Jed Wolf

I’m not surprised Dave and I rushed to get our house listed before the height of hurricane season. Our reasons, like Freudian slips swirling off the coast of Africa, mixed with our asking price, growing interest rates, politics, and “back to school” market lethargy, resulted in no traffic during three open houses. Our realtor chose to highlight our relatively new house’s style and location while downplaying our gardens and pond-centered backyard, which would look to prospective buyers like a lot of worry and maintenance.

I found solace in nature as a child and have acknowledged my need to create sanctuaries ever since. Tweaking nature, building water features, and opening up lovely views wasn’t lost on landscape designer Frederick Olmsted either, whose web of drainage and plumbing beneath Manhattan’s Central Park made his vision feasible.

Though buyers might appreciate our house’s snazzy location walking distance to St. Augustine, Florida the “oldest city in the world,” crammed with tongue-in-cheek tee shirt-wearing tourists, paradise regularly inundated with rising seawater, is a consideration for some more than others, I mused, as no one but Dave and I showed any

interest in our sun-dappled love.

Tall trees, while prized for shade, are also a liability in Florida. Even without high winds, the oaks, palms, and pines in our quarter acre rain debris continuously, and I blow debris from my paths and patios nearly every day. Cutting them introduces blazing sun, which makes worse things grow, so most people opt for screened-in pools and chemically dependent lawns. Others, like myself, feel cool shade, though high-maintenance, is more precious than increasingly scary water views in the Sunshine State.

Our property is like a fickle lover. Though we noticed its quirks eight years ago when we bought it, we were smitten. Since rebuilding, we’ve been living with it for six years, and though we’ve only been flooded by four rather distant hurricanes, every fall the strength of our relationship is tested.

It’s a scary time for everyone on the planet. Cities are struggling. Rural is becoming rare. We thought we might like to roll the dice with the pretty penny we were told we might get, so we prepared to move to another road somewhere in Maui or Asheville and risked trading one set of problems for another. 

Though the pond I hand-dug floods with salt water, I’m tired of hearing it’s a liability. Of course, I’m heartbroken when it’s inundated and it takes many months for me and it to recover, but I refuse to consider filling it in just to unload the house we so lovingly built.

I’m like a beaver. After our third open house, I sensed what was wrong. The problem wasn’t my pond, our paradise, or even its frequent flooding. In fact, there was no problem at all, I thought while calling my old boss who built our high and dry pool in the far corner of our yard two feet above grade.

“Hey Tom, how much would it cost to bring in a shitload of dirt to raise the elevation in the middle of the backyard to the same height as the pool?”

“Not that much. It sounds like a fun project,” he said like a fellow beaver innately interested in playing with water. He’d do it at cost. That’s how much he loves us.

And just like that, I was designing mounds, dikes, irrigation, and hidden drains so whatever salt water might breach our perimeter berms would drain into the pond where its pump would suck flood water out to the road and back to the sea. The entire plan, “basic hydrology” according to Dave, depends on the low point rather than the high. Ironically, my undesirable pond is the key to saving our garden paradise.

I’ve already begun pouring retaining walls to support our central patio and am designing hidden pipes, wiring, and irrigation to rival Olmsted’s.

Maybe somebody will come along one day and offer us that pretty penny, but meanwhile, like a beaver with my nose to the wind, I’m letting the universe do its thing. 

Though mounding Florida sand will not mitigate the “big one,” that’s not the point. Attending to one’s property like a lover is not for everyone, but like any intimate relationship, it took nearly trading it in to fall back in love.