"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men"

"Gang aft agley"

(Borrowing from Robert Burns)


So, there was a bit of snow ...

...and the move got postponed.

But I go and visit this old house, as if going to a tryst, and take pictures of its imperfect beauty.

More later....

Little by little...

Remember my deadline?  January 29.  We'll get there little by little.  Last week I moved the birdies over.  I also moved them to a new cage.  It was a bit stressful for all concerned, but we all survived.  And today, when I went to visit, they were back to singing their usual songs.  (They were quiet for a few days.)

Bendi and I visited over the weekend, and while I worked on making a fire, (which is NOT an easy thing to do, but I'm very happy of my progress), Bendi was outside playing.

Finally, a good fire going.

After a while, Bendi came to one of the doors and started banging on it urgently.  He wanted to be let in, and he had something in his hands.  When I opened the door, he announced that he found a caterpillar outside who might be frozen.  Now, if you know anything about me, you'd know that I jumped to right away, understanding the urgency of the situation.  I told him to bring it in, put it among one of the potted plants and wait and see if it could warm up and start moving.  In a few minutes, to our joy, it did indeed uncurl and start moving.  Bendi was very happy.  After this, he stayed inside, and managed to find a fly that was still alive, but barely.  I told him that flies usually die in the fall, and don't live through the winter, but he wanted to try to save it.  So we proceeded to put the fly among the potted plants as well, and hope for the best. Bendi was talking about how famous the fly and him would become in case, by some miracle, the fly survived winter.  It would be the first fly ever to have survived, and he surely would be famous.
Now, if you know me at all, you would understand how happy and proud it makes me to have a son who loves all of nature's creatures like this, and if you don't know me, you might just thing I'm crazy, and that I am bringing up my son to be the same, but the truth is, I don't care.  I have been told that I need to toughen him up, (when someone saw him crying over a friend squishing a bug), but I am very proud of what a gentle soul he is.  That is how I am too, and I wouldn't want him to be any other way.

While we were there, I also managed to make a bracelet for myself while Bendi swept*, and we played some Connect Four while sipping tea.  After which we took a walk on the trail.  (Unfortunately, without the dogs this time.)  In other words, a beautiful afternoon spent at this great house.

*Please don't think that my son sweeps on a regular bases.  This was his first, and probably his last time ever.  He found the broom in the kitchen and decided to use it, that's all.  Since there was a lot of dirt, he was sweeping for a while, managing to hit me in the head with the handle while doing it, so, all in all, a pretty normal kid.

I needed to use the flash so you can see the colors.

Thank you for reading.  It is such fun writing this blog, and photographing for it, I hope you have almost as much fun reading it as I do making it.

Bye for now....

Winter

Time for another post.

It is officially 2013, and this really is the year for this old farm house to become a home.  We are still not living here, but I have decided on a deadline - January 29, my Name day shall be the day we move in.  The long-suffering-husband tells me that we can't officially move until we have the old house under contract to sell, which will not happen, for some mysterious reason, until we put it on the market, and we can't put it on the market until it is cleaned up enough to be shown.  So there we are.
I have done a few things at the new house though, that I would love to show you.  The first one of which I can't show you, because I can't figure out how to download the pictures from my cell phone.  No, actually, I tell a lie, I could just about manage that part, but my cell phone tells me that there is "not enough memory", and to "delete some thing", but then proceeds to not open the gallery, so that I CAN'T "delete some things", so I don't know how to deal with this issue.  But I assure you, what I was going to show you was going to knock your socks off.
Anyway, instead of that, I will show you a few pictures from the house after the first snow storm of the year.

Here we go:

The house after the snow storm.  I love the old pear tree in the front/side (depending on how you look at it).  I'm planning on picking pears this summer.

The view from the back looking at the shed - the future chicken shed, I hope!

This is the outside of the Sun room, and on the right is the fenced in area we created for the dogs.  What you don't see is that I raked the whole area, just before the snow fall, of course, so it doesn't make any difference.

Not a bad size for a temporary canine facilities, right?  I plan on eventually fencing in most of the property, so that the dogs can roam free, as it were.

This picture is of the very first fire I built in this kitchen fire place of ours.  Not an easy feat, I tell you.  The weird  thing with the fan that you see there is a thing that is supposed to increase the convection heat coming from the fireplace.  One of the long-suffering-husband's things.  It does seem to work though, as long as there is a good fire going, of course.

And last, but not least, I finally spotted some birds at the bird feeder:

Downy or Hairy Woodpeckers?

Well, that's all for today, I'm sure you're thrilled and fascinated.  

And one good news I have to tell you about:  I think(!) I figured out how to turn off the feature on the blog where you have to prove you're not a robot by entering some barely legible letters and numbers if you want to comment, so let the commenting commence......

Path

Guess what?  This house of ours, this property, this homestead (to-be), is even more perfect than I could have ever imagined.  I recently found out that we have a path starting at the side of our property, going all the way to a State Forest!  And if that is not perfect enough, I also found out that one of Bendi's classmates, one of his friends, lives two houses down from us, and that we can take the path from our house to theirs!  Only in my dreams have I dared to hope for such a perfect place.  The ability for a daily walk with the dogs without having to put them into the car and taking them somewhere, a friend for Bendi he could see whenever he wanted, and just the feeling of living pretty much in the middle of the woods, these things make me giddy with happiness.

So let me show you a few pictures from the introduction of the house to the dogs/dogs to the house, and the first walk into these woods.


The introduction:

The path:

Stopping to admire the moss:

A perfect little stream:

Some prefer not using the bridge:

And some use it in unconventional ways:

Perfect tree climbing opportunities:

Bogart always checks back to make sure I'm OK:

More climbing:

And last but not least, a peek into the house 

(I can't wait to move in!!!!):

I hope you all love it as much as I do, (or, if not, at least you understand why I do.)  :)

Working

I haven't been to the new old house all weekend.  There is a lot to do in the old house what with emptying it out, and cleaning it up so that we can put it on the market.  I have to say I consider myself very lucky that we are able to do things this way.  I can't imagine the work and stress involved with having to get your house ready to sell and having it on the market WHILE you are living in it.  With all the animals we have, we decided that that would just not be possible for us to do, hence the reason we bought a house before selling our current one, which of course comes with its own set of stresses, mainly the responsibility and financial burden of owning two houses.
Anyway, we are slowly getting things moved over, but can't actually move in until the heat situation is resolved.  So for now, I'll show you some pictures of what the animals think of the move:

Jude and Bogart are very interested in everything we do, and are always under foot.

Szerecsendio also wants to know what's going on.

Ally, on the other hand, is happy as long as she has a bed to lie in.

And the birds are also happy and oblivious.

The bugs feel the way the birds do, happy and oblivious.  (Not pictured this time, but don't you worry, I'll have some cockroach pictures for you before long.)

And we are moving things into our mini storage and power-washing the house with the help of a friend:

I will leave you with a couple of pictures from the old house of the places I love, and I hope that I will have an equally lovely, (if not more so) place in the new house.

My plants and our living room.  To be re-created, only better :)

                                                                                                                                          Adel