Woodsheddin' 1 and 2

i'm gonna spare you another bluegrass blogothon today except to explain the term "woodsheddin'." the first time i heard the term was back years and years ago playing in nashville. i assume that it's only a term musicians use. I remember i was at a gig and mentioned to somebody something like "i haven't been playing out all that much" to which he replied "what? you been woodsheddin'?" Given my uneasy ego and not wanting to reveal my own ignorance of the term i uneasily laughed "yeah," hoping all the while that i hadn't just told him i attended last night's KKK rally.

Turns out all i was saying was that i had been laying low from giging for a while and working up new licks, honing my chops, i.e. staying at home practicing intensely.

alright. so there's woodsheddin' number 1. here's number 2:


I try to think carefully about aesthetic home additions. I try to avoid stuff that's really consumptive or too homogeneously caucasian--like gas lamps. Few things say "i'm white and have money to burn" as succinctly as a gas lamp in the front yard of a house built in 2006. Problem is, though, i find a lot of that consumptive crap really pleasing.

One thing in particular is good landscaping.., or at least interesting landscaping. I don't mean rows of shrubs and nicely clipped grass. I mean trails and corners and little ponds and different levels and intimacy. That's one of the things i like about most downtown Charleston yards: they're tiny little havens, everyone's little patch of Central Park in their own backyard. Additionally, they can't be that wasteful, and most everyone can have one. Even rental houses have these little enclosed spaces and most of them are small enough to require very little monetary outlay for some decent plants--besides, given the climate around here there's a lot of great stuff just growing on the side of the road. I mean, who the hell's gonna pay for pampas grass?

Anyway, one of my big fat attempts since i got home is to turn me and alison's back yard into a little green wonderland. At best, I'm shootin' for silly: i want cherubs spittin' water and stuff, archways with spanish moss on them. i'm goin' nintey to nothing for thomas kincaid, painter of light.

So a nice practical addition we've made here is our shed. Alison and i seem to gravitate to homes that don't have closets, so sheds are a necessity. plus i gotta a lotta tools. But a shed, while being so, so functional, doesn't have to be an aesthetic eyesore, you know? i like cute sheds. Here's our shed when we first moved in:


here it is now:



sadly, however, (and i think it's mostly the doors and lack of paint) but this new shed is not as cute--or cuttin' edge in shed design--as the one we had in nashville. I'm working on it, though.