Someone turned on the Lights!

The front of the house perches on a hill that I am cutting pathways into with our self-propelling lawn-mower.

It’s been hot, damp and rainy this week in Bear River. Right now everything is so lush and green that it’s hard to stay away from our house. You see, I’m supposed to be packing. We are moving for the third time in less than 2 years, but this time it’ll be for a good time and a long time! Still, I HAD to go to the house and witness the hanging of the light fixtures that we agonized over at Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Rona etc. etc. on our marathon shopping trips to Bayer’s Lake, a vast suburban shopping place outside of Halifax and over 2 hours from here. Larry has way more stamina for this kind of thing than I ever will have. I’m more like “ya, ya, ya….lets get that one and go home.” I really hate shopping and I find it hard to visualize what the thing will look like in the house. But thank goodness for Larry’s persistence in all things house related or we’d be moving into a tent in 2 weeks.

This heat wave is opening all the overgrown wild roses that border our driveway and the fragrance is powerful. The weather has also brought more of the low-tide seaweed/fishy smell from the river up to us. That combination of ocean smell and roses is what I will always associate with Nova Scotia. Walking down the driveway yesterday reminded me of  over 4 years ago when we were on holiday here. I was transported back to the conversation Larry and I had over and over. “Let’s not go back to Ontario. Why can’t we live here? Look how beautiful this place is.” It would take us 2 more years to move…and now here we are living in the picture postcard!

The blooms have just begun and already it's powerful. There are baby bushes sprouting up all over the place. I thought I'd pot some up. Would you like one?

Well, almost picture postcard. Right now besides light fixtures going in, besides floors getting sanded, besides establishing vegetable and flower garden, besides planning a pond,  a new roof is being shingled. It’s a bit of an obstacle course to get inside. But let’s do it!

The small roof on the far right is finished. The torrential rain this week has stopped the work for a while.

The electricians are busy installing the lights. Larry has started painting the walls and this greenish yellow is the very first colour. It’s in the kitchen/dining room. That large hole in the wall will fit a stove pipe for a wood stove.

When I saw the electrician using a ladder to install a light-bulb, my inner light went on and she said "by the way, did I tell you that 9 ft. ceilings have their challenges too?"

The very front room which has a door out to the front hallway, will be a studio space for fabric, computer, watercolour and all non-permanent-paint-sticking-forever-to-the-newly-finished-floors-media — for now anyway. The paintings on the walls will benefit from spotlights and there will be a fan in the middle to circulate winter wood heat or summer breezes.

While these modern lights are not in keeping with the style of the house, I like the lyrical feel of them. It's fitting for a creative space.

The front hallway will be a display area for paintings and metalwork and this fixture reminded us of the green willow tree that stands outside. We are planning on a soft yellow for the walls.

I can't wait to see the light from this pieced glass fixture at night.

The living room will be a neutral taupe colour. We thought that a couple of fans would help to circulate the heat.

Larry negotiating with Home Depot about a broken fixture: "So are you telling me that you give customer service for purchases, but not for broken merchandise?"

This is our bedroom. Ha Ha Ha. In two weeks it will be sanded and painted. Maybe.

You would never know this room had been vacuumed about 30 times throughout the last months.

There is a Sears catalogue store in Digby and they also have a few appliances: beds, ride-on lawn mowers, and TV’s. The essentials, I guess. They are really the only game in town which I don’t mind, because it means there is only one store where I possibly CAN shop and that selection is narrow. I think this really speeds up my shopping process. I don’t know where you’ve been for the last 5 or 10 years, but I haven’t been shopping for a freezer. So I was delighted to find out that they come in upright versions now. Perhaps I’m counting my chickens before they’re hatched. Or should I say “tomatoes before they have blossomed” for the only flesh we eat is fish and even that is in sharp decline. When I look into this frozen cupboard, I see tomatoes and beans and strawberries and rhubarb and homemade soup and lasagna. I see us after a long, productive, creative day in the studio, wading through the snow to the house, melting a hearty harvest soup. Eating it with slabs of home-made bread and enjoying a bowl of blueberries and ice-cream around the fireplace while the snow glistens outside.

Larry says that chest freezers are more energy efficient because they don't loose all their cold air when the lid is opened. (Cold air falls, heat rises.) However, an upright works for me ergonomically so I have to override that sound objection.

With crazy thoughts of winter in my head, I drove back to Bear River and when I turned onto the road that goes along the river, I had to stop and take this photo of a cloud forming in the river and rising to the sky. Pinch me. We’re really here!

Every day I see startling examples of nature's beauty. I am truly blessed.