Another Friday

Egad!

I haven't even logged in with last weekend's progress report on the shed and here we are, another Friday!

So, last weekend was gorgeous and sunny and we (when I say "we" I really mean Chuckles) slaved away on the shed and got the whole roof on, as well as the drip rail around the bottom of the siding.  After the sun rose in the sky it was T-shirt weather!  I was the go-fer, swept up the inside of the shed and picked up all the debris left outside from the prebious weekend's construction
on Saturday morning first thing.   Then I held the ends of the drip rail while Chuck fastened them on, steadied the ladder for him and kept the meals coming.    Actually we went to the Mexican restaurant on Saturday night - love the Chile Rellenos so much!!

On Sunday I moved the truck around for him as he stood on a platform he built in the truck box.  Faster and easier than building a scaffold!

 

 

 

 

Leo was VERY happy at the country estate.  He could not stop carrying sticks around and he was so busy he forgot to eat until we got back to the city, then he gulped down some dinner.  We went for a walk each morning and then he amused himself outside until dark.  Occasionally Chuckles or I would toss a ball or a stick for him but mostly he just followed his nose.

 



 

 

 



 

In between helping on the shed I started on a little project I have been wanting to do for some time. Filling some wrought iron containers I have had for ages with moss.  Inside the moss I put soil,  and I am going to plant some succulents around the outside and probably primulas in the middle.  I have three of them in total.  Here is where they are at so far.  They will be cute on the deck I think.

 

 

 I also have spread this tarp on part of what will be the veggie garden.  The tarp should kill the grass to make it easier to remove it and then I can till the soil and add some compost.  In the photo, middle left you can see a stack of 4x4 posts which we are going to use to build some raised beds.  I have the fence posts from the horse turnouts we dismantled, so we just need to get some wire to fence this area to keep the bunnies and deer out.  In the background is our camping collection - the Alaskan camper used on hunting trips and our travel trailer wrapped in a tarp beside it.  That riding ring is coming in handy as a parking lot!

 

 

Leo has gone home now.  On Wednesday his "parents" came to pick him up and both of us have missed him.  It's weird how in two short weeks we got so used to him being around!  We both keep thinking things like "after work we'll walk Leo on the Spirit Trail" or looking for him in the shop.  He was great fun!

 



 

 It's a spectacular day today, so I hope this will last for the weekend and we can make some more progress on each of these projects, but mostly the shed! 

 

Recovery Weekend

Hi there!  How was your weekend? 

We had a different kind of weekend at the country estate this past weekend.  I was there completely unexpectedly.  I was supposed to be at my choir retreat, but then my back was suffering all week long and I knew that it would only worsen unless I took the time to treat it right AND Chuckles hand got all infected and he ended up requiring daily hospital visits for intravenous antibiotics AND my sister and her husband were still at the country estate, days past when they had expected to have gone home, because my brother-in-law had some setbacks following a surgery and wasn't up to the 10 hour drive home to Prince George.  SO... there we all were, each dealing with our own stuff, but being together in support of one another. 


Day 15 of the Blog Challenge - The Challenge Today is Relax!

First thing in the morning, before the rest of the household was awake I went out for a long walk and enjoyed an hour of early morning solitude.  It was chilly and threatening to rain, but I bundled up and walked to the end of our country road.  When I got back to our driveway, I wasn't quite ready to go back indoors, so I headed off in the other direction.  My walk took me up a side road, where I watched some ducks float lazily on their pond, and goats in a field, each one hiding in it's little shelter, watching me as I passed by.  I spoke to the two horses I found in the pasture at the end of the road as they eyed me with interest, their ears twitching as they processed my voice.

 

 

Two scenes from my morning walk

 

 

Later I raked leaves with my sister's help.  The pond area was inches deep in leaves that had come off the walnut, alder and red maple trees in that section of the yard.  She raked and I gathered the piles into a wheeled bin, and pulled them into the pasture where the big compost pile is and dumped them. Happily, my back was improved a lot just from sleeping in my own bed!   We worked for some time despite the drizzle as it was pleasant to visit and work together and we only stopped when the rain became heavy.

 

 

A sea of leaves

 

 

In the afternoon, I had the house to myself for several hours, so I played my guitar and prepped the dinner.  Relaxing to me is engaging in activities you enjoy, without feeling pressure to be doing something else.  By that definition, I had a very relaxing day!

