Ok so we're not finished but if you use use a little imagination you can see the progress and get an idea of where we headed with this project. Do you want to know something strange? When we moved nearly 4 years ago, not long after we had settled in I was looking at the back section and suddenly and fleetingly I had a picture of the garden as it is now becoming. At the time I had no idea that this would ever be a reality and neither did I know that it would be someone else who would actually conceive and execute the plan.
It was that fragment of an image which helped me decide to use some of my share of my fathers estate to do the garden and not the kitchen which as you can see is small and awkward and you might think a hindrance in creating gourmet meals and almost certainly in need of a make over. But it works. I kind of like its awkwardness and many happy dinners are cooked in here.
Along the way with my indoor painting project and outdoor makeover I think I've learned a few things.
1. It always costs more and takes longer than you think.
2. Living in chaos is not very fun and can be stressful. ( next time - move out for a while - or maybe just decide there won't be a next time)
3. Wood does not have to be sacred. My friend Jackie gave me that insight and freed me from my notion of not painting wood in case it lost it's integrity. ( She laughed at my ideas."Marg , don't you see the wood in this hallway has no integrity. It's not Buckingham palace you're living in"!!) The painted hallway is amazing!!
4. The end result if you get someone else to do the work is as good as it gets and good enough really can be good enough. Perfection is exhausting , unrelenting and never permanent. I'm happy to live less than perfectly.
5. When you start moving stuff around there's always too much stuff. Less has the potential to definitely be more.
This is the last parcel for the year. Tomorrow Rosie will be home for the summer , take a break of a week then start her summer work. So this week it was gluten free pizza base, cheese and bread from the otago farmers market ,( The farmers market is great and If you want to get a sense of just how corrupt the food industry is able to be, I would recommend you see FOOD INC. I truly felt sick watching it) some more gluten free coconut biscuits and a chocolate bar each. It will seem a little odd not sending of a parcel every week for the next 3 months but it may feel equally odd having us all at home for 3 months. Still as always this little house will expand and contract in the ways it so easily does to accommodate as few or as many of us as are here. Well as Miriam can vouch for there's a lot of tidying up to be done around here. I will go and tidy up. ( later though - there's a coffee to be had first!!)
have a great week. Marg
Aaah you quoted an architect! "Less is more"... Just when I thought I could avoid anything school related for four months and my very own mother quotes that on her blog. I guess I really cant escape it. Wow the backyard look amazing!! The neighbours surely cant complain about that?
ReplyDeleteVery excited to be back in the ever expanding house tomorrow night. Wishing I had taken you up on your packing help now, but we're getting there.
See you tomorrow, great parcel!
xx
The back garden's looking great - I'm sure Dad would love to think he had helped make it happen.
ReplyDeleteWe are meeting another architect next week to start our renovation. I will remember your words, it's not going to be fun spending my days with a toddler on a building site, but I think we probably won't be moving out now that we're not changing the roofline and we'll always have a bathroom and kitchen to use.
Wow, what a great garden! It looks beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI like the non-committal version of "less is more", i.e., "less has the potential to definitely be more". One of my summer jobs around here is to declutter a little. Wish me luck! We are all our father's daughters after all and collecting little bits and bobs is in our genes.
You definitely made the right choice there to do the garden. I prefer character kitchens, functional is best of all and yours is both already, just less than perfect.
ReplyDeleteHi Marg
ReplyDeleteI like your 5 points of wisdom and particularly relate to the one on perfection: I used to be a trades person in another life and in the context of furniture manufacture and restoration I found that my boss while I was an apprentice, found it hard to charge out the extra hours, and I got hounded a bit. So at that early age I realised perfection had a down side.
Oddly though, in going into business in the same trade in the town where I've lived now for a lot of my life I found the clients here were different - they liked the finish that extra time gave a job, and were happy to pay more. This endured until about '92, when I began a new passage in life.
So I learnt that like all things everything's and everyone's reality is relative, but I have found great happiness like you say in accepting and just observing.
Cheers
Donald