A Beginning, At Last

The first morning here belonged to small things: a kettle on the boil, cool tile under bare feet, and the birds singing in the early light. After nearly five years of paperwork and pressure, keys and questions, we set two mugs on the outside table and listened to the grove wake around us. It felt like a door opening, not just to a house, but to a life we'd been building in slow motion.

When we first found this place it was more ruin than home. Roof tiles loose, land overgrown, water uncertain. We thought the hard part would be the work you can see: fixing the roof, mending fences, pruning the trees. Instead, it was the invisible kind: waiting for a habitation license, inching through forms, learning patience one phone call at a time. There were months when it seemed like we were tending a possibility, not a place.

The grove kept its own counsel. Trees grew ring by ring. The birds came and went as did the water in the stream. In the margins, we learned the slow skills this land asks for: how and when to tend the trees, how to rebuild a wall that will outlast your temper, how to be satisfied with a clean tool rack and a tidy terrace at the end of a day.

A few things the wait taught us:
- Seasons matter more than schedules.
- Small wins are not small: one sound wall, one healthy sapling, one full tank.
- Neighbours are a kind of infrastructure.
- The work is the reward as often as the result.

Now that we can finally live here, the house is still plain, there are no doors or kitchen, and many projects wear their temporary faces but the essentials are beautiful: morning light over Monsanto, the path woven by animals, the rustle of the trees in the soft wind.

I didn't start this blog during the waiting because it felt too uncertain to write in the middle of it. Now I want to gather the stories from those years and set them alongside what's happening today: field notes from the grove, restoration progress, the harvests, and the small wildlife encounters that keep us humble.

If there's something you'd like to read about first whether it's the terraces, the harvest, the water system, or daily rhythms, tell me. I'm glad you're here.