too. But isn’t it obscene that most people can’t afford to buy a home while he can spend $15 million to tear one down? At least (and I do mean least) he’s donating to Habitat for Humanity.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what their survival skills would be like if you cut them off from all their resources and plonked them down in the middle of nowhere which could just a swell be an inner city ghetto or bario with just $20 in their pocket.
DeleteThere is ann obscene distribution of wealth in this world, isn’t there?
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ReplyDeleteWhy do you care about the wealthy? He gets more write offs on a rebuild than a reno. English garden won't thrive and he might be flipping it. So who cares? More write offs with habitat if he even does that.
Where did that come from? I don't care what he does with his money or property. And I'm aware he can write off the donation to Habitat. I wrote about it like I write about all kinds of other crazy shit. What's the problem?
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DeleteCame out wrong. Envy is not buddhistic. The moderately wealthy didn't cause this. Many do great things like Dolly or Dwayne Johnson. Unless it destroys a community or the environment, who cares? The wealthy as a group aren't responsible for people not making ends meet. That's corporations government and the powerful.
However an English garden in Texas is crazy.
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DeleteHe could also be building Vault 51 ;)
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote and why. I don't envy the wealthy, never implied it, and I never claimed that the moderately wealthy are responsible for the financial squeeze most people seem to be dealing with right now. I was simply pointing out the expreme contrast. And I think a guy who can buy a $15.5 million mansion just to tear it down because he doesn't like it is a little more than 'moderately' wealthy. Like you say, they can do whatever they want with their money and who cares? Not me. Hopefully they employ artists and artisans while building their bunkers and private islands.
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Deletegot it. The wealthy have always been among us.
I suspect he'll flip it. Hence the tear down. In four years time? Might go for 30mill.
Moderate by todays standard. He might only be worth 50mill.
Saint Dolly. The super rich have money, connections and also access to access, like acceleration to velocity. They have a web of expertise we ordinary folk don't enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't call it expertise. It's all insider trading of one kind or another.
DeleteThe zuck guy just purchased a castle in Ireland so he has a proper residence when the EU and Ireland will eventually get their act together and start legal proceedings. I hope it rains a lot and the castle will be as damp as castles tend to be in Ireland.
ReplyDeleteI cheer any person who figures out a way to share and support community efforts etc but I still believe it's the job of an elected government to properly look after its people. I suppose I've lived too long in a social democracy - not always perfect but still with a mandate to serve the people first and foremost.
No wonder they wore so many layers of heavy clothing.
DeleteHopefully the progressives and the socialist democrats are finally taking over the Democrat party. Republicans over here are shitting their pants over Mamdani who is actually instituting the social policies that the people elected him to do, trying to delegitimize him. And progressive candidates are winning the primaries. The people have had enough. Republican representative Nancy Mace (the nut job policing D.C. bathrooms making sure that one trans woman in congress doesn't use the ladies bathroom) has called his policies un-American (you know, because he is muslim and not white) and saying "It’s about what standard we want for the people entrusted with enormous power over the American people.” Note her choice of words, 'power over the people', not power entrusted to them by the people to do what the people want.
Also, the frog is gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteI definitely have noticed that I'm looking older recently. I'm trying to make peace with it, but apparently I'm pretty vain (this is actually not news to me). I have no idea how long I'll live. Both of my maternal grandparents died early-ish (car accident & suicide). My paternal grandfather was in his 60s & my paternal grandmother was in her late 80s (same as my dad). I guess we'll see!
ReplyDeleteI've outlived my dad and older sister. My mother still has a couple of years on me but she already had one foot in the grave when she was my age. None of us know how long we've got. I don't usually think about it to tell you the truth. Just four deaths in one week kind of make you think about it. (Joanne, Dolly, Tim Curry, and my neighbor lost one of his sons.)
DeleteI had the exact same thought about having 4 more years if I die at 80. What should I do with these last 4 years? I don't need to live a long, long life. I've had a good life and will just go when it is my time to go.
ReplyDeleteWe all go when it's our time whether we're ready or not. I guess I'd rather go before I'm ready than be ready for years waiting for it.
DeleteYou will make late 90s, ellen. You're vigorous and strong and limber and not slowing down, and you've also set your intention. See you there! And oooh, another art piece to follow along with as you make it. Funny about your sprinkler. Whenever I put things away carefully I can never find them, but the things I leave lying about are always at hand. These days, the more important something is, the more casually I tuck it away.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed. Usually when I don't put it away it's on the ground next to one of the outdoor faucets. Whatever possessed me to put it on the overturned bucket, so off the wall that I walked by it over and over without seeing it.
DeleteI think all of us tend to contemplate our own mortality when we lose someone we care about. My mother and my sister died at 69, and I was surprised to outlive that deadline. I don't have a death wish, but I am content to go when my time is up. In the meantime, we will buy sprinklers and plant seed in hopes of a tomorrow that may not come.
ReplyDeleteI tend to contemplate it more the older I get especially now that people in my age group are dying. I don't dwell on it though. Other than doing what's necessary to stay healthy and active, we really have no control.
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ReplyDeleteBTW. Is blogger glitching again? Not showing up in blog roll.
If you mean the new one I just hadn't added it yet. Both are there now.
DeleteWell, I'm turning 80 in October, so I think I'll make it past that benchmark. The thought that sobered me up was the fact that in only a decade I'll be 90. Ten years is nothing. It's been 36 years since I started my business, and 15 years since my mom died. Another decade will be gone in a flash. I mostly don't think about it; I'm still too busy thinking about work and flowers and dinner with friends and such. I suppose I'm playing Scarlett: "After all, tomorrow is another day."
ReplyDeleteI found out that the other older woman in one of my yoga classes just had her 80th birthday. I was surprised. She said 'and you thought you were the oldest one in class'. She's right, I did. Hard to contemplate 80, though I'll be there in short order, mush less 90. Hard work keeps us young I guess.
DeleteSome people have too much money. I turned 80 in July, hard to believe, it has gone by so fast.
ReplyDeleteNo argument there. 80 is just mind boggling. Doing my best to stay healthy and active.
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