137 Charles St - $325,000

The Essentials

A pretty two-bedroom detached cottage with an extraordinary garden, just up the street from The Elm, and just down the hill from McBurney Park.

The Bigger Picture

I’ll start outside for a change. And not even with the garden of 137 Charles St, but with a mention of the big screened-in wood-frame shed set behind the house like something from a Victorian garden party. You’ll want to fill it with musicians and string coloured lights from the rafters. I picture Sheesham and Lotus out there in their suspenders, with their smudged horns and gourd banjos lined up in the moonlight. A square dance unreeling in the half-light. Laughter filling the trees. You could serve a tall cake at the intermission, white sponge filled with paper-thin layers of real cream and jam you made from raspberries that until a day ago were clinging to the back fence.

There are slate stepping stones in the garden here, great crooked lines of them set down like lily pads between the endless rows of hosta and iris. That slate was salvaged a few years ago from St John’s Catholic Church on the corner when they re-did the roof. A century from now, someone more evolved (and definitely more charming) than me is going to pick up a slice of that flat green-black stone and try to piece together the history of the neighbourhood. He or she will picture maybe someone with an old wheelbarrow moving loads in the dead of night. A flattish tire and a wobbly short walk.

The lot here is 135 feet deep. You could organize track meets, weekend wilderness adventures. Its one of the great joys of this side of this part of Charles St. You move up into the lovely maze that is the Fruit Belt and you’re looking at postage stamps and pocket handkerchiefs most often, rather than the to-the-horizon hectares it feels you have here.

All that space means you could expand the house, I suppose. Add on to what’s there. Because it’s not a big place. It’s a pretty, stuccoed cottage, hunkered down among long fringes of coneflower and insistent vine. But I like it just the way it is. The metal roof, for instance, will make songs of the rain for you. And the bedroom windows set into that roof remind me of the Murney towers somehow, a line of defence against insomnia and restlessness.

Two bedrooms are what you have. And a pretty little bathroom, with an orchid right now climbing the pale blue wall. If you buy the house we’ll get you one of those. It’s impetuous of me, I know, but you’re worth it and we want you to be happy.

The main floor is divided in two by the stairs. A centre-hall plan in miniature. You enter though the mudroom and from there you can turn right, into the kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, or left into the living/dining room. It’s an efficient no-nonsense layout. The important thing is that you’re home, in your own space, with your tunes and your books; your wine is chilling in the fridge. You might go back outside later for another look, you think, because it is all a bit unbelievable, that you’ve ended up here, just up the street from The Elm, and down the hill from McBurney Park. That you paid so little to move into this brilliant neighbourhood. How the hell did that happen? You shake your head, I reckon, and you smile. And then you turn up the music just a little, and begin to dance.

The full iGuide is here. And the Realtor.ca listing is here (or will be, any minute), with your taxes and so on.

The Gallery