We Saved the Windows
When I was growing up, there was an old woman – Mrs. Kellogg – who lived around the block from us. Her yard was full of beautiful flowering shrubs, and tall pink-purple foxgloves grew thick along the path up to her house.
Behind it sat a little greenhouse made of old glass windows, overgrown and shaded with vines and decades of quiet tending. When four-year-old me stepped inside, it felt like walking into a secret world – warm, earthy, and green – glinting in the sunlight. Those old windows held memories. Their wavy glass blurred the outside just enough to make the inside feel sacred.
I didn’t know it then, but that greenhouse lodged itself somewhere deep inside me. I’ve thought about it many times over the years – the hopeful kind of sanctuary it offered.
When we moved to Ashland and began renovating our 1910 house, that memory came rushing back.
It took us more than a year to renovate and rehab the house to the point where we could finally open the doors of the B&B. One of the first tasks we faced was addressing the 30-plus windows in desperate need of replacement. Most were decades – if not a full century – old, with broken sashes and failing glass. Others were painted permanently shut, making them genuine safety hazards.
We had no choice but to replace them. There would be contractors and bills and more dust and debris.
But honestly? My first thought was: We’re going to have all those old windows. We can build a greenhouse of our very own.
So when the contractors came to replace them, we carefully stacked the old windows in the backyard – more than thirty of them – covered with an old tarp.
They leaned against the rock wall for months while we gutted bathrooms, installed new lighting, and painted every piece of trim, wall, door, and ceiling, trying to bring the house back to life.
The greenhouse would have to wait.
But every time I walked past those windows, I could see it – the shape of something small and glass and green, waiting for its turn.
Last fall, it was finally time.
2 Comments
Nancy
I love this.
Renée
Thank you, Nancy. The old neighborhood is still so vivid to me, and it means a lot that you’re here cheering me on.