One Year On

One year ago today, I watched as our home was up-ended and shaken out into the back of a truck and sent off down the highway. I piled my babes into the car, filled every empty space with the last bits of stuff, plonked the fish in its plastic bag on top of the teetering pile on the passenger seat, squeezed in the still-warm foil-wrapped food offerings from my inconsolable mother-in-law, and set off after the truck.

We've worked our way steadily through four entire seasons in our new country home. I've been frightened by a couple, and entirely mesmerised by the others. A pathetic chilly summer that had us questioning the decision to move. Enchanting, misty autumn with all of that colour and crunch. The depths of a winter, the first of many, I suspect, in which my toes will feel perpetually cold. And then spring, incredible spring, abundant spring, show-off spring.

The vineyard on the drive into town tells of it perfectly - leafy green turning to red and brown, dropping back to nothing, then bursting forth again. I grew up in a town with four seasons and, having found myself in such a place in adulthood, now I get what all the fuss is about.

This country life hasn't been all it was cracked up to be. There aren't 27 hours in the day like I thought there'd be. The weeks are still only seven days long. Life is busier than ever, more relentless than ever, as exhausting as ever, just with a prettier view out the window and far, far less traffic. The questions of 'where' haven't been answered entirely. We may have started here, but the decision now is where to finish. This region? This very village? In town or on the land? An old house or a new one?

For now, I'm not going anywhere. A year in and I feel I'm a small part of the neighbourhood. We've made friends, real connections. In a little over a month we'll join the thriving local school community. The people at the local shop know our names. I've finally memorised my own phone number.

And my babies haves stretched from chubby sausages into talking, thinking, proper people, naughty as ever, minds of their own, as ever. My big girl gets to start her formal education in a perfect, tiny country school, with a paddock for a playground and the best-stocked library I've seen anywhere.

There is still much work to do, much to improve. Sometimes it feels like we left so much opportunity behind and I have to remind myself why we're here. Despite it all, one year on, I know we made the right decision.

Let's Be Adventurers

It's brewing ever so mildly and steadily within, but I can feel it picking up strength - this feeling that we're on an adventure, that we've taken bold steps towards a new way of living and opened ourselves up to so many things that were previously off the agenda. It's not huge stuff in the scheme of things, just lifestyle stuff, kid-raising stuff. Gardening, food sourcing, choices about consumption and how we pass our time. Here we can do it, whereas previously it was difficult or impossible. Here we can grow food or buy it from the person who grows it. Here we can step back from that cycle of want/buy/discard/want more. Here we can move away from screens and into the backyard, and spend time together at home rather than having to escape it at every opportunity to outrun the cabin fever of too-small spaces.

Our big step away from what we know has been relatively safe. We didn't sell up and quit jobs and sail off into the unknown. We still own a house in Sydney, we've brought our work with us, friends and family are only an hour and a bit of freeway away.

But yet we took the step. And however small and however safe, it feels like a rollicking great adventure to me, and hopefully the first of many.

So this Saturday, I'm grateful for adventures, big and small. And, as always, grateful for the ones taking the ride with me.

Joining in with Maxabella.

Print purchased here.

Grateful

There's a lot of gratitude swirling around on the blogs I read, it seems, and lots of thoughts on how good a bit of intentional thankfulness can be. I went through a stage once (probably back in my self-help book reading days) when I would write a list of five things I was grateful for each night before going to sleep. It was good for me. Good for keeping things in perspective, good for making me focus on what I had rather than what was missing, and what was working rather than what was not. I've been sneaking glances at the Grateful link thing over at Maxabella loves... for a few months now. And it's a new year, and the topic is 'beginnings', and suddenly it seems apt that I join in.

So here I am, still in the first week of the new year, grateful, oh, so grateful for this new beginning here in this new town. It was a serious slog, and a little bit crazy to try and squeeze the move in two weeks before Christmas after one of the busiest ends of the year ever. But I knew I wanted to be in this house, in this new town, when this new year began. It just made sense.

And having survived the end of that year, I'm just incredibly grateful to be starting this one here, where there's room to run, space to breathe, no need to go anywhere if we don't want to, nature in all its glory in every nook and cranny, and three gorgeous little girls and their lovely dad finding their feet, in this new life, with me.

Welcome Home

Well, we're here. We've been tripping over boxes and piles of assorted stuff for days, but the bulk of the work is done, and we're starting to stretch out and ease into this new place. Now, after all those years of dreaming, months of planning, and weeks of waiting and crossing fingers and hoping it would be right, we're here and it is right. Oh, so right.

