FINALLY -- today was the day I finally got outside to work in the yard and didn't die from the humidity AND I didn't get eaten alive by bugs! It's a freaking miracle! Last year, it was in October sometime that the humidity finally started lifting, and today I sprayed Repel on my shirt and hat and gloves and it kept the bugs at bay, so I didn't get eaten alive, either. Another miracle. I trimmed all the poor hydrangeas (I don't think they were trimmed last year, and possibly the year before that), so they lost about 2/3rds of their canes, but now they can breathe and they have a ton of huge buds coming, which is exciting. Then, I started working on the front yard where our forest of giant azalea bushes are trying to grow across the driveway, and now I also have a small grove of yaupon hollies coming up IN those azaleas.... but, the hollies coming up in the center of the azaleas can stay, but we'll lose those others, as well as all of the nandina and other tropical plants I can't stand. LOL I have a huge list of natives and a few non-invasive non-natives I'll be looking for in nurseries over the next two months or more. Then, next year we'll be able to watch the yard explode in a chaotic cottage garden, as it should be.
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With only the kitchen left to paint, and only about 40 more boxes to go through, the house is coming together. (Most of those boxes are in a storage unit. They're all my things.)
What I've been waiting for is the weather to knock off the humidity so I can go outside longer than five minutes at a time, because our yard needs an overhaul. Today was a tour of the pollinator garden at the Nash County Extension Arboretum, and believe me, I took notes. I also have notes from that garden in the spring as well, and between these two lists of plants, our yards will look much different next year. All of the insane tropical plants are out of here except the banana trees, because those are just funny. It will be nice to get out there and trim back everything that's already overgrown, and plant the flowers that will bloom next year, turning the yard into a Pollinator Oasis. It seems like we just moved in, but I've been painting like a madwoman, and the girls have been painting their rooms like a couple of madwomen too... My goal is to get the major painting done first, and in there we did flip the couches into the correct rooms, but then we can start bringing in the smaller furniture and figure out what pieces we may need to find for the cottage. I always paint all of our homes, most people think the colors are too bright, but honestly, I'm painting over colors like grey, greenish grey, blueish grey.... come on. And I'm doing a lot of prep work this time, like caulking cracks and things I usually ignore. Emily's art space needed to be completely re-taped, so that's held up her second room longer than we wanted, but it should be done this week. Then she can move in there and unpack her art supplies. Mary's art room is ready to go. Each girl has their own bathroom and they are both seriously so cute! I'm super jealous, because our bathroom off of our bedroom is a tear-down. As soon as we can swing it, that room will get an overhaul! Enjoy the progress photos below, and some of the kitties. There's more to share, but I'll keep adding as I plug away at the to-do list. Peace. Yes, it's true. We are moving again! This will be move #13 in 27 years, but THIS TIME, it's MY idea, and that makes all the difference!! We started looking at homes for sale in the Rocky Mount, NC, area after Christmas. All four of us were checking out Realtor.com daily, comparing homes we looked at, thinking about how far the drive would be from there to anywhere... then we started looking, engaging our amazing Realtor, Crystal. And we started going to open houses, which was fun too. I really loved one house in particular, we visited many times, once with our agent, and as other homes came and went, we decided to put in an offer. But, between the strange behavior of the owners and their agent, the less-than-stellar inspections, and just general sketchiness of everything, we decided to pass, even though I really loved a lot about the house. During the whole process, I kept myself at 80% excited, because I just knew something was wrong. So, now we know why we weren't meant to buy that house... Because we found this one. This is my Forsythia Cottage!! Yes, slightly larger than a "cottage," at 3200sf, but, wait... it gets bigger! LOL (In my defense, the door IS painted TARDIS blue, and so it's no surprise that it's bigger on the inside, AM I RIGHT???) Above the garage, is an 700sf unfinished bonus space! And so we are going to be finishing that with a guest room and bath, and then the rest will be the home of Forsythia Cottage Writing & Design!!! I CAN'T WAIT. When we visited the house the first time, it was the day after it went live online, and we were the first ones to see it. We were there for two hours and we made an offer. They accepted at 10:30 the next morning, Sunday. Boom. We close