#soddy-daisy

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Swangin'

Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee

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We do!

Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee

April 2013

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Soddy-Daisy Walmart

Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee

April 2013

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My Soddy

My Soddy

Two happy years of my awkward youth were spent attending Soddy-Daisy Junior High School, near the town of Soddy, Tennessee, a beautiful place nestled between Walden's Ridge and the Tennessee River, just up the road from Daisy.  I've heard that Soddy's funny name came from "soddies", which are clammy turf huts.  While log construction seems a simpler, drier, more obvious option for the settlers of this forested area, I like to imagine the Welsh frontiersmen on some primal, hobbit-like eco bent, using sod to keep their beloved trees intact.

I've moved up to a different part of the Great Eastern Hardwood Forest; I love my woodland retreat (above) next to New Jersey's Morristown National Historical Park in an area named Jockey Hollow.  History remembers Jockey Hollow for its singular inhospitality.  I like to bring house-guests to see the Park visitors center's video presentation of the hardship and misery that survival in my neck of the woods can entail: there are re-enactments of the awful winter of 1779-1780 when Washington's soldiers had to eat their shoes to survive.  There are even reconstructed primitive huts to make the deprivation real.

Entry View

Today, down the hollow toward Hardscrabble Road, my own encampment has some comforts - at least the part that's enclosed.  It's a 1950 modern ruin, mostly stabilized with a green roof assembly, sod, that was partly inspired by a visit to Linnaeus's house in Sweden.  But why would a house already redolent of mildew, designed on a wet concrete slab (frogs in the hallway) with no vapor barrier--and a dead-flat roof that ponds and leaks-- want even more flora incorporated into its structure?  The architectural reason is that I've added a tiny rooftop belvedere of glass, from which I want to imagine that the rest of the house below doesn't exist.  It will have just a bed, and I'll wake up to the illusion of an independent, one-room Walden.

And then, sustainability-wise, it's green.  The inhabitable part I use now doesn't need air conditioning this summer.  The clever pre-planted Xero Flor green roof system is a lightweight terrine of: a root barrier to protect the membrane roof, drainage stuff, soil, and then an array of plants. Different sedums and mosses slug it out in Darwinian fashion to conquer roof area according to moisture and sunlight.  The plants and soil act as a sponge to reduce run-off, and help the house stay cool like a wet cloth on one's forehead.  The succulents are all drought tolerant, and are fine with light foot traffic (and an occasional sprawl.)

Green Roof View

Green Roof Plan

Garden View

But the best reason is purely Arcadian.  While this getaway is only forty-five minutes from the negotium of Times Square by car, my hermitage and I are so camouflaged by the green roof and the woods that we aren't picked up by  satellite photography.  Just try Google Earthing us.

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Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee News

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