Out every window it's green. When I get a chance to sit, I'll be spoilt for choice about which room to relax in. And that yard. It's enormous. I open the door, and the girls tumble past me, running the length of it, down and back. They've never known such space. 

It sounds different. I'd become so used to living under a flight path, roaring jet engines punctuating my evenings. Here, occasionally a freight train rumbles in the distance. Birds twitter and chime. Insects chirrup. 

Our next-door neighbours popped in the other day with a bucket of fresh eggs from their hens. It's my chicken fantasy, once removed, come true.

I think we might be home now.

The Big Country Move

What's that funny sound? That's me squeaking and grunting from beneath a massive pile of boxes. The truck comes tomorrow. The big country move is finally happening.

Things might be quiet here for a few days till the dust settles. But I'll be back with a bang. Typically Red goes 'village'. There's lots to talk about from the past weekend, including the wedding of the year. I've even got a crazy wedding cake tutorial for you. Some pretty vintage stuff to show off. New books and old. Not much knitting, but just you wait.

Wish us luck! (Go on, I'm a bit anxious...)

Oh, and for those who asked, that last photo was of one of the local kangaroos that frequent the caravan park where we stayed on our holiday. It must look quite amusing for you Northern Hemisphere dwellers.

See you on the other side!

Unfinished

All around blogland, it seems, people are slowing down, settling in and readying their homes for the festive season. Everywhere I look I see beautifully decorated trees and homemade hearths and ornament-annointed mantels. I look around my own home and see empty bookshelves, piles of uncategorised 'stuff' and boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling. Ah, moving house - the most heart-warming of Christmas time pursuits.

I've been knitting a little here and a little there this past couple of weeks. I set out on our big beach holiday with enough yarn to knit at least six cardigans and jumpers. Optimistic? Hmm. Half an hour into the journey, I realised I'd left my knitting needles at home, and with the three in the back seat already whining "Are we there yet?" (only four hours to go...), there was  no way we were turning back. Of course, I had no need for the needles. The knitting I accomplished, mostly over glasses of wine after our communal dinners each evening, was scarce. Optimistic? Yes.

But now it's back to packing and sorting and packing and sorting. And throwing and chucking. I have lost count of the bags of stuff that have gone to the charity bins, and despite that and endless full garbage bins, I still have several boxes labelled 'crap' and 'junk'. I'm guessing I won't be unpacking those ones in a hurry.

The packing and sorting did unearth a large plastic box, long forgotten, filled to the brim with unfinished knitting projects. Holy smokes, what was I thinking buying that yarn? Those patterns? Some of these things have been in the works since I took up knitting again back in the early noughts. Is that 100% acrylic? Hot pink and lime green stripes? Yikes.

Amongst it all is a finished jumper (sweater) in lovely Debbie Bliss cotton that someone could be wearing now but for the wonky collar. And a quite nice Jo Sharp jumper in orange that would fit one of my girls, except the sleeves turned out quite long and thin. I could be all brash and make these my new year's knitting resolutions...or just quietly put the lid back on and add it to the tower of boxes in the garage. And tiptoe away. Shhh...

Perhaps I could stick a star on top of it all and call it the Christmas tree.

Back to the packing and sorting.

Joining in with the Yarn Along over at Small Things.

To Do

Don't you love a quiet lead-up to Christmas? Time to shop for the perfect gifts, pen thoughtfully worded cards to your nearest and dearest, hand-make stylish decorations to brighten your home and hearth, plan a delicious Christmas menu.

We have a few things to get out of the way before we can start thinking about all of that yuley stuff. There's our much-anticipated week at the beach with a group of lovely friends. Then there's the wedding of the year, when my dear friend Amanda will marry her lovely Tim. My outfit is already arranged - miracle of miracles - so now I can concentrate on my two other jobs, making the wedding cake and singing at the ceremony. (Not alone, thank goodness, as I'm not really a singer, but it's a continuation of the tradition of this group of girls serenading each other on the big day.) And then we have the end-of-year celebrations at preschool, including the Christmas concert.

Oh, and we're moving house too. A week before Christmas.

Turns out the white picket fence was meant to be. And now it's ours...for a while.

White Picket Fence

I've been staring at a list on the wall entitled 'Pros/Cons'. It's been many, many months since the decision was made that we would move out of the city and I've spent many, many hours during those months clicking away on real estate websites, looking at listings, ogling pictures, um-ing and ah-ing. There were a few houses that seemed OK, some that even seemed great, but they went quickly. Then a couple of weeks ago I found 'the one', perfect except that it was a little further away than we'd envisaged, and in a tiny village rather than a larger town. But the house, oh, the house - a weatherboard cottage with a wrap-around verandah and a beautiful, sprawling garden. 

