Let's hear it for the dogwoods

This is the is the prettiest spring for dogwood trees since we've been here at Deerfield. Somehow the blooms survived last night's hard rains and high winds. A glance out through the woods in the mornings and your first thought is there might have been a freak snowfall.

The redbud trees are also resplendent, and that means it's time for delicious morel mushrooms, but I've not found a single one. I'll not be going to the store to pay $50.00 a pound for them either.

If you look closely at the bottom photo, you'll see Willie the white boxer at his usual post at the window. You won't see any squirrels or rabbits because Willie is calmly seated and not slamming into the window trying to get at them.

Craftsman-style door for 10 cents on the dollar

I thought that a craftsman-style wooden door would look nice on the Vawter House, my grandparents' old farmhouse in McKenzie, Tenn.

I started looking through catalogs and at online door sites. The doors I liked were $2,500 to $3,000, certainly not in keeping with the farmhouse mentality. I came upon an idea.

I went to Knox Rail Salvage and bought a solid wood six-panel door made out of Douglas fir. It was a plain Jane with no glass. I cut out the top two panels, framed in three small windows and added small corbels. I found some antique "bubble glass," cut it to size and fitted it. I finished the door with three coats of stain and three coats of polyurethane.

We got our front door for 10 cents on the dollar -- or less.

The brass plaque says:

The Vawter House
Vilas V. Vawter Sr.
Carrie DePriest Vawter

Our Amish friends installed it last week. Thanks to Cousin Amy for the photo.

The door will be a fitting welcome to friends and family.

Later this month I will install a wooden screen door. As I hang it, I'm sure I will hear Mamaw asking us to keep the door closed so the flies won't get in.

Treasure behind the paneling

While the renovators were tearing out the cheap paneling in the rooms of the Vawter House, we came across a special wallpaper that sent me soaring back more than 50 years.

While most of the interior walls in my grandparent's house were of non-descript painted plaster, the walls in the living and dining rooms were special. I remember staring at the pale green and pink wallpaper that was almost dreamlike. On a rainy day (we were always outside in good weather), the colonial scenes of horse-drawn carriages and women in big hats would prompt stories to begin whirring in my head. The man and the woman in the scene were courting and ready to get in the carriage and ride away. The church, courthouse and plantation home looked exactly right. The trees in the scene reminded me of the huge oak trees in my grandparents' front yard. I guess this kind of daydreaming is what kids did before video games -- and TV.

A close inspection of the wallpaper would tell you that the vertical seams didn't precisely match. I'm sure my grandfather hung it and he was more into practicality than aesthetics.

I cut out a section of the brittle wallpaper, mounted it on plywood and framed it from some of the original dark-pine moulding in the house. This cutout will hang on one of the new walls in the Vawter House.

I'm told that through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation a person can find the origin of just about wallpaper. It might be interesting to research the history, but to me the wallpaper is simply what dreams are made of.

Mr. Wolfe, we're going home again

In the late 1930s when Thomas Wolfe of Asheville, N.C., was finishing up his novel "You Can't Go Home Again," my paternal grandparents were building a new home in McKenzie, Tennessee.

Vilas V. Vawter Sr. and Carrie DePriest Vawter had been forced to make the move to the small town in West Tennessee because the Vawter family farm near Milan, Tennessee, had been taken over by the Department of Defense in order to build the massive Milan Arsenal, a World War II munitions stockpile. My grandfather was one of the last holdouts, but he eventually took his compensation and purchased 120 acres in Carroll County. The farmhouse, sitting on one of the highest points in the county, consisted of three rooms. With little more than a hammer and a handsaw, Vilas Sr. immediately began turning the small single- story house into a seven-bedroom two-story home where he and Carrie would would raise their seven children.

The children -- Vilas Jr., Bobby, Billy, Betty Jane, Carolyn, Nancy and Judy -- would begat 15 first cousins. Every summer in the 1950s and 60s, Vawter cousins would descend on the farm from all over the United States. The huge farmhouse, the hay-filled barn and the fields of cotton, corn and soybean were a place of magic for us. Granddaddy plowed the fields with several of us always on the tractor. We helped chase the cattle and hogs that invariably broke through the barbed-wire fencing. The only baths were on Saturday nights and always three or more in the tub. Gender was irrelevant.

Vilas Sr. died in 1967 at age 78 after a tractor accident. Carrie sold the farm and then the house in 1974. She died in 1983 at age 91.

For more than 40 years the farmhouse was lost to the Vawter family. Some of us would occasionally drive by the house on the Old Paris Highway and vicariously relive "back in the day."

