By Jennifer Carrasco

I recently sold my home, and the developer plans to bulldoze it and  build a two story house with an ADU in back. Seattle doesn't have much room to expand, so the city must resort to density. I've come to terms with it.

Before anyone commiserates with me, I have to tell you that I've moved a lot, and I've gotten pretty thick skinned about the whole process. It does seem like a waste––my cottage was in very good shape and my studio would  have been a terrific workshop for someone, but I needed to go to senior living at St.Vincent's, and the developer gave the highest bid.  I didn't want to end up living in some broom closet smelling of pee.

Of course when a house is leveled, so goeth the garden. But I sent the word out to all my gardener friends and they arrived with pitchforks to root up my plants to plant in their gardens. Better than my previous moves....

For instance, our Clark Air Force Base garden in the Philippines was a tropical Eden. We had concerts there and friends wanted to be married in our garden. When we moved back to the States, the military cut everything to one foot above ground. One never knows what evil lurks in a tall fern or a bushy bromeliad. 

The garage was in there somewhere. I know. Excessive. I sold 430 potted plants alone when we left Clark.

The military staff were talented in creating issues of their own making. An officious new General decided that all our neighborhood garages had to be "standard". Of all the problems on Clark Base, he focused on that. Aides de Camp scuttled over with their clipboards to ask the location of our garage. Our house girl Lena came to the screen door and pretended she couldn't speak English. "I don't know" she would bark, and slammed the door in their faces. The aides left without finding the garage, probably because our very serviceable garage was a quonset hut covered with passion fruit vines. We lived under giant old acacia trees and when a typhoon hit we needed a sturdy garage to protect our car from falling branches. The vines were for beauty.

But the Big Cheese wanted "standard". So I trotted down to the legal department and asked if the General could force me, a civilian teacher, to tear down and build another garage. Legal department assured me the General couldn't. Fortunately, the issue was resolved when the Generalissimo made himself so unpleasant that a Filipino gang took out a contract on him and the General was whisked away to foment bother somewhere else.

Before I left Clark Air Base forever, I walked by our former yard. Our old house was demolished.  But our un-standard quonset hut garage remained, a green mound of glorious passion fruit vines.

Jennifer Carrasco is a longtime West Seattle resident and internationally recognized muralist whose work combines historical depth, mythic storytelling, and botanical elegance. With decades of experience painting large-scale trompe l’oeil and chinoiserie murals for clients ranging from Tommy Bahama to private collectors, she brings a distinctive Northwest voice to decorative arts. Her artistic journey has taken her from Peace Corps service and teaching in the Philippines to NEA residencies across the globe, and long ago she chose to make West Seattle her home.