What a turnaround!
3 months ago, we acquired our 1.1 hectare plot of (wild) land. It had a house-like building on it that was far from ready to move in(to). It was the land itself, all the trees and the view that we fell in love with and that is why we bought it.
Since then, @clareartista and I have been going back and forth between the house that she bought 15 years ago, in a smallish city, 3 hours away by car.
Every time we do so, we aim to move as many things as possible ( one carload at a time ) and when we return to our new land, we attempt to create order in the chaos. The idea was to make our new place live-able and possibly ( Autumn and ) Winter proof but time had other plans.
A couple of weeks ago, reality kicked in. Things became a bit too uncomfortable and we started thinking about a rental house.
Three days ago, on Monday, we finally got the key(s) of our rental. It's a cute house, located at the bottom of our village's centro storico.
And it's not only on the quiet side of this town, it's also a mere 15 minute walk from our land or a 5 minute drive.
*me timing the walk, yesterday...*
Yesterday morning, after days that felt like weeks, filled with plenty of turmoil and stress, everything seemed to flip upwards, once again.
I felt like I could breathe again ( literally and figuratively ) and I am sure @clareartista experiences something similar.
Some insights I got were the following:
We really needed this.
Having a (now) cosy, weather proof rental house makes things so much easier.
We now have:
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more space to store our things and keep them dry.
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more space to be alone, instead of always in each other's face/way.
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Now we aren't on our land full-time but also spend time away from it, the land feels even more beautiful and all the projects on it, as well as the work that needs to be done on our casetta ( aka the house-like building on our land ) in order to make it live-able, feels way more doable now.
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Plus, more importantly, the pressure ( to do it all too quickly ) is gone.
and yeah, it does help that the weather is still mostly pretty agree-able; few rainy days and not too cold, aside from mornings and evenings
and that our view isn't the shabbiest either ;^)
I could share so much more, I realize I have been a bit quiet as of late... but suffice to say that Clare and I need some much needed time to re-'acclimatize'.
It only starts to sink in now how much we have gone through (in the last year or so) together. It has been a bit of a whirlwind, to say the least.
Italy - Portugal - Italy - Portugal - Italy. Buying land, going back and forth between two places etc.
Now we are slowly setting into our rental house, we actually have the option to focus a bit more on ourselves, spend a bit more time on self-care so we can be (even) nicer to each other. I sense that it will also lead to us sharing a bit more on here.
Time will tell.
For now I hope you enjoy my photos.
I'll be back!
Sending love from Molise, Italia.