In 2009 on a trip back to McKenzie, Aunt Judy noticed that the old farmhouse was for sale. She pondered. After the death of her husband, Bill, in 2010, Judy's mind was made up. She wrote a check for the house and put a sizeable chunk of money in the McKenzie bank for the home's renovation.

Aunt Nancy, still a resident of McKenzie, knew all the good craftspeople in town, including a wonderful Amish carpenter. I signed on as the unofficial, absentee and ersatz general contractor. While the cosmetics were in sad shape, the bones of the house (all sawmill red oak) were as solid as they were 75 years ago. I defy anybody to drive a nail into a joist or rafter. The house will be there long after the present generations are gone.

To date this is what has been done to the Vawter House:

• New green metal roof.
• New electrical service and wiring.
• New windows and screens.
• All new siding, fascia and soffits.
• New kitchen cabinets, countertops and appliances.
• New central heat and air conditioning.
• New ceilings.
• New tongue & groove walls in most rooms.
• Reframed back porch.
• New bath. (That's right, seven bedrooms and one bath. The Vawters have always been a close family!)

Along about the first week in May, all the Vawter cousins will gather for 10 days of painting, general cleaning and final trim work. In June floors will be refinished, new carpeting will be laid in the bedrooms and new lighting will be installed. Judy has gathered furniture from near and far to furnish the house.

On July 4th the entire Vawter family and many friends will celebrate the renovation of Vawter House with a family reunion. Over that weekend we will tell and retell the hundreds (thousands?) of family stories. We're hoping that Cousin Jill Holland, who just happens to be the new mayor of McKenzie, will proclaim the day as Vawter Day in McKenzie. We will take part in the city's parade and the Vawter Family Bluegrass Band will play.

As readers of Deerfield Diary know, I rarely post anything that doesn't have a direct connection to my own family's home in Deerfield in Louisville, Tenn., but on further consideration, the Vawter House in McKenzie house has everything to do with Deerfield. I vowed in my retirement to try to recapture some of the rural magic of McKenzie, to ramble around on a tractor, to plant, to build and to remember. It all started in McKenzie in the big old white house that was cold in the winter, hot in the summer but always filled with laughter and love.

In many ways, Thomas Wolfe was right. It is difficult to go home again, but then he never met the Vawter family.

(Painting of the Vawter House is by my late aunt, Betty Jane Vawter Harris.)

Where is Alfred Hitchcock when you need him?

Remember Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" where Robert Taylor and Tippi Hedren get pecked to death by a flock of maniacal birds?

Well, we're being attacked in Deerfield -- by bluebirds and cardinals no less!

My neighbor Larry was the first victim a few days ago. A bluebird slammed and pecked an upstairs window for several days. Larry finally caught it and brought it over to our house to show me the culprit. He let it go and it found the nearest tree. Larry was hoping it would move on. Not. The bird is back at Larry's house trying to break in again.

This afternoon Betty was in the kitchen when the dogs started going crazy which usually means a squirrel or a 'coon is in the vicinity. This time, however, it was a female cardinal attacking a transom window on the west side of the house. It persisted all afternoon and was still at it just before sundown.

I don't know what's going on, but I have some theories:

1. The birds see a reflection and immediately want to fight the "other bird."

2. Spring has the birds a little crazy with the "birds and bees" thing going on.

3. The birds are trying to get inside to find a clock because daylight savings time has them so confused.

If you see the two birds in the photos above, tell them to go peck on somebody their own size.

Just one pile after another

If you happened to be in the International Space Station in the last 24 hours and looked down in the area of Louisville, Tenn., you may have seen one of my wood piles burning.

All fall and winter I piled wood debris from land clearing in several huge piles. We burned the biggest one today. My neighbor and I kept feeding the fire all day with the front loaders on our tractors. If the fire is large, it gets kind of tricky. You want to stop your front wheels just before they hit the burning coals and then flip your load on to the top of the pile. Then you put the tractor in reverse and back out as quick as you can. I only "smoked" my front tires once or twice.

Native Americans use to burn fields and wood piles regularly to serve as fertilizer for their corn and maize. They also thought the smoke was a gift to the spirits. I have four more huge gifts for the spirits.

New plan for the vegetable garden

Readers of this blog know that my garden plot is cursed with terrible soil. Half the garden is red clay and the other half is pure muck. No other word for it.

I have tried to amend the soil with compost, new top soil and peat without much luck. My new plan is raised beds.

I dig down about 12 inches with my tractor scoop and clean out a 4 X 10 foot section. (I know. It looks like a freshly dug grave, but I'm not ready to go just yet.) I fill back in with rotted mulch, leaves, compost and new top soil. I'll till all this and hope to end up with about a 6-inch raised bed. That will be 18 inches of new soil.

I'll surround the beds with compacted tree chips to try to keep the grass down.

We shall see.