Monday, November 4, 2013

New Beginnings.

If I thought that the last post we made here was embarrassingly late, this one deserves a hearty apology and a batch of home-baked cookies. It's been over seven months since our last update, and although a lot has happened in that time, we could have at least made an attempt to post a note here and there.
I'm sorry, truly.
Now that the dust has settled and we're nesting in for the winter, we can devote a bit more time to burbling about what's been happening with us.

As mentioned above, a lot has occurred over the last several months, not least of which was moving into our own home here in the wild woods. Yes, for the first time in our lives, we have a house all to ourselves, and a nice swatch of land that we can cultivate into garden spaces. This has been a dream of ours for quite some time, and it still doesn't feel completely "real" yet. My guess is that it'll take some time for everything to really sink in; right now, it's still very fresh and exciting, but every so often we'll turn to one another and ask whether we are , in fact, actually here, or whether we'll wake up from this. It's beautiful and overwhelming at turns, but in the loveliest way possible.


Although we've been in our new home for a few months now, we've only begun to scratch the surface as far as decor is concerned. We have a general aesthetic in mind for the house, but it'll take some time to amass the bits of furniture, artwork, and other accoutrements that will make our house truly "home". The building has only stood for about thirty years, so we'll be adding bits outside to give it a more Victorian/Edwardian feel, and the interior decor is a combination of that era's influence, and a reflection of our woodland locale.

At the very least, we've painted over the hues chosen by the previous owner, as they were eye-searing beyond measure. Who paints a kitchen terracotta and yellow? Honestly.
The hues we've chosen for the house have been drawn from the forest around us: river stones, tree bark, moss, lichen, sky, stream, wildflower. The kitchen is white and blue, while the living room is white, grey, and mossy green. Our bedroom is all shades of stone and bark, while N's studio is a manly, woodsy place—iron, wood, loam. My studio is an airy aerie in white, aqua, pale pink, and light grey, and the garden outdoors... well, those will have personalities all their own.


We spent the summer sanding, painting, and fixing things, and the winter will be a time for nesting and planning: those gardens will require a lot of work, and between establishing food-bearing trees, creating raised permaculture beds for perennial vegetables, and scattering local wildflower seeds, we'll certainly be kept busy! For now, let's just hope that the windowsill herb garden grows in the weak winter light, and that the deer will return to visit us over the cold half of the year.