Treehouse is platform for flights of daring

"Because I Said So" column for The Commercial Appeal

April 15, 2010

My children's aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Toby, just returned from a 10-day trip to Spain. They visited the village of Robledillo de la Jara and the metropolis of Madrid. They sampled new foods, saw centuries-old architecture, watched a bullfight and met new and exciting people.

My family and I recently returned from the local hardware store just off Summer Avenue.

We spent my wife's -- she's a school teacher -- and kids' spring break building a tree house and planting a garden.

The house is 7 feet off the ground with a zip line that will carry a kid 50 feet through the grove of pine trees behind our house. The only thing missing at this point is any sort of railing, some type of safety precaution.

Despite the lack of safety (or maybe because of it), this is the tree house I always wanted as a child. A Swiss Family Robinson structure, a home that would have made Tarzan proud.

Some people, especially here in the South, may look at it and think "deer stand," but I know differently. In my mind it rivals Frank Lloyd Wright's house, Fallingwater, for design and placement within nature.

It is Falling Daughter ... (read more)

Well-traveled century plant adjusts to master's moves

Home & Garden feature for The Commercial Appeal

September 25, 2009

Norman Dean of Cordova says people stop all the time and ask "what do you have growing there?"

What is that strange plant with its thick leaves sporting spikes that look to do harm, sending out offshoots that sprout up around it like so many children? Is it native to this area? To this planet?

The plant in question is a century plant (Agave americana), so named because it is said to bloom once every hundred years, an undertaking so strenuous that the effort eventually kills it.

This plant, which decorates the front corner of Dean's brick Cordova home on a street lined with well-manicured lawns, measures about 5 feet tall and its width, from tip to tip of the longest of its gray-green leaves, is nearly 8 feet ... (read more)