I am cherishing everything now. (Why do we only seem do that when we are letting things go?) I said in one of my latest blogs that I was going to sit in my garden. It hasn’t disappointed.
Last night RD and I sat in our pyjames with a beer and a wine and we watched this bright gold early Harvest Moon rise.
I could not catch the colour of the moon, but as the sky changed colour it was a beautiful site in that inky blue sky, as it rose over the valley.
As we both sat with tears in our eyes , the bats whizzed around the trees in our garden, and the owl hooted from the distance. (I like to think it was the owl we had saved all those years ago).
I turned to RD and said ‘we may feel as we do now, because we are leaving. But if we were staying would we still be cherishing this moment?’ I believe the answer would be ‘no’, because we humans sadly hold on to something when we know we are going to lose it. It’s not always the best thing to do.
Life has adventures on every corner, if you are brave enough to turn the bend.
To memories of Harvest Moons, and owls and bats, trees in our garden and being blessed to have experienced it.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
So here we are, having a glass of wine and a beer in our home. I am back in France.
We have just signed the documents agreeing to sell our home. It’s time to move on.
I have shed a little tear, I am sure there will be more to come. But for now, despite the stormy weather, it is good to be back in my ‘for now’ home.
Tomorrow we are having a BBQ for all our fabulous French friends and neighbours, and two English friends that we didn’t realise were there, all the time. Here is to a party to celebrate the last five years.
Just a little teaser, I used to swim in this river, right by the bridge.
And I spent many hours under a bridge just like this catching tiddlers in the glen that flowed down from the mountain.
Ireland has so much to look forward to.
Exciting times. But right now, I am going to enjoy the hear and now.
Rosie
Oh! Just to make you giggle our buyers thought we are religious! I think it may be my vintage bleeding heart statue of Jesus.
You can call us many things but religious is not one of them.
😉
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
Nearly three years ago I wrote this post in which I said how I come to realise how much our home had replenished me. How a house is not a home, it us the people in it. I will need to remind myself of this in the next three hectic months, because we have sold our house. Only the second viewers have placed an offer that cannot be refused.
Life really has shown us the way as we had always said it would. It is time to move on.
The feeling is bittersweet.
RD and I were talking the other day and we both cried. I said how I had realised now, how we had struggled for so long living here that at times we had failed to see what we really had. But then I look back over my old posts and I know that is not the case. There has been do much positivity, and we have truly learned to value the simple things.
The opportunity to move on, given to us so quickly is bittersweet because we had yearned to live in France for so long, it was our dream and now our dream has ended.
But time to start a new adventure.
I cannot wait to go home on Friday and sit in my garden with those I love.
Thank you all for your kind and wonderful comments.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
So here it is. Our house in all her glory, now for sale on the internet and generating a lot of interest.
Why wouldn’t it? The location of our house is second to none, set amidst the rolling valleys of the Parc Normandie, at the very end of a dead end road, with no traffic.
God she is going to be hard to replace (a small tear came to my eyes then.)
But as I am writing this I know that selling up and moving is the right thing to do. I cannot be away from my family constantly on a long term basis, and I will have been away this time for weeks. Albeit with a fabulous client.
Even in paradise we all need money to live.
Over the five years I have been writing this blog I have written about change so often, and how we should not fear it, because it is the only constant we have. So I know this change is right for us, using all we have learned from this adventure to enhance the next one.
And boy! Have we learned a lot!
But I know that with my current job I will only have six weeks at home for the remainder of the year, and for me that is too long away from the ones I love. I also believe that life is too short.
I know that there is a high probability that this is the last summer in this beautiful place. That when I left last time would be the last time I saw the bales of hay waiting for collection from my bedroom window.
That it will be the last time we will sit in the late sunshine, drinking wine and watching the swifts teach their babies to catch the insects in the evening air.
So when I go home I am going to enjoy every sunny evening for the two weeks I am home. I am going to cherish that ‘here and now’. I will catch the sunrises…
and I will raise a glass to the sunsets.
And I will remind myself that Ireland will offer me more of the same, only different.
Poignant Times
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
The For Sale Board is on the gate, marking the beginning of the end for this adventure.
As I sit here in my garden writing this post, the pool is bubbling away, and it’s currently just over thirty degrees at 7pm in the evening, RD is just doing a little shopping and the Harley Pup is patiently waiting to be splashed.
The bees are buzzing around. butterflies are fluttering by, our garden looks lovely, all ready for the pictures that have been taken to sell this house and take us away from here.
Five years ago I dreamt of what I am doing right now, writing a blog in the sunshine, with a light summer breeze, listening to the pigeons, surrounded by tranquility . This place has healed me.
It seems strange that the For Sale sign is now in place.
We have deliberated long and hard, we know it is the right decision, but on an evening like this evening, it feels a little poignant.
Cherishing the moment.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
These are the flowers that our lovely neighbours bought for us because we had invited them to a soiree last night. As I sit here this evening I still have a slight hangover after much hilarity was had. But more than anything I feel a sense of poignancy.
I have written often about our neighbours, mainly Mark and Nadia and their friends and ours, Michelle and Martigne, how they have helped us so much in our time here. We have been truly blessed.
