A Pause To Ponder-Part 1
Posted on | January 6, 2010 | 2 Comments
She picked her apples briskly, barely pausing to turn them each over and check for bruising on the other side. Into the cart they went and as she whirled around she saw me and asked, “So how are things for you?”
Stopping for a moment as I added some lettuce to the items on the counter, I simply said, “It’s complicated” instead of my usual autopilot response that everything was fine, just fine.
I didn’t know the woman well and she was simply making polite chit-chat. I had seen her in years gone by at several committee meetings for volunteers here in the village. She was being pleasant and I was being honest — things are complicated.
A very, very big adventure is on the horizon right now — but it’s going to take a lot of planning and the timing is going to need to be just right. 
Circumstances, fate, the hand of the Universal Consciousness — all of these have conspired to nudge us (no, shove us, actually!) this year into the realisation that some rather large lifestyle changes must be made as soon as possible.
The signs were there, drifting in the wind on more than one occasion in the three years since we moved up here into the country from Melbourne. But this had been the dream — to have a small piece of acreage with a view of some kind on which to build a little eco-conscious cottage upon, to have a separate art studio, to have fruit trees and an olive orchard, a veggie patch with fresh, organic goodness at the doorstep, a charmingly landscaped set of shrubbery beds around the cottage. All of those things are finally in place right now except for the landscaping around the cottage. And although we are still under construction at the back of the cottage where a large new diningroom and study is being built, we are within months of finishing!
What has truly given us the greatest amount of joy is the abundance of close friendships that we have formed since arriving here — the kinds of friends that would do anything for you — and you would reciprocate for them at the drop of a hat. And my darling Mark was relieved to not have to drive an hour or more each way in peak hour traffic each day to go to whatever building site he was working on. Working here, mainly in the village proper or the surrounding farms has been a joy since he can get into his little van and toodle off through the glorious countryside on his was to and from work each day. That is certainly more blissful that driving on a multi-lane freeway that is wall to wall with traffic!
We certainly got the view as well. Mt. Beckworth is off in the distance and our sunsets are glorious since they face straight out to the back of the property.
Certainly we are not made of the sturdy rural-living stuff that the locals are — the ones who have lived in this district for generations and who shrug off every sign of disaster or adversity — fires, floods, drought, insects, whatever — as they do what my late mother used to always advise, “Pull up your socks and just keep moving!”
The amount of maintenance on a place this size — 7 and 1/2 acres — is more daunting that we could have ever expected. I will admit that I had seriously blinkered eyes when we came up here for a look-around almost 6 years ago, and I take complete responsibility for that. What spread out before me were beautiful green fields and a splendid view — but neither of us gave a thought to who was going to mow the grass on 7 and 1/2 acres, and unfortunately that falls to Mark 99% of the time. I feel tremendously guilty for suggesting that we purchase land instead of a normal sized lot with a house in the village, but Mark too was starry-eyed about having our own piece of country heaven. If we had only known what all that would involve.
It isn’t as if we can allow the paddocks (the Aussie word for fields) to just naturalise into a wildflower meadow the way we could if we still lived in England. The dangers of bushfires racing across unmowed grass was brought home to everyone in Australia last year when hundreds of people died right here in Victoria. And the Shire Council requires that the grass be kept cut short — a mere few inches short. So for months at a time, Mark spends whole days on the lawn tractor mowing and mowing and mowing.
Now — about snakebite, construction, fires, health, and more — Part 2 continues tomorrow!
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Deborah Harmes, Ph.D.
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January 7th, 2010 @ 7:30 AM
May the force of nature be with you!
January 7th, 2010 @ 6:24 PM
Thanks Anthea!
We are thinking happy, sparkly thoughts for the year ahead.