A Wonderful Place In A Calming Location

A real center of the community in Wickford is the library.



The statistics say it is one of the busiest in the state and from what I can see, that is very true.


I’m there at least 2 or 3 times a week and the place is always a beehive of activity. Patrons range from toddlers to seniors and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.

Not only do they have any book, movie or music CD you could desire but they have so many wonderful programs and activities for all ages. Art exhibits, French practice, music performances, guest speakers, knitting for kids, walking tours through Wickford by local historian Tim Cranston, poetry reading and discussion and book discussion groups. There is also internet access and a quiet study room.




The setting is wonderful, relaxing and contemplative. Waterfront on Academy Cove, you can sit in the meditation garden or walk down to the footbridge to see what the ducks are up to. I’m sure your local library is just as wonderful (I also LOVE Narragansett Library) but if you would like to explore a bit, try Wickford. Then you can go into town and have a sandwich and do some shopping.

Happy Birthday, Lina

I wanted to wish someone very special an Extra Happy Birthday. It is not everyday that you turn 8 years old.


This is an extraordinary child. She is so great at finding sea ice that she discovered an entire little beach on Wild Goose Point and we are always sure to add to our collection whenever we can. We like to keep it around the house – inside and out. It must be those big, blue eyes.


She also is very, very good at taking care of little dogs. She makes them feel safe, loved and comfy in their little beds. I don’t know what I would do without her help sometimes.


When Halloween rolls around, Lina is sure to come up with a great costume. She usually has 2 or 3 different looks up her sleeve and we never know until the big night which look she will choose. This past year she was an unbelievably convincing Senorita. Don’t you agree?


Lina has an artistic nature and she loves arts and crafts. Who else (besides Mia!) could make a huge, walking puppet of a dwarf hamster (named Daisy) out of an oversized leaf bag? She is also on the cutting edge of sidewalk art. She has a knack.



She is a great soccer player, swimmer, gymnast, fantastic reader and an all around excellent student. She is very hard to beat when we play the memory game. We have 2 – one is of old fashioned French tools and the other is of toys. You would think it is easy but believe me, it is not. She always beats me fair and square.


But most of all, she is my darling and I want to wish her an Extra Happy Birthday!

Captivating the Heir Apparent

There are certain houses that seem to attract just the right buyers. They started out their lives looking beautiful and somehow have remained so and even grown more lovely. They may have been around for a long time and no one has ruined them with well-intentioned but bad remodels.

While I do not know the entire history of this house but hope to find out more, I do know that the past 4 owners have included 2 architects, 1 interior designer and 1 landscape architect. Pretty impressive if you are looking for a house with a pedigree of good taste. It definitely shows with this house where less is more.


The landscape mastermind for these 2.7 acres was a professor at Harvard and designed the land to be beautiful but trouble-free. Very low maintenance. And the man who mows the lawn has been doing so for the past 25 or 30 years. He knows every square inch of the parcel which includes an in ground pool surrounded by hydrangeas and sea grass and fenced garden beds for growing vegetables. There is even room for a proper clothesline.


It is adjacent to South Kingstown Land Trust land and is waterfront on Perch Cove which opens up into Potter Pond - which means there are some wonderful opportunities for bird watching and enjoying the beauty of nature. It is also in the vicinity of Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge (640 acres), Matunuck Management Area (145 acres), Moonstone Beach and more pristine spots conserved for us to enjoy.

I have no doubt that the next owner of this beautiful house will appreciate it for what it is and will bless the day they found this treasure.

Six degrees of separation

By now most of us are familiar with the “six degrees of separation” concept, the notion that everyone on the planet is pretty much related somehow. You know…Barrack Obama turns out to be related to Thomas Jefferson, George Bush and Vladamir Putin are actually distant cousins, the person sitting at the next desk is descended from the Romonovs, etc. Well something kind of strange happened recently – call it an amazing coincidence of sorts – that started me thinking. What about the six degrees of separation between buildings?