Last week we were approached by them regarding the option of buying the barn and the land behind it separately from the house. We fully understand why: they are concerned re who buys our house, and whether they will allow Mark to park outside the barn, as we do, or will put a fence up, or quite simply not be part of the community as RD and I have been.
Our attitude has always been that we are blessed to live in France and as such should do our best to get on with our French neighbours. When in France do as the French do.
Last night we invited them all to a soiree, only this time we also invited Lucie and Manu our other set of neighbours. They have always been friendly but reserved (or is that us that have been reserved? As the good old British tend to be at times!) We had a fab night and our lovely neighbours told us how they would be so upset to see us leave. in fact they do not want us to leave, they want us to stay. They told us how they were so happy in how we had fitted in with the community and they are now so worried about who will live here next.
I cried, they cried, I have tears in my eyes now. What a fabulous thing for people to say to you, to feel about you, and I know that RD also feels very sad.
The Barn sale probably won’t come off, but that doesn’t matter we still had the opportunity to spend time with these people who have become our friends. So much so we are having an end of summer BBQ at the end of August.
I think it is fair to say that both RD and I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility. RD said today how our decisions make such an impact on others, like ripples in a pond.
I have just written in my journal..
‘A lot of change, a lot of things to consider, a lot of people’s lives will be affected when we move. I just didn’t realise how much. ‘
Rosie
Wiglet, letting Marc know she loves him
If you think others will like my blog please share
So on the back of the last post from what will be a series of posts reflecting on what we have learned from the past, here is the first post from the series about the Here and Now.
I am so aware of the fact that this may well be our last summer here (I never assume a definite I am not doing the driving ) but I know it’s pretty likely. We have taken the weather for granted over the years, the sunny mornings and the fabulous views, and have often sat inside drinking our tea; but today the morning is beautiful and we are sitting on our terrace, drinking our tea, and treasuring this moment.
It’s so easy when we make plans for the future to jump headfirst into them and forget about where you are, and enjoying the moment. I know it is something I do, and by writing a series of blogs about enjoying what we have here, and all the poignancy that entails now we know we will be saying goodbye, I hope will keep me grounded.
Enjoy your day. It’s all you have.
Rosie.
July 2020 Pays de Loire
If you think others will like my blog please share
Seven years ago I took this photograph of the pretty sundial we used as a table at a beautiful gite we were vacating in. I still love this picture today, one of tranquillity and stillness.
At the time I took it I was just about to move from an incredibly stressful job to what I didn’t know at the time would be the job from hell. I didn’t realise just how stressed I actually was at that time, so when I then became ill with stress the following year, to us the obvious place to live in France was the region where this picture had been taken. We made our decisions based on how we felt at that time.
Now, after living in this place for five years the people who ran the gite have moved back to England, in fact many people who we have met along the way have moved back to England.
Over the years we have come to realise that is part of an adventure like this: change, not for ‘change sake’, but because we evolve, and part of evolving means that we move forward to pastures new. At the time we make our decisions they are the right ones at that moment in time, based on how we feel at that moment in time. Just as we did after our fabulous holidays in this region.
When RD and I moved here we were both burnt out, literally. My brain had been addled dealing with high levels of human emotion every day. I needed peace, I needed to step out, I needed tranquility and this place offered us all that; and it healed me. But moving on I am better, despite only realising and accepting recently that I will never go back to the person I once was; and as I write that I wonder why I thought I would, because you can never go back, you can only ever go forward.
So now we are healed we have also learned that we are not ready to retire, and we are not ready to slow down quite this much. Going back to work, and interacting with some of the fabulous people I have met has also shown me that. RD has realised that he misses the interaction with other colleagues, he misses working as part of a team. We miss nightlife, and having the opportunity to interact fully in our community.
Language is a barrier, never believe that it isn’t. Language dictates, to a certain degree, the people who you have to interact with, as opposed to those you want to. I cannot emphasise enough the huge impact not knowing a language will have when you undertake an adventure like this. There is an upside also though: you can (I won’t say will because some never try) learn the fabulous art of improvisation, and the other fabulous art of mime! And the best people we have met during this time have been French people.
So seven years ago, when the picture in this post was taken I was a very different person (not least that I can speak a little French now). I was fighting against my feelings of fear and entrapment. Going on this journey has stopped all of that, I have learned who I was, and who I am, and I know there is a ‘who I am going to be’ somewhere in the future.
More to come.
Rosie
My home in the evening sun
If you think others will like my blog please share
It’s been a busy few weeks. New propositions have been raised regarding our barn and the terrain behind it, meaning we might be in a position to move sooner than we thought. Watch this space, life will show us the way.
The thing that has been the most exhausting has been the mental acrobatics required when considering a move to another country: the logistics so to speak. This time we want to ensure that we use the lessons we have learned to make the best decisions we can.
But for now, after early apero’s with our neighbours we are going to chill before a busy week. In twenty-five degrees plus, my sun-bed is calling me for a snooze.
I am sorry I have been away so long, my brain had to recoup, on to our new adventure.
Rosie
If you think others will like my blog please share
