Evolution of Moeller’s Wild Kingdom

This could just as easily be titled: “How to Lose Money on a House.” I am not sure what motivated me do to this blog but I have a lot more free time while we isolate in place and this will keep me from getting bored. So here goes, this is just for fun.

We bought 27 Lubberland in June 2012 in a move from Wichita, Kansas to Newmarket, New Hampshire. We had the usual sticker shock in moving from the Midwest to the Northeast. Wink and Andrew spent two weeks out here house hunting, but our upper price limit was set too low to find anything suitable. When Mark arrived, he hated everything in the lower price range that they had to show him. The search area included Dover, Newmarket and Newfields. In desperation we were shown a house in Moody Point and happened to see the for sale sign on 27 Lubberland. It was explained to us it was out of our price range. I wanted to see it anyway.

Mark immediately fell in love with the house. In his words the house had ‘ambiance’.

What is an ambiance?

the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu: The restaurant had a delightful ambiance. that which surrounds or encompasses; environment.

What was special about this house?

The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Moody Point community. It was situated on four and one half acres (and shrinking) with two hundred feet of waterfront on Great Bay.

The main floor and upper floor had oak wood floors. This is good for our allergies. The house had what was described as a gourmet kitchen (which we have taken to mean small). It had the double ovens that we were used to. It had a gas range that we like.

The front entry was gracious with stair to the second floor landing.

There was a very nice master bedroom and office space off the landing. The master bath was spacious and had a shower and a spa tub. All three rooms looked out over the bay. There was a porch off the master bedroom.

The porch sat on a three season porch set off from the dining room.

From the back of the house you can see the oval garden, the three season porch, Living room and master bedroom. There were Arborvitaes screening the porch from the East.

There was an exercise room in the basement. This rooms function was maintained as it was in 2012. The equipment has changed a little.

I think the yard as much as anything else held an attraction for us. There was only about an acre of grass and the rest was left untended. Today we identify the areas as Bay Yard, Front Yard, Back Yard and Side Yard.

One of the first things we tackled was the oval garden. It was a little over grown. The next thing you know, Wink is planting new plantings to start making the yard her own.

The yard was overgrown and there were plantings that would eventually obstruct the view. Here is the yard at first mowing by us.

At the end of the summer, Moody Point has its view cutting done by Paces Tree Service. Al Pace was the arborist that advises the MP Environmental Committee. We asked him to evaluate our yard. He said that it was neglected and overgrown with invasive species. There was a lot of hawthorn, poison ivy, russian olive and purple loosestrife in the yard. He recommended we clean it up.

We decided to start by cleaning up the East half of the yard. This involved removing trees and brush hogging the brush.

There were two rock walls, one of which defined a property boundary that we hadn’t seen before. They also uncovered the fruit trees, so that they would do better without the foreign competition. This property was previously part of an orchard and had many residual fruit trees.

We liked what was accomplished with the East clean up so much, we decided to proceed with the West half of the yard as well. Wink called it the marching of the trees. There was a big tractor that would grab the unwanted tree and pull it out of the ground, roots and all. The trees were piled in the middle of the yard and then removed.

After the yard was cleaned up, we went to a charity auction at Rolling Green Nursery and bid on several pallets of plants in a silent auction. We won two, a blueberry garden and a butterfly and hummingbird garden. So we created these gardens on the edge of the old lawn.

Once we got the plants in the ground we needed to protect them as hurricane Sandy was coming. We ordered some rocks and mulch and got busy.

That was pretty much it for 2012.

In 2013 we had the non grass part of the Bay Yard plowed and planted in pasture mix to provide fodder for the critters.

We started having problems with our Pella Windows leaking in 2013. The whole neighborhood was saddled with similar problems and eventually there was some sort of settlement. We ended up needing to replace all our South facing exposed windows. It was an expensive, tedious mess.

We relaxed and recovered in 2014 while we worked on windows.

In 2015 we decided to tackle the front entry.

There was a brick walk way that led to the front porch. A large stone provided a step up to the deck. Unfortunately the stone had settled and the step up was more than ten inches and a little uneven. We also wanted to assess the yard, so to get ideas we hired Elizabeth Dudley, a landscape architect for professional advice. Part of the project was to develop a master plan for the yard. We decided to undertake the front entry first.

What a difference! We love it.

The next big undertaking was adding more space when Meg moved her home base to New Hampshire. This was finally undertaken in 2018. We had been considering it for some time but we decided to explore adding an in-law suite over the garage. We made another good choice and hired an architect who listened carefully to what we wanted. He hit a home run on his first set of drawings. We wanted two bedrooms, a family room and a bathroom in the new addition. His plans included everything we wanted. We hired the original builder of the house as the contractor for the work. This turned out to be another good choice.

We couldn’t have been happier with the result. It added a lot of living space to the existing house.

The next adventure was to widen the driveway and work on the yard in 2019. We had had extensive landscaping done to us by the elements. The deer ate all the Arborvitaes, a blizzard crushed the Japanese Maple, a Nor’easter took down an apple tree and straight line winds did in a pear tree. The house looked naked without its plantings. So we reconnected with Elizabeth and drew up an updated landscaping plan. Then Matt Gunn Designs implemented the plan for us.

In early 2020 we updated our exercise equipment and added a VR studio

The yard is still a work in progress. Wink calls it Mark’s Farm. Some people have called it a private wildlife sanctuary. It certainly has an abundance of wildlife that has been the subject of many a blog.

We were most fortunate to get this work completed before the COVID pandemic hit. It is hard enough to self isolate but this gave us the space for each person to maintain at least some personal space. It also provided entertainment and exercise space. It isn’t easy to self isolate but this made it much more tolerable.

Mark, Wink and Meg