 

Day 16 Blog Challenge is What are Three Things You Do Well?

 

This challenge was particularly interesting to me, as I like many people, have that inner voice that constantly tells me where I have failed, or come up short, or neglected to do something. 

 

While that inner voice doesn't get my attention as much as it used to, this challenge is a good reminder to me that it is important to tell myself what I am doing well.  Why is it we feel okay about beating ourselves up, but feel a bit silly giving ourselves praise and compassion? 

 

I was drinking my morning coffee with my sister as I opened my emails to see what the challenge for today was, and as soon as I read it out to her, she said "Three things you do well? Oh that's easy!" 

 

Here is my list for today:

 

Prepare healthy meals

Exercise regularly

Maintain a positive outlook 

 

From doing this challenge, I realize that this list could change daily, or even hourly.  The important thing is that when the little voice comes calling with it's laundry list of negatives, there will always be positive things I am doing in my life that I can remind myself about.

 

In the afternoon Jennifer and I went out to the Co-op.  This used to be nothing but a feed mill with a small store attached, but it has morphed into a bustling and trendy grocery store with a general store component boasting clothing, footwear, hardware, tack and just about anything else you might need.  Except fine-tipped Sharpies which we looked for but couldn't find.  They do have this funky horse outside, however.

 

 

My sister has begun a new hobby, based on her abiding enjoyment of doodling.  When watching TV to keep her hands busy, she creates these most intricate and beautiful doodles with nothing but a fist full of fine tipped Sharpies.  She gave me two pieces she did this weekend and every time I look at one of them I see new things that I didn't notice before.
 

 

 

 

Day 17 Blog Challenge is What Robs You of Your Joy?

 

The pressures of life - needing to be someplace else or doing something else, and feeling that there is more to be done than there is time to do it - are the things that rob me of my joy.  Wanting to savour a moment or an event, but feeling the need to rush headlong into the next activity. 

 

Also, getting negative energy from other people can really affect my mood.  This was pretty apparent this weekend, between all the good stuff.  Chuckles isn't good at sitting around doing nothing, which was all he was able to do, sit and keep that hand elevated.  That put him in a bad mood, and it was challenging for me to be empathetic without being dragged down into his misery.  However, employing some of the mindful living tools I have been learning about, and getting him out for a walk in the fresh air on Saturday morning definitely helped both of our spirits! 

 

This really speaks to the crux of mindful living.  Appreciating what is happening right now, without letting what just happened or what's about to happen get in the way of that.

Despite that the weekend was not the one I had scheduled or planned, it turned out to be a lovely weekend spending time with my sister.    As my only sibling she is a very important person in my life, and with the distance between us, we don't always get to spend a lot of time together.  So this weekend was a very special one.   Even though she beat me at Scrabble several times....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving, Frogs, Apples and Dogs - It's All Here.

Moving day - that is, the official one where the movers came with their big truck - is 6 days behind us now. 

It was a smooth operation, 3 guys who knew their stuff, aided by the fact that we have taken a lot of the boxed items to the country estate already. 

When they arrived, I was a bit shocked to find that two of the men were skinny, little old men that I had to resist the urge to offer to help - they just didn't look strong enough to move our lamps, never mind the big old piano with the wobbly leg!  But their looks belied their strength and experience, and when I stepped back and let them go to it, it was clear that they had done this once or twice before! 

 

 

 

Here's the moving truck, arriving at the country estate to unload

 

At the country estate, it took them a couple of hours to unload it all and deliver it to the correct room (mostly), and then they were gone.  Within a few hours we had much of it in order.  A great lesson I learned years ago from my children's grandmother is that, when moving, set up the bedroom(s) first.  There is nothing worse than working yourself until you are ready to drop, then realizing there is no place to drop!  Where are the sheets?  Where are the blankets?  So we put the master bedroom together, then the living room, so we had two comfortable spaces to relax in when we were ready. 

 

Master Bedroom After Movers Left

 

Office area after movers left

 

 

 

On Sunday morning I went out first thing with my nemesis the extension ladder and several large containers, and picked the apples off the tree that had ripe fruit.  The other tree is a week or two behind.   

