Furnishing a Small House

It’s a Cold Night in Tucson. The night sky is clear. A quarter moon is swiftly sliding through its orbit west. The air outside is crisp and rapidly growing colder. It’s night on the Sonoran desert, where a hard freeze has been forecast.

Inside our casita, though, it’s warm and snug. A casita is a cottage, or a small house. Ours is just 500 square feet, consisting of two rooms with an open kitchen sandwiched between them, a bath, a short hallway, and a tiny front entry way.

When we arrived about six weeks ago I had to re-think living space and how it functions. I knew everything had to be small in scale, spare, visually coordinated. I knew that there would be room for nothing superfluous and that everything must have an essential purpose or two, as well as a proper place.

I had a head start with the couch and chair and soon added end tables and a table to eat on with four marching chairs. In my search for bed side tables I almost bought a mid-century modern five-piece bedroom set, two more pieces than we need or have room for, but came to my senses and realized that furnishing the casita will take time and luck and persistence. It was time to slow down, visit estate sales and moving sales.

Tucson, a popular retirement city, has plenty of estate sales because the retirees keep dying off. At one estate sale I found a mid-century lamp that helped create our music “room.”

At another I came upon an unusual pillow that works perfectly in the “library.”

This weekend at a moving sale just around the corner there was this Kitchenaid mixer for a very reasonable price. (Blair said it was a steal.) The mixer qualifies to be in the casita because it serves an essential purpose – mixing and kneading bread dough.

I also found a good pair of kitchen shears that fits my hand and is easy to use. I needed them! 

Going to estate and moving sales could become a habit. Thanks to them, bit by bit the casita is becoming a cozy cottage, shelter and haven from the heat and cold. It’s almost everything I need except for a sewing place. That, too, will come in due time. The bee house, when its renovation is completed, will add 300 square feet of space. It will seem like a mansion.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Disarming the Agave

We gave the first dinner party in our 500 square-foot casita. As you can see the living room and dining room are the same.

I made roast chicken in Blair’s big slow cooker. It was tender, juicy, and delicious. With the chicken we had brown rice pilaf made with the saffron the kids brought back from their honeymoon, minted peas, and cranberry sauce. We served it buffet-style on the kitchen peninsula.

The occasion was a send-off for Dennis, who is traveling.

A little wine was consumed. This morning I found the wine cork hiding behind the fruit bowl. Hmmm. What if I stuck it on one of the dangerous agave spikes?

Ten more bottles of wine and I’ll have disarmed the tip of every leaf on our back-yard agave. 

It won’t take long. Intergenerational living makes almost every dinner a party.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

In and around our Casita

Things are hopping in our casitas. I can’t write about everything, but some highlights are the acquisition of a new refrigerator and stove, both badly needed. The first stove arrived damaged and had to be returned.

After a ten-day wait, which unfortunately included Thanksgiving when we could have used two stoves, another stove arrived.

A nearby antique mall is closing and everything is on sale. We bought two craftsman-style end tables for the living area and a mid-century modern table and chairs.

Outside, Grant and Dennis finished putting up new siding on the second casita, known amongst family as the Bee House, because the chimney was occupied by a hive of honeybees. (A beekeeper came to take them away.)

Now the siding is painted and ready to be trimmed out.

We’ve made great progress, but have a long way to go. For one thing, the whole yard needs to be graded to keep rainwater from flowing toward the three houses. For another, this beautiful agave has to be removed. Not only is it in an inconvenient spot,  it also has vicious thorns on the ends and sides of the leaves. Our new friend Jessie, a native plant expert, says that many people are highly allergic to its thorn punctures. Moreover, Jessie says that at 3 ½ feet it is only half-grown.

Our work is barely begun, but we are enjoying every phase of transformation that will make this place our own.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Meeting the Pomegranate

Forty years of gardening should have taught me better than to assume that all pomegranates look like the big red ones we see in grocery stores this time of year. Pomegranates don’t grow in Kansas, of course, so my acquaintance with pomegranates has been limited to the commercial ones.

This is by way of explaining why I let the pomegranates on the tree outside my kitchen window almost go too far. I was waiting for them to turn ruby red. I kept waiting but the only evident color change was the tree’s leaves turning yellow.

I worried that the tree was sick, but learned that pomegranates are deciduous and drop their foliage even in the desert. Still I waited for the pomegranate fruit to turn red.

I waited until last weekend when Grant said, “Grandma, one of your pomegranates is splitting open. I think you’d better harvest.”

The splitting pomegranate easily came apart and indeed it was ripe and ready. The shells obviously never turned red, but are pinkish with green blotches.

I’ve learned a lot about pomegranate trees since then. There are at least eight varieties of pomegranates with softer seeds and five varieties that are juicier but have hard seeds. Their fruits vary from yellow through pinkish, to red. The hard-seeded kinds are used to make juice.

Unlike tree fruits I have known, the pomegranate fruit does not fall to the ground when it is over-ripe. It clings so tightly to its supporting branch that it ought to be cut off with pruning clippers to prevent damage to the tree. Instead of dropping, the fruit splits open to allow its seeds fall to the ground. Expert advice calls for judging the readiness of the fruit not by its color but by its size.

Pomegranates need full sun to do well. Our tree occupies a four-foot-wide space between a ten-foot wall and the wall of our casita. It gets no sun except for an hour in the morning. I won’t be expecting a big crop of pomegranates next year, but, by golly, if there are any at all I will know when and how to harvest them.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer.