...forgot to say...

...it's been 3 weeks since Moving Day, and Belinda's comment on my earlier post made me realise that I haven't really had time to take stock of how I feel now.

Well, I feel rather as though I was staying in a holiday cottage, one in which I was allowed to make changes. It doesn't quite feel like home, or that it's mine, and I have a slight sense now and then of playing at cottages rather than living in one, but in a way, that's rather thrilling too.

I am struggling with the untidiness and disorder everywhere, although it's largely unavoidable as rooms start to take shape but where it's still not always clear what should go where. I'm not rushing to get everything done at once, and do take lots of time out to walk the dogs, savouring the woods and the hills, the horses, the large birds, the sudden expanses of sea that can appear unexpectedly through the trees. I don't like coming back to chaos and disorder; I need at least one tranquil, orderly room, and that is evading me at present.

But I love having a garden outside my kitchen door. So far, all I seem to have done in it is to dig out and transplant things that were in the wrong place, fill bags full of weeds, fork over the rich soil. The Lovely Son pruned (with her consent!) the neighbour's unruly bay, ivy and honeysuckle, and we filled the car to the roof with green waste for the tip. My plants from Newcastle are parked in a bed at the back of the garden, and seem to be enjoying the warmth and the shelter of the old stone walls. The cats lurk in this garden; they can be seen at night, sitting hunched under the clematis, thinking their thoughts. Only Millie seems to travel abroad; she is often to be met sauntering along the road in a very local sort of way, when I walk the dogs.

I often lean out of my bedroom window and try to plan what needs to be done - the straight path that squeezes you painfully between a holly and a berberis and that needs to curve gently through the garden; the huge fuschia in front of the kitchen door that blocks the view of the rest of the garden, and that needs to be persuaded* elsewhere (but that is alive with bees at present), the matted jungle of clematis and wisteria that, unsupported, has never managed to scale the wall but falls back on itself halfway up, and that needs to be cut back, and looked after carefully next year so that it can all climb prettily.

And that's rather how I feel too: a bit of a disorganised and chaotic mess right now, but with care and attention, capable of building a serene and lovely life for myself in this funny little old cottage.

* 'persuaded' as in with an axe....