Apple Tree Set Up

 

Me, Up the Ladder

 

One of Three Buckets of Apples

 

The first thing I had to do was pick up the week's windfalls apples, which I put into a container and moved them away from the tree, as the wasps were swarming around them and weren't happy to see me at all!  Because this tree is badly in need of pruning it is very bushy, with the fruit mostly on the high branches on the south side of the tree.  Of course, there are spiders everywhere at this time of year and the trees are full of them, so I frightened quite a few of them as I suddenly ascended into their space!  As I picked, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.  Expecting another spider, I turned to come face to face with a little tree frog!  They are also plentiful right now.  Although I didn't get a picture of the one in the tree, I snapped this one on my car when I was leaving to go to the farmers market.

Tree Frog

 

While I was busy with the apples, Chuckles made a bird house disguise for a light to illuminate our address sign at the road

 

Birdhouse in progress

 

Finished Birdhouse Light

 

 

 

I got a little lesson from Chuckles on the ride on lawnmower and spent an enjoyable hour mowing the lawn - a job I have now happily inherited.  It's like a little ATV with a purpose!!  I also took my hoe and a wheelbarrow and made the rounds of the gardens to get rid of some weeds that had cropped up.  On my rounds I discovered that the one pear on the little pear tree has disappeared!  Deer?  Birds?  Not sure who the culprit was but it was a bit of a disappointment!

 

Pear tree missing it's pear

 

I was also really happy to see that the raspberry canes which had looked very sickly when we first took over the country estate are now much happier after some TLC and a heavy feed of compost.  There are lots of new shoots and plenty of ripening berries.

 

 

 Raspberries looking healthier

 

Living room set up

 

The rest of the weekend was devoted to unpacking and putting the house in order and the garage, garden shed and barn.  One of our challenges right now is that, although we have 5 acres - huge compared to our city lot, there isn't as much outbuilding storage space as we had in the city, when you take the barn out of the equation.  Since the barn is going to house our business, we need to build a storage shed for all the toys, which include motorbikes, ATV's, kayaks, ( notice all the plurals!!) as well as all Chuck's tools, project car, gardening implements, push mowe, ride on mower...the list is long.  We need that shed pronto!

 

The apples I picked are sweet/tart and very tasty, so we have eaten a lot of them, given some away and the rest I processed on Monday night and they are now in my deep freeze ready to be made into apple chips, crisps, muffins, cakes and pies.  There will be more in the coming weeks from the second tree. 

 

This coming weekend is our last weekend in possession of the city house.  We still have some garage stuff to move out, and then the usual cleaning up.  We are also looking after granddog Nicky this weekend - another doggie fix to top up our tanks!

 

Nicky smiling on the back deck

 

 

Next week we continue our nomadic lifestyle in reverse - living in the city in our trailer and going home to the country estate on weekends.  The big life change continues....

 

 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This week the kids have gone back to school, and I am sure many of them will be writing the obligatory "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" essay.  Here is my version!

Just spent another busy weekend at the country estate, finishing up the painting and getting ready for the movers to bring our furniture over this coming Saturday, it seems a good time to recap the progress made on the big life change so far..

The new house front steps

Here's the whole list of what was/is entailed:
Purchase Suitable Property
Sell City House
Move Household to Property
Move Business to Property
Find Tenant for City Warehouse Business Currently Occupies
Enjoy our New Life on Country Estate


Purchase Suitable Property
Mid-May we put in an offer on the country estate, and after a minimum amount of haggling it was ours!  We took possession of it May 31st.

During that same period of time I got sick- the sickest I have been in my adult life - causing me to  miss singing in my choir concert, cancel a trip to Prince George to see my nephew graduate from UNBC and cancel a trip to New York with a group from my choir. I think my body was letting me know that now that the big life change was happening it was TIME TO FOCUS!

So focus I did.

Sell City House
The month of June was spent de-cluttering the city house.  Countless trips to the Sally Ann, packing boxes of stuff we don't use on a daily basis and moving it to the country estate, stripping wallpaper, painting rooms, and painting the whole exterior of the house ourselves!

Chuckles doing the prep work before painting the city house exterior

 In between, I laid on the couch, as I was still not very well, but was determined that I was going to help Chuckles to get the job done!  By the end of June it was completed and we listed the house the first week of July.

