The flyer underneath the "for sale" sign describes a lot “big enough for the most lush garden parties, croquet, lawn bowling or your own ‘field of dreams.’” But for the daughter of the woman who lived in the house for 56 out of its 101 years that side yard was recently the site of yet another farewell to a beloved home.

Barbara Norvell Hynek was raised in the extraordinarily ornate house that still occupies three standard city lots, a third of an acre, at 3306 N.W. 71st St. She graduated from Ballard High School just eight years before Norvell House was designated a Historic Landmark in 1979; one of just nine in Ballard outside of Ballard Avenue.

Saying goodbye to the house means revisiting a lifetime of memories, and saying goodbye once again to her late parents, particularly her mother who died at home in 2005.

With the highest turret supposedly inspired by a clock tower in Bern, Switzerland the 1908 Norvell House is one of its kind, even for Ballard. Second floor balconies extend from each bedroom, including master bedroom with its fireplace and view of Mt. Rainier. Capitol Hill has its Mansion Row and The Highlands its gated gems, but the Norvell House is just out there among all the other homes.

Two weeks ago I wrote about how the fireplace kitchen made its way into Erica Bauermeister’s novel, “The School of Essential Ingredients.” From her home in Canada Barbara Hynek read the column and made contact. So when she and her husband traveled down from Canada last week to visit the house while it is on the market, Erica and I tagged along.

Despite a time when Barbara’s brother engineered very ghoulish Halloween presentation for the house; the house is not haunted, just cursed by erratic ownership. The ownership history reads like code: one short, one long, two short, one long, two short, with the longest owners being James and Hazel Norvell, from 1949 until Hazel’s death in 2005.

The seven owners left different marks; a chandelier beloved to one removed by the next, vegetable gardens overrun by bluebells, the black and white entry replaced by wood flooring.

Since Hazel’s death the fireplace kitchen built in 1964 has remained. The most recent owners remodeled the carriage house and the house gleams with fresh paint and lovely staging. In Barbara’s dreams the house would be purchased by a non-profit and used for weddings and recitals. She and her husband, Ken, were married in front of the living room fireplace, “a Christmas wedding.”

A historic landmark for its unusual architecture, for Barbara it was home. An avid reader, Barbara would hunker in the nook beside the kitchen fireplace to read. She would sun herself on the west facing balcony and slip away to then decrepit carriage house to do her homework in privacy.

Her brother’s big train set occupied a whole corner of the basement; they rode their tricycles around the pillars and played baseball with other kids at the corner.

Even though the house is just blocks from Sunset Hill Park her parents always said they lived in Ballard, not Sunset Hill. When they first arrived in 1949 the neighbors were mostly Scandinavian and not immediately welcoming. When a new house was built in the 1950’s along the west property line her parents were terribly upset, “as though it were an inch away” instead of two city lots.

For Barbara the house is filled with memories of her parents, especially her mother a longtime democratic precinct chair who survived her husband by nearly 20 years. Over the years, Barbara’s husband Ken worked on the house, never visiting without his toolbox.

“He didn’t get to do big things,” she said, “Just kept the house from disaster.”

Barbara showed me photos from when her family lived in the house. In one photo a group of women are all seated at the dining table, just where she is standing with me.

“That’s my book group,” she explained. “We’re all librarians and decided to read on themes rather than separate books. That way we’d read ten books instead of one and then tell each other about them.”

Barbara looked at the photo wistfully; her mother seated at the head of the table, her friends around it.

“Our theme was Seattle so we all traveled down from Vancouver to gather in this house.”

“We’re actually meeting this week,” she told me. “I can’t wait to take them this book.”

By that she meant Erica’s book, “The School of Essential Ingredients,” because for her it’s not only a book about their theme - friendship, it’s a book about “the house.”

In the garden she showed me a well cover that her husband fashioned from a spruce that needed to be removed. Along the north border there’s an area that she always thought of as being her secret garden. The greenhouse attached to the carriage house was her mother’s favorite spot. In later years Barbara planted and her mother tended.

As her mother’s health declined, Barbara and her husband tried to convince her to live with them in Canada, hoping to win her over on visits. But after a few weeks she would always announce, “I want to go home.”

Barbara was surprised when she learned that the house was going on the market again, the third time since her mother’s death. Once again she and her husband took the landmark sign out of storage for listing agent and neighbor Bob Boyd to place in front of the home.

Everyone hopes the house can attract long-term owners who will embrace its oddities, perhaps even its embedded memories.

Barbara broke off a twig of tall flowering rosemary. Earlier she’d said, “When I heard the house was on the market again I pulled out a poem I wrote the first time, ‘How do you say goodbye to a house?’ It’s sad for me in a way.”

She sniffed her rosemary.

“I can’t get this to grow in Canada,” she said. “I’m not allowed to take a plant across the border because of the dirt on the roots, but I keep trying with cuttings.”

She rolled the rosemary between her fingers as we stood in her childhood garden.

“I keep trying.”