on April 18. We arrived before our Realtor that first day, but it was 2 p.m., so I knew the owner wasn't there and our Realtor was a minute away... I walked up the driveway, curious to see what was above the garage, because there'd been no photos of that space, and I knew there had to be something up there. This is what I saw! This meant the bonus room went across the ENTIRE three-car garage... omg... FOUR DORMERS?? Then, I peeked into the backyard, something that was also not included in the early photos online (this house was "coming soon" for four days starting March 11, which was my mother's birthday), and my heart stopped. I walked up the path toward the back of the house as the entire yard came into view. I don't even know how to describe it except to say that I felt like I'd walked through a wormhole and come out in the Pacific Northwest! The home sits on an acre, so the backyard is HUGE, and it's entirely landscaped in these beautiful undulating gardens surrounding a grassy center. Pine trees way overhead, followed by holly trees all around... their little red berries adding color to the sky. Camellias, each a different color, were everywhere! Hydrangeas were just starting to kick out their leaves, and I can't WAIT to see what colors they are!!! Kerria japonica, crepe myrtles, and so many azaleas!!! They were all throughout the border gardens... and ferns and daffodils and wood hyacinth, hellebores, euphorbia, and a lovely little white Chinese fringe flower. (We went back a week later and even more plants were coming up!) I stood there, trying to take in the whole yard, and I just couldn't. I started walking around, just freaking out, and realized in the back corner there's a little woodland path leading to the far corner... so I'll even have a woodland path? OMG Back there I saw a concrete pad that looked like there was electricity to it... okay... but by this time, everyone was in the house yelling at me to get inside, but my Realtor came out onto the back deck, and I was like, "I'm done!!! This is it!!!!! Get out the paperwork!!!!" But, I went inside!!! Now, in the photos online, in addition to no photos of the bonus room, there were no photos of the backyard... and they also didn't include the money shot of the kitchen... so I was dying to see the entire kitchen. I come in and turn the corner and see the kitchen and just scream. IT IS SO FREAKING HUGE AND GORGEOUS. OMFG!!!!!!!! So, at that point, I was done. Like, really done. I didn't need to see anything else!! haha And fast-forward, I learned this past weekend that they didn't include that shot of the kitchen or photos of the backyard on purpose... they wanted to bring those into the description when the house was truly available, but we got there first! So, in addition to all of those that convinced me already, is a formal dining room, two living rooms, an owner's suite on the bottom floor, laundry room, and then a staircase up to the bonus room... all on the first floor. The second floor has four rooms, one of which has its own full bath, and then there's another full bath in the hall, so each daughter gets two rooms and their own bathroom. Perfect. One of those rooms actually opens to a rudimentary staircase that goes up to a third-floor attic space that's not finished -- but it could be, and then another room opens to an unfinished storage area that leads to the bonus room above the garage (which means the bonus room has two exits, which is cool). Out back, I want to put a greenhouse on the concrete pad, and then I'll put in a fenced kitchen garden, and an aboveground saltwater pool. We don't want it to be too crowded in the backyard, but we're all pretty set on a pool, so somehow it will all fit and look awesome. And I need to get my husband plenty of tools, because this time, I want my TARDIS tool shed. We did visit the house again for its inspections yesterday, and we already received the overall report back. She needs a little help in a few areas, but we'll fix all of that, except for what we will ask the owners to take care of. But, honestly, not much could pull me away from this house. When I'm there, I FEEL LIKE I am in Oregon. I feel like I'm in the Pacific Northwest. The backyard is LUSH and GREEN, and full of all of the plants I already love. The front yard is just as landscaped as the back, and has a curved driveway leading right up to the front door, just like Rosemary Hill -- just on a much smaller scale. Now we will have a home base for all of us so we can finally relax, settle in, and get on with our lives, and THAT is a freaking miracle. We have felt like we have been in limbo this entire past year. Like, the rug was ripped out from under us, we landed somewhere where nothing is familiar or normal, and we have no friends. So, we are moving to the much larger town with crazy things like Target and Books-A-Million and multiple coffee shops. Real food I can eat when I don't want to freaking make every single thing I eat, Office Depot, omg... REAL grocery stores... our new home is two minutes from a Harris Teeter. The first time I went in there, I nearly cried. I couldn't believe how clean it was and that the produce department was FULL. Joanns, Sam's Club, and some really good restaurants. Raleigh is also going to be only 45 minutes away, which is super awesome, because Raleigh has literally everything. I can get my business going, the girls can figure out what they want to do, and Charley can continue his job knowing his family isn't dying on the inside. After closing, we'll first paint bedrooms so those are ready for furniture. We will schedule the movers to move the large furniture, freezer, and the beds, plus whatever furniture doesn't fit in our trucks. We started filling a storage unit weeks ago that ended up only being 3 minutes from the new house, so that's awesome. I've been packing, and now the girls started packing, and Charley packed his extra things already and has been working on everything in the garage. We have a few weeks to get the rest of our things down there, and we're doing a lot to this house to get it ready to sell. Then, we close, paint, move, clean this house top to bottom, then it can go on the market. We secured a bridge loan in order to get us into the next house first, so we can empty this house, because there is no way I wanted to try and show a house with six cats and six cat pans. Nope. No way. LOL Then we will be in the new house, and this house will go to the next person, and everything will be groovy. They aren't native, but I will be adding a few forsythias to the front and backyard. Also, I didn't see any roses, so I need to ask about the deer population, because that is for sure just deer candy. I have one plant here I need to dig up and bring with, I hope it survived the winter. I brought it from Oregon! My moon flower. Oh! And the neighbor next door has chickens! We heard them the first time, and then this time, we saw one pecking in their front yard! I feel like I'm starting to wake up, and that's also a good thing. I even bought an office chair for my soon-to-be office. Woo! Oh, until the bonus room is finished, I'll be using half of the front living room downstairs as my office. But, I will still need a chair! Happy times!!! Outside Forsythia CottageThe kitchen!!!!The bonus room... soon to be my studio!I can't wait to transform this room. We'll find a contractor and get started -- insulation everywhere, drywall, outlets and lights, new flooring.... and then we'll carve out a nice bedroom and stub out a bathroom at the one end, then any guests will have a nice, private spot. And I'll someday have a bathroom upstairs too. Maybe we will be able to get the bathroom done with the rest of the work... we'll see!
Thanks for reading!! Cynthia Ready to start writing and making art every day! It's still in the 80s here at the end of October in eastern North Carolina, so on Saturday, husband suggested heading to Medoc Mountain, about 30 minutes south... elevation 325'? 375'? Anyway, not much. ha... But I thought, "Maybe there will be a view?? Maybe?" No. No view... but the weather was great, 80 with a breeze... and the bugs weren't bad except at the "top." We have discovered that, along with soybeans, sweet potatoes, and tobacco (gross), we are surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton. We have never seen cotton growing, so when the countryside burst wide open in a storm of white over the last few weeks, it was magical and amazing and looked just like snow. This field is behind my husband's office, and we've gone twice -- once to get the first photos at sunset, and then again a week later at sunrise when Jack Frost had come to town. The fields went from cotton bolls to snowballs. It has a very complicated history for sure, but we all still need cotton. Now machines run through the fields picking all of this pretty fluff and packing it tight in cubes and rolls to head to the factories where our pretty, pretty fabric is made. When I moved here, one of the things I wanted to do was see if I could keep a sourdough starter alive. I had no clue how to start one, but when I read that I could start my own instead of getting it from someone, I decided to try that. Well, it worked!!! It took 12 days of feeding and watching and checking on Betsy, over there on her little shelf in the living room, before I saw the bubbly action I needed to see to know she was alive, but I did it: I feel like I should be sharing the discard, but then I'd have to talk to local people! haha OMG
Halifax is a tiny little town just south of Roanoke Rapids and apparently there was a lot of historicalness going down there in the past, but today we focused on, well, today. I had been through this town when I visited in May, so I knew there was an art studio, nice shop, and three restaurants, so today I took the girls to check it out and it was wonderful. Definitely something for the YAY side of the list. The next two days we have so many deliveries coming, we won't be able to go much of anywhere except the store for more ice cream and cream for our coffee. #Priorities
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