How has gardening changed for you over the years???

'Sunny and seventies' is to dream for here in the dreary, dank, damp weather we have been enduring.

While I will say that there are definitely some cheap constructiopn down-sides to my manufactured home, Iam grateful to have a home to live in and land to garden. I would not have been able to afford a home if it were not for this one. All the stick built homes we looked at in our price range had major problems such that the bank wouldn't have loaned us the money for them anyway as they would have requred major renovation (adding to the price considerably). It is the land around the house that matters more to me anyway. After all, I need a vacuum cleaner that has a bumper sticker reading "I'd rather be gardening"

LOL! Come to think of it, I need a vacuum cleaner, period. An item that keeps sort of falling off the to-do list, acquire vacuum cleaner.

but yes, I agree, grateful to have a place to live and a place to garden, indeed.

Amen!

I love living in a park and I have what must be the biggest spot in the park, in an awkward corner where they couldn't jam them in shoulder-to-shoulder.

The soil is very poor, but I'm working on that!

Corey

Our house is stick-built; we put it up in the early seventies when we were just kids and had no money, so we had a long-term mortgage. What we paid for our house back then would have bought you a nice 24-foot boat not very many years later! That amazed me, when I saw boat prices creeping up like that to equal our investment in our house! We got in at a good time....

We built our house as well, in the early 80s, cash basis, which makes for a very slow go. Lived in the basement while finishing the upper floors. Good memories.

The banks make it really hard to build your own if you don't have enough cash to get started. The interest rates on raw land and/or construction loan were about 13 to 14% when we looked into that option. Also (hopefully unlike all those of you who built your homes) several people I knew who had been building a hoiuse for anywhere from 3 to 10 years got a divorce soon after it was finally finished. That made me wondwr about the stresses people were under.

I think the rate was 7% when we built our house. Our monthly payment was tiny back then, too, compared to today's prices. At the same time we were building we also brought home our baby son, but we managed to weather both experiences and we're still here almost 40 years later! Our house only took a few months to build; it was ready by the time the baby started to crawl. But it's not a big house and maybe that made the difference.

Ours took 7 years and two children. I wasn't working, and my husband was digging ditches. Pretty skimpy times. We didn't have any financing, and when the house was done enough to warrant homeowners insurance, that was a challenge.

Mauryhill, I have fond memories of many heated arguments that today are so insignificant (hinges, doorbell ringer, wall colors...) they are humorus.

I have heard a rumour that the local hardware store will not sell wall paint to a guy unless he has the color approved by his significant other.

The only argument I recall was over the location of the driveway. I wanted it away from the house so I could plant a border of shrubbery between the house and the parking, and my DH wanted to be able to drive up close to the house to unload furniture. We came up with a reasonable compromise.

Good rumour re paint choice - that can be so dicey (cream cheese or mayonnaise?)Thirty years later, we both have regrets about things we should have done or not done. Ah well.

Interesting conversation. I remember buying a house after Jimmy Carter and paid 16% on a new house! It was a big burden but fortunately my ex wife got the house and I only had to pay for it. LOL That was back when houses doubled every 5 years or less so she did well. The interest rate we are paying on our house now is 4.18%. Thank goodness for economic recession. Hated those inflationary years.

I really lucked out about 16 years ago when I was getting divorced. The house we had was in a gated and conservative community on a private golf course and was certainly not my thing. We sold it during the divorce, and I bought a cottage on a dirt road on Lake Sherwood in So Cal, and stayed close to the same area we had been in so the kids didn't have to change schools and their father was close by. Boys need their fathers and we shared custody. The 3 youngest kids (all boys) were still at home, and were in junior high and high school. They spent so many hours rowing around the lake and fishing, and diving off "Chicken Rock". Two years after I bought that house a southern gentleman named David Murdock bought up all the land around the opposite of the lake, and established the Sherwood Country Club and golf course, which is now famous and hosts the Shark Shootout golf tourney every year. I'm not a golfer so I don't really get what a big deal it is but whatever. The people in the new mansions across the lake called us folks on the other side the "cabin people", and we called them all sorts of names, none of which I will repeat here. Their bright street lights and fancy boats ruined our peace and quiet, and all us cabin people complained endlessly. However, when the kids were out of school and all tucked away at college, I got a job offer in San Francisco for a dream job I could not refuse. Since a few boys were at Berkeley I didn't hesitate, and sold my cottage on the dirt road for a hefty price, thanks to Murdock and his development of the lake. So for as much as I despised what he did to the last wild area within commuting distance to LA, I profited greatly. That made it easy to move to SF, and eventually to Portland. I feel very lucky, and now have a small little home that suits me just fine, until I'm too old and then I will either crawl off into a snowbank and croak or move to one of those retirement places. If I didn't have to worry about having a part time job I would leave the city and live in a cabin in the forest with my dog.