Summer 2021 was a year of harvesting and beginning to enjoy the hard work put into the house. As I said before there was still a lot to do and Gardening was a big part of it but after a long break we were eager to get going again. The advantage of not being able to continue with all our plans was that we had time to re-evaluate and look at our designs and to make changes. We also could prioritise, at this time we had decided that the swimming pool could wait, but considering that our youngest daughter was visiting with friends and the temperature was soaring towards 40^oC we needed something!

We decided on a temporary swimming pool which was an absolute godsend!

When the house filled up with our youngest daughter and 7 of her friends they spent their days lazing on the patio and in the swimming pool!

Needless to say the kids all absolutely loved it here and have booked a another week this summer! Will the swimming pool still be here… to be continued ……

Volleyball and Cycling

Being avid volleyballers they decided a holiday wouldn’t be complete without a volleyball net and promptly installed one at the bottom of the garden. At least they could cool off after a game.

A couple of the boys chanced an early morning cycle ride with Johan, apparently the hills nearly finished them off but they made it and were rewarded with a cold beer at the end of the ride!

Plans, plans and more plans

We moved plants around, made borders, changed them, bought trees, relaxed and generally planned the next stage. There are times in our lives when we plan, plan, plan and never seem to get further than the plans as there are always reasons not move on to the action stage, as I get older I see a lot more obstacles and think of reasons not to do something – overthinking lurks in the shadows and usually becomes larger than life the minute my head hits the pillow. I have numerous tricks to stop the overthinking, my favourite one is every time I find myself thinking, or worrying about something I quickly, figuratively speaking, close the lid on the thought, when it works it SO rewarding and even though I promise the thought, as I slam the lid shut that I will open the lid the next day by then I have usually forgotten what it was that seemed such a big deal.

The world only exists in your eyes, You can make it as big or as small as you want.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Its amazing isn’t it how one thought leads to another and before you know it you are thinking of something completely different to the first thought that popped up in your head, it would be amazing to get a printed data sheet of all your thoughts and how you got from one thought to the other, just imagine 24 hours of thoughts, there would be thousands, probably millions of thoughts bouncing around your brain at one time.. where do they go? Is there at the end of the day a place where they congregate and say “well, this thought needs to be explored in a dream the rest we can throw out until another day”.

What next?

We started building the house in 2017, 4 years later with many up and downs we have started enjoying the fruits of our labour but we set ourselves a few goals for 2022.

It promised to be another busy year!

And we weren’t disappointed.