Every weekend in July was spent at the country estate.  The weather was marvellous and we cleaned up the gardens, entertained visitors, gutted the barn, and generally busied ourselves outside.  During the week we would be in the city working and doing our best to keep the house clean, polished, mowed and clipped to look good for the open houses each weekend.  Then, Friday night we'd drive out to the country estate spend the weekend and drive back to the city Sunday night. The Monday of the August long weekend, we got the call we had waited for from the realtor.  Not just one, but two offers!  They were presented the next day, and one was clearly the best.  We accepted - house sold!

Move Household to Property
August was all about the interior.  After my initial solo attempt at the painting, Chuckles threw his weight into it and together, in four short weekends (LOL) we have painted nearly the entire interior of the house.

 It is so much better we cannot get over it.

Dark paint

 

Finished in our choice of paint colour!

 

 It was originally Dark Chocolate brown, accented with Marian's Meadow green, colours which completely absorbed the light that came in through the windows, making the house extremely dark and dungeon-like.  We have left the hallway and foyer those colours for now, as the furniture movers will be in next Saturday, and in likelihood there will be some bumps and scrapes on those wall, so we will paint them after the furniture arrives.

So officially Saturday Sept 7th the furniture will be moved and although we still have possession of the city house until Sept 19th, none of our "stuff" will reside there any longer. 

That's where we're at.  Next up is moving the business, but we need to renovate the barn first.  That construction begins on Sept 9th.   Chuckles will be doing some of that work himself, as well as using some contract labour.  Still, we expect it will take a couple of months to complete.

Meanwhile, we will still be working in the city during the week, and at the country estate on the weekends, except  now it will be roughing it in the city and living in comfort on the weekends, the complete reverse of the past three months!  We plan to bring our travel trailer in and park it at a nearby RV park on the river, which will be a nice spot to live, close to work and all amenities, trails and the beach. 

One of our two apple trees, in need of pruning but still producing!

Now that the bulk of the painting is finished, I can turn my attention back to the gardens, the apples that are ripening now, and putting some of that delicious Chilliwack corn into the deep freeze before it's all finished for the season. 

Thanks to all of you who are following my little blog, I sure do enjoy writing it.  It allows me to savor the little experiences that make up my big life change!

Movin' On

It never dawned on me that my mother would cry when I happily announced that our city house had sold.  But that's what happened.  She cried.

Now that I have had time to think about it, I understand her tears.  We have lived in this house for 17 happy years.  Seventeen years during which all our our extended family has had accommodation in the city whenever they needed it.   Our city house has been centrally located for all our out of town family who had city doctor appointments, who were flying out of town on vacation, who were enroute to another destination by car, but needed a stopover.  It has also been in Chuckles' family for 30 years, so there is a lot of nostalgia attached to it.  It seems my big life change is affecting everyone.

Combine my mother's tears with my son's query "I hope you had digging out the Japanese maple written into the contract" referring to the tree gracing our front yard that the boys bought for me when it was barely a twig.  And which Seymour the dog desperately tried to unearth when he was a puppy!  When I said they could just buy me another for the new place, he declared that it wouldn't be the same.  He's right.

Japanese Maple in our front yard

Memories, memories.

With the city house sold, and a move out date now carved in stone, I am wondering " is this all a big mistake?` Am I being selfish in making this decision that affects so many people?

Walking around our city neighborhood on Wednesday evening, enjoying the cool air after the heat of the day, I realized just how much there is that I will miss when I am gone. 

The lovely woodsy trails around the school fields and Loutet Park.  The huge garden at the end of the Park, now designated Loutet Farm with their gates sales of produce. 

 Footbridge in trails

 The Loutet Farm sign

 

Setting sun shining through the trees along the trail

Since the deal is done there is no turning back, which makes leaving, once so exciting a prospect, now very bittersweet. 

I understand my Mom's tears, as I feel my own right now, possibly for different reasons.  She is afraid of me being farther away, less accessible, and what that might mean.  I see now that we are leaving a neighborhood we have enjoyed for the past 17 years and the future is a big unknown, which is scary and exciting all at once. 

There's only one way to face it, and that's with the expectation that it's going to be great and we will make new memories in our new home.