So the damage inflicted by Hurricane Charley on Aug. 13, 2004, was especially painful because a number of landmark trees were lost alongside some vintage houses.
Fortunately for Clifford and Maggie Birdsall, the enormous Cuban laurel tree in the side yard of their Trabue Avenue house survived Charley, even while their house lost its roof and suffered extensive water damage.
“Parts of the tree were on top of the house,” said Maggie Birdsall. You would hardly know it now. “Nature filled it back in,” she said, and it again provides cooling shade.
The Birdsall home and landscape, at 607 Trabue, near the First United Methodist Church, is one of four historic district houses featured on the the 18th Holly Days Home Tour, from noon to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 3.
Admission is $10 (helping fund scholarships and community projects) at any of the tour homes, at the Punta Gorda or Charlotte County chambers of commerce, or in the church’s Lenox Hall, 507 W. Marion Ave., on tour days. Refreshments will be served in Lenox Hall, and poinsettias will be sold. Information: Louise DiNino, (941) 575-6354, or www.pggc.org.
“We want to share with visitors the sense of community and beauty that a small town like Punta Gorda has,” said Bonnie Verminski, publicity chairman for the garden club. “People here are not just proud of their homes, they are proud of their community and want to show it to others.”
The Birdsall house oozes vintage charm, but inside it has an open floor plan that links the redone kitchen, with granite counters, to the dining area.
The structure was built in the early 1920s on West Marion Avenue and moved to Trabue in the 1930s or 1940s. The Birdsalls purchased the house in 1994; they replaced the roof and made significant repairs to the interior after Charley made a mess of it.
Electricity is generated by solar panels on the roof.
Other stops on the tour:
nDon and Pauline Waldt, 721 W. Olympia Ave. This is a new house, built in 2003, with a carport and workshop added this year. Don Waldt did most of the landscaping. Shade is from a camphor tree on the west side and an oak on the east.
nMarjorie Smith, 109 Dolly St. One lot from the riverfront Retta Esplanade, this 1914 vintage house is listed for sale at $199,000. Smith redesigned the interior in 1999, but the feeling of an old cottage is still evident. The landscape includes a ylang-ylang tree, the blossoms of which are used in Chanel No. 5 perfume, and four blue bottle trees.
nBetty Mittle, 610 Palm Ave. Known as the Coconut Cottage for unknown reasons, this Key West-style cottage was built around 1938 and was a landmark on Retta Esplanade until it was moved in 2003. It survived Hurricane Charley with “nary a scratch,” said Verminski, and has been carefully renovated and modernized.