This is what happened. I had a client who was purchasing a house at 28 Channing Street. Right about the same time I got a new listing for a house at 18 Congdon Ave. The two houses are in the same neighborhood, two or three blocks apart, and my buyer actually looked at both houses. So far so good. He put in an offer on the Channing St house, and to his delight, it was accepted. Meanwhile, to my delight, my listing at 18 Congdon was also put under contract. Even better. But this is where it starts to get spooky. My buyer, in his excitement about buying the house on Channing, went over to City Hall and did some research on the property, going all the way back to the moment it was built. And what he found was this: that the person who had built 28 Channing had done so while living at 18 Congdon. The two houses had a six degrees of separation type link and we – my buyer, my seller, and me - were the connective tissue.

Fast forward to later the same week. I was trying to find some background info on Moorland Lodge and kept running into a blank wall. Then I came across an entry for it on the National Register District website, claiming that it had been built by Vera Scott Cushman, heiress to the Chicago department store fortune of Carson Pirie Scott. Now the Carson Pirie Scott building in Chicago is one of THE most famous buildings in the history of American architecture, designed by Louis Sullivan, one of the very first skyscrapers, one of the very first buildings to ever employ a curtain wall, etc. It’s totally landmark, ultra famous with the scholarly set. And then it occurred to me – there was a six degrees of separation thing between the CPS building and Moorland Lodge! They’re relatives – once via Vera Cushman, and once again via me noticing the link. It was incredible. Believing I’d possibly stumbled upon one of the greatest secrets of life ever, I became more and more convinced that there might be an invisible network of relationships connecting seemingly disparate buildings. Could it actually be that a system of secret architectural energetics mysteriously underlay the everyday visible world? If true, I was so THERE…

So I started looking for these connections everywhere. And finding them. I didn’t even have to leave Vera Scott Cushman and Moorland Lodge far behind; it turns out that Cushman went on to live at Avalon out on the Drive, which in turn became the Van Alen estate, which in turn is what swallowed up Wrentham House and put it under a spell for decades…which means that Moorland Lodge & Wrentham House are sort of like distant long-lost cousins, reunited by their present day Lila Delman-client status. Or how about Berry Hill, next door to Moorland Lodge? Prior to being Moorland Lodge, a structure belonging to the Berry Hill estate stood in that location, although whether the earlier building was demolished to make way for Moorland Lodge, or was just radically rebuilt & enlarged is an open question. But either way, it would seem there’s a family connection of sorts.

Postscript. I’d finished writing this blog, but hadn’t yet pulled the photos so I could publish it, when I came across an old 2007 issue of Food & Wine magazine a few weeks ago. It had been floating around the back of my car ever since, and the other evening I finally got around to bringing it inside. I set it down on my kitchen table and casually glanced down at the label on the cover, and what I saw froze my blood. It was addressed to an occupant at 17 Chestnut Street, a house I had just listed two days before.

I rest my case.

Culprit Revealed

Every spring I await the beautiful tulips in my gardens. And for the past few years, something very strange has been going on – someone or something is snapping their pretty little heads off!


It is a precise chop right at the top of the stem. Every morning, very early, I look out to see how they are doing and invariably the morning comes when I see the damage done. A beautiful tulip head just kind of flopped over.


The first year I saw it, of course I blamed my dog, Ollie. At the time, he was an only child so he got all the blame. I just looked at him and shook my head because he can’t help the fact that he tromps all over everything in sight - and if a cat should happen to sit outside the fence and tease him, all hell breaks loose – delicate flowers or not. I lost 3 or 4 tulips that way the first year.


But last year, I was looking out the window and actually saw what was happening. A bird – I think it was a mocking bird – swooped down and with the precision of a fighter jet – sliced the head off the tulip! I couldn't’t believe what I was seeing. I had never heard of this and have only seen it the one time. The bird didn’t even stop to admire his handiwork – he flew right off without a backward glance.


This morning, history is repeating itself. One of my little tulips chopped down in her prime. I wondered if anyone has had this experience and wondered what the heck was going on. Now you know!