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Illustration by Drew Shannon
After renting cottages and farm houses for weekend getaways, I decided to get a second home of my own outside of Toronto. I put an old fashioned compass in the heart of the city and marked one and a half-hour drive destinations. I didn’t want to be in a commuter town.
I spent weekends driving north, east and west of Toronto. After some deliberation, I settled on a village near Guelph, Ont. And a friend I knew who lived there took me on a tour of the town with the inside scoop on each residence. Such is life in a small town. As the sun was going down he stopped outside a Regency cottage circa 1870 and said, “A friend of mine lives here but is thinking of selling. He wants to do it privately. Do you want to see it?”
You bet I did. Around this quaint house was a dynamite garden. It was on a third of an acre with lots of room for plants and flowers. So arrangements were made to view it the following weekend. My friend introduced me to the owner, Allen, a widower, and then left us so he could show me around. I enjoyed meeting him and the house was perfect. It had high ceilings and wide planked pine floors. There was a nice flow through it, perfect for entertaining. (I even noticed the Saturday Globe and Mail crossword puzzle finished in ink on the kitchen table.)
I bought the house, and the owner moved out to a smaller house in town. We met for lunch once to discuss the house and the gardens. He gently asked, “Have you gardened much before?” The honest truth was no. It must have been discouraging for him. He spent most of his time landscaping the property.
I was still working in the city for a while and would come up on Friday evenings to get the new place in order. I had all the rooms painted and haunted the antique stores in town. One owner said to me, “You bought Al’s house and my wife hates you.”
Allen often came by to work in the garden. I profusely thanked him and invited him in for a drink one day.
He told me that he had been a widower for six years and had turned down all opportunities to change his status. This took some persistence, but he stuck to his plan.
Not long after, he asked me out for dinner but was very clear with friends that this was not a date. I reciprocated the invitation with a dinner at my house a couple of weeks later. We began to spend more weekend time together and I eventually told friends in Toronto about him.
My city friends warned that even small towns have con men and he might just want to get back into the house after selling it and pocketing the money. They wanted to check him out and came to visit.
Allen passed the test.
I also hired a gardener to manage the 13 beds of perennial flowers and bushes. So the property maintained its beauty throughout the summer and the fall.
When I would drive up on Friday evenings, I called Allen to say I was on my way and stopped at his home where he had dinner ready. It was a pretty ideal way to live. I gradually met his friends in town and was even invited to a monthly dinner party.
We both loved crossword puzzles and in addition to the weekly Globe puzzle we graduated to the New York Times’s daily one. We framed our first successful Sunday New York Times effort.
We began spending all our time together and after three months, I gave him a drawer to keep some of his things at the house. Allen is an early morning walker and rather than go down the hill to his place to change, he could start out straight from the house. Big first step. We began to think of ourselves as a couple and decided we would be engaged forever. Given our ages of 52 and 69 that made the most sense. He even bought me a ring at a pawnshop to celebrate.
He knew I suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and that my drugs were very expensive. Al came into the kitchen one evening as I was preparing dinner and said, “I wonder if we got married if my drug plan would cover your medications?”
“Is this a proposal?” I asked. “Because if it is, it is pretty lame.”
“Well, I guess it is one. What do you think?”
I turned the heat down on the onions, threw my arms around him, and said, “Yes!”
We were married in the garden three months later and then left for a three-month honeymoon in the south of France. (After he sold the town house.)
So, in essence, I bought Allen’s house, he moved out for 14 months and then he moved back in. Love works in strange ways.
Penny Lipsett lives in Elora, Ont.