Searching

After last weekends shenanigans, I spent this weekend with my head stuck in various shrubs and trees, literally, not good for my hay fever I can tell you.  By Sunday evening I looked like a boxer who had done too many rounds with Mohammid Ali my eyes were so swollen.  The back garden is looking a lot tidier (too tidy for me) and I just have some weeding to do in the front.  The weather was glorious so I decided to take some photos for the sales blurb.  I tried to take carefully staged photos that didn't show all the wild plants (well o.k. weeds)  patchy weedy lawn, piles of wood that have deliberately left for insect homes under the trees and two ruddy great compost bins.  I was pleased with the results until I downloaded them and realised that in most of them there buckets, spades etc from our toils, bare patches and of course the compost bins and the water but.  Oh and not a flower in sight, I am clearly not a gardener!

So I can here you all asking when is she putting the house on the market?  Yes I know this has dragged on but what with working, doing all the normal things in the house and trying to find time on top of that to paint, declutter and generally pimp my house........

I guess what is also dampening my enthusiasm is that despite spending hours searching, nose stuck to my computer, I just can't find THE house, or is it THE lifestyle?  Don't get me wrong, there are some beautiful properties out there, but maybe some are just too beautiful.  Everything designed to within an inch of it's life, the sort of thing you see on the television, all glass and metal with 'landscaped' gardens, but I just couldn't see myself in them.  In my mind my future dog will be running all over the  cream carpets with muddy paws, the grandchildren will be falling down the designer glass floating stairs.  The future goat and chickens will be happily munching away in the landscaped garden.  Me, I will be wandering around in my cut offs with inappropriate holes, (the bearded one did remark that my ass was hanging out of my threadbear jeans yesterday when I was bending over weeding)  I found a beautiful cottage which was next to some woods, it looked idillic but I would be shut indoors suffering from heyfever half the year.  A property by the sea had me wavering but it had no garden at all, yes a gorgeous view but.......

I guess in my mind I can see myself in a traditional hard working shabby farmhouse kitchen, the type my farming grandparents and uncles had.  Where dogs and muddy boots were welcome, my shabby old furniture would fit right in and cats would feel at home tracking muddy paws over the back of the old sofas.  Clothes and boots by the range drying, free range grandchildren running through the house wreaking havoc with no fear of breaking anything precious.   I want some land around me but not pretty land, more wild, gorse covered land, preferably high up where I can look across miles of landscape and watch storms approaching.  I want it to be 'our' home, not completely finished to another persons taste.  I want to get my 'teeth' into something, not sit in a pretty house with nothing to do but look at it and tidy up.   How do I explain all of this to an estate agent.  Am I asking too much, do these places even exist any more, or have they all been prettified, lost their character and priced out of most peoples reach.   I will keep searching and hoping.

Not sure which photos to include, what do you think?  I've booked  a couple of estate agents to come and do a valuation next Monday eeek!!  Right off to do the second coat of gloss on the backdoor and start on the cloakroom, and yes my ass is still hanging out of my jeans, I'd better remember which way to face when I am weeding the front garden.  I don't want to frighten the neighbours.

Chickpea xx