I half hoped it would be awful when I went to see it the week before last. In the photos, the front of the house looked a bit rundown. But when we pulled up, the rickety fence in the images had been replaced by a brand-new white picket fence. 

A white picket fence. Did somebody say perfect?

I wasn't able to get it out of my head. I tried to talk myself down, but I kept seeing us there, living in those rooms, enjoying that garden. The GM came down for a second visit last week and he was smitten too...but for a few minor issues. And thus the list on the wall entitled Pros/Cons.

I think it's natural when something you've dreamed about for so long - years, even - is getting close to actually happening, you start questioning the choice, looking for the pitfalls, the potential problems, the reasons to stay put for a bit longer. But for the time being, pros have outweighed cons. We've thrown our hat in and it's up to the powers that be to decide if this is the house, and the tiny village, and the perfect white picket fence, for us.

Livestock

A cow goes moo, a dog goes woof and a sheep goes, "Raaaahhhhh." According to Stella, that is. Which is why we need to get out of the city.

OK, it's not really, but I've got a couple of dozen real reasons, if you've got the time. How about just five?

1) A house on my street is for sale and the sign out the front says "Massive 384 square metre block." Leaving aside the fact it is a tiny two-bedroom house with a price tag of $850,000, in this neighbourhood, 384sqm is 'massive'.

2) City kids think milk comes in plastic bottles. That was what my mum used to tell us. It might have been a slight generalisation on her part, but we country kids knew where our food came from. We could see it out in the paddocks on the bus ride to school. I want my kids to live it, not just hear about it.

3) Today, my four-year-old described the single tree in our backyard as 'lonely'.

4) Almost everyone I know works far too much and far too hard. And the women I know who don't have to work never see their partners who do. Nor do their kids. All to sustain the city existence. 

5) Because I want chickens. Chickens, goddammit. Isn't that reason enough?

It's been a joint goal for the GM and I since before we had our babies. We always knew it would be possible to do our work (staring at words on computer screens) remotely, and the having-two-babies-at-once thing was enough for our employers to finally succumb and set the home-based office wheels in motion. So now that it's not just a hypothetical, it's time to launch in. We're not going too far - just an hour or so south where the grass is green and the hills roll. Far enough away to feel like country folk, close enough to get our city fix regularly and easily, if we have to. Close enough to doting aunties and grandparents. Close enough for the girls' night out Japanese on King Street.


And far enough away to feel like we can slow things down, let things go, try things out, free things up. 

Want more reasons?


This kid likes running in the grass:

This one wants two dogs, a big one and a small one:

And this one thinks sheep roar:

Watch this space - Typically Red goes Rural, perhaps?

The Chooks are A-Callin'

The Garbageman, who refuses to eat eggs unless they no longer look like eggs, returned from the supermarket a few days ago with a dozen eggs to add to the dozen we already had in the fridge. Realising his double-up, he put me under firm instructions to use them up lest they go to waste. So there have been a few poached eggy mornings, some boiled eggy lunches, a Father's Day boeuf bourguignon pie brushed liberally in an eggy egg wash. Even, dare I say, a first attempt at creme brulee over the weekend (yum!). And last night, as a special treat for dad, there was going to be homemade chocolate ice-cream.

Three egg yolks mixed with 100g sugar. A cup and a half of milk heated with 200g of dark chocolate and a splash of vanilla. The whole lot mixed together with a cup of cream, then cooled and finally churned in the ice-cream machine.

Silly ice-cream machine. It made us a lovely cold chocolate custard, and then decided it's work was done for the day. No ice-cream for us.

Today, however, thanks to an overnight stay in the deep freeze, it had turned into a wonderful, velvety, rich, chocolately, scrumdiddlyumptious thing as good, if not better, than the best chocolate gelato I've eaten up the road on Norton Street. How easy was that?

I imagine this is how hard my life will be when I finally get the chickens I've been dreaming about. So many eggs! Oh, what to do??? Might have to make another batch of ice-cream...

(Task for tomorrow - using up the eggwhites...)

Magnolia

May my future sprawling country garden have a grand magnolia as its centrepiece...

..countless fruit trees that burst into flower the minute winter lets her guard down...

..and great swathes of unruly jasmine to fill the air with the scent of my childhood for a few weeks a year.

Oh, and maybe another magnolia for good measure...

Get Better Soon

Just about the cutest thing to ever land in our mailbox - a picture of Lola on her verandah by her friend Scarlett to say "Get better soon." 

This is making me insanely happy and thinking I should get my pom pom on. Beautiful and hilarious.

This has me thinking, thinking, thinking, wondering if I could do it. And ultimately drawing the big country move closer and closer.