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....

 

 

Countdown to Moving Day

Moving day tomorrow!

Even though I thought we had moved most of our boxed type stuff early on in this process, when we were de-cluttering, seems that's not the case.

We have a sea of boxes - in the dining room, in the rec room, in the foyer.  Ah well, most of the packing is now done.

I have stupidly packed all my clothes except for today's (which you will be happy to know that I am wearing!!) and tomorrow's.  But, since we will be back at the city house on Sunday night, I really should have left a weeks worth of clothes here.  So, I will be bringing back some of the clothes that the movers are taking tomorrow!  Duh!

The moving company provided a checklist to follow, and although all of it is common sense stuff, it's pretty handy to have and I have been reviewing it periodically as it's been a long time since I moved.  In my mis-spent youth, which lasted mid-way into my 30's I moved quite a lot.  That is advantageous in that you don't tend to acquire and keep things except those that are absolutely necessary.  Now that it's been 17 years in one house, even though I am not a pack-rat personality, it's amazing the things that have found their way into little corners of closet, drawers and cupboards. 

The checklist has also been a very handy reminder of who to contact with address changes.  A few I would have overlooked, I am sure!

Anyway, tomorrow is the big day, and I just spoke to the movers to confirm details, so the fun begins at 8 o'clock in the morning, ready or not!

By the end of tomorrow, we will officially live here, and hopefully can sink into that hot tub behind the grape arbour!

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.

What Happens When Your Dog Dies

Hi!  When my dog Seymour passed away suddenly last November, it marked the end of a chapter in my life.  I didn't expect that, but that's what happened.

Poor old Seymour suddenly seemed to be going downhill, so a visit to the vet confirmed he had cancer in his spleen.  That was Saturday.  By Monday night he was unable to get to his feet on his own, and so Tuesday morning we had to put him to sleep.  Hard stuff, he was my best buddy.

And that was it - after the fog of grief lifted a bit, I knew I needed change - big change.
 
I am 54 years old, and have had in the back of my mind that I would "retire" at 55 for a number of years, but it's complicated on a number of levels.

My husband, life-partner, lover, friend, occasional enemy (or person I find really really irritating), soulmate and business-partner Chuck (Chuckles) and I own a small manufacturing business which we both work at.  He's not quite at the retirement age or phase yet, so part of the challenge has been working out how I can slow down a bit while he keeps on working.  He likes having me around, we work well together, and our customers like "us" as a package deal.  For those reasons, hiring a replacement has never seemed practical.

We have dreamed of a larger property often, pouring over the property listings online and fantasizing about the life we would have with space for all Chuck's toys and projects (he's a toy and project guy) and the huge garden we could have (I love gardening) and the outdoor space and privacy we could enjoy (we both are outdoorsy and like our personal space!).

So, in May, we bought 5 acres in the country, near where I grew up, about an hour away from Vancouver, BC where we live now, and we are going to renovate the barn, move our business there, and work from home!  I will still be involved, but won't be locked into the 8-10 hours a day just at work, I can be out in the garden, or playing with my new dog (yes! That's part of the plan!) with my iphone on my belt and can take calls, do the books on rainy days and in general devote more time to my own interests.   

One of the things I have always loved is writing, so I thought I'd start a blog about the experience of moving from a big city back to the country after 30 odd years (back for me, Chuckles has always lived in the city).   So here goes....