Posts tagged me

My mom went to yard sales when we were little. Yard sales, estate sales, garage sales, church rummage sales, and she sometimes even stopped on the side of the road to grab something off people’s trash. I hated it then, but hey, my parents’ house has antique radiator covers because my mom hauled them into our old Dodge van. And she did it alone because I was wailing, “Stop embarrassing me!” from the floor of the backseat.

I’ve somehow worked through my embarrassment of yard sales—but not of garbage picking, Mom—to occasionally go and look around. This weekend a friend sent me a message with a link to an estate sale in my town. The sale had gnomes, tons of gnomes. So of course, even though I had already sent my father to the sale’s opening to buy me the gnome I wanted, I went again anyway to see the rest of the collection.

What I didn’t know about was the back yard of this house: someone with master masonry experience built up walls and castles, sometimes five feet above the ground, around the entire backyard. The ledges were smoothed-out and crenelated concrete and the walls were studded with protruding rocks, and little bits of quartz glinted in the sun. He or she also created small sunken-in ponds (that were really mini built-in pools), grottoes, and alcoves. There was an archway made large enough to fit a tall man that led visitors in and out of the backyard gate. The whole thing was almost medieval and I walked around the yard longer than I did in the house. If the seller had let me, I would have brought a hammock and set up camp.

This backyard, with some TLC and small redesigning, would be the backyard of my dreams; it was like a mini fairy-tale. And I would be the giant roaming the kingdom.

How cool is that?

Thank Ghod it’s the trifecta of my/Jackie/Nicole’s birthday celebration this weekend.

If you’re in northern NJ and want to come celebrate, lmk. We’re doing drinks at a local (like I could walk home local) bar.

That’s ok. I’m just dying here.