Greenbackyard

Making friends in a new place

When we we were thinking about moving  we knew that we were moving into a community where we didn’t have a huge circle friends, like we do in Sydney. We told each other that it would be a priority to us to make the effort, to get to know people, to establish new connections. Then when we moved, we seemed to be inundated with just the onrush of life – work, babysitting, shopping, sleeping, talking, mowing, – arrrg it just came on like a river. I wondered sometimes when we’d ever get the chance to do what we promised ourselves we’d do. I actually wondered if we’d lost the knack – can you make new friends – do you grow out of the ability to make a new connection? Ask yourself, when was the last time you made a new friend? If you are established in one place, the answer is likely to be a bit further back than you can easily recall…

We’ve had quite a few visitors from Sydney, which has been wonderful. I’m asking people to help us dream the place into being something. We’ve got a rule with visiting friends – they have to cook us one meal, and buy us one decent bottle of red, and tell us stories as we eat and cook and dance in the kitchen. So far we’ve been lucky to have some great friends come over – and they haven’t even tumbled to our not so secret agenda to work them like slaves on the land, then make them cook us dinner ! My mum even came up (- we made her work harder than the rest of them, seeing as she’s old we need to get the best out of her while we can. Unfortunately she responded by napping frequently on the couch.)

But somehow, despite our rather poor attempts at keeping the resolution to make new friends, we’ve been meeting new people. Really different people. By chance mostly. The first people I met were the people on whose land I was trespassing. It was a baking hot day and I had been told there was a swimming spot just down the road, right past the old church. So… wandered on over to the church, wandered past it, and was happily plodding off to the river with my baby when I noticed the 3 luminous people watching me from their porch, about 2 metres away from me. Oh and a 2 year old boy, scampering after grasshoppers. How’s that for awkward introductions – “Hi I’m your neighbour – say am I trespassing? Golly? Really? I’ll just be on my way then…” We had a chat next time I came past on the way back and that was a beginning of something. Mind you, since our introductions were so odd, I wasn’t sure exactly how the three of them were related, and I couldn’t quite figure out who was the father of one of the very pregnant and beautiful women who met me on the porch. My active mind got to thinking of unusual marriage arrangements – like polygamy in the wild woods – and somehow I kinda hoped that was what was happening since for the most part, my generation is so boring in that regards.

And we’ve met other people. The postman is awesome. His name is Jim, he’s an ex-Kings Cross policeman and if you invite him in for a cuppa tea he has some very entertaining stories about the place. He delivers letter and he delivers gossip, bargain. He told me that he went over to the church one time way back because a friend of his had discovered an underground bunker full of marjuana plants 3 meters high. Apparently someone was getting enterprising with an  old underground bomb shelter. They burned it.

Also, we’ve now met our neighbours from right next door – and they are inspiring people. We went over for an afternoon beer on Australia day, and sat at an old table, watching some rather magnificent horses run in the sunlight, and lorrikeets swoop down and frolic in a nearby bird bath. Our neighbours are garlic farmers, they sit at this table every morning and peel their home grown garlic, ready for shipment to their wholesaler. That afternoon we talked about farm things – sheep, raising chickens, the postman, and frost, and they kept us laughing the entire time. These guys do things properly – they have two chest freezers, and a walk in freezer, because they freeze the produce from their land to use throughout the year. They are the real deal … and yet… as we talked it emerged that they made the same sort of journey we are making, 16 years ago. They came from the advertising world and they threw it all in, looking for something different. Their whole amazing story isn’t mine to tell, nor do i think I know enough to do it justice, but I found it comforting to think that our closest neighbours also made a journey like ours many years ago. We aren’t so isolated after all.

Evolution into management

Danielle pointed me out today to Rands In Repose’s latest post and it’s amazing how much similarity there is between what he relates and what I’ve been through in the past 5 years, from the time that I moved into management first at Greenpeace International and subsequently at Rising Sun Pictures. Mine was definitely an evolution into management, initially I was very reticent as I never believed I could really do the job, it seemed to require someone very smart and intelligent, and I didn’t see me as either

As with everything, you have to be passionate about it. I wouldn’t have lasted a minute at this if I didn’t really put all my energy in trying to be better than I thought I could. Like many of the stories that you will read from me, I initially get a lot of self-doubt but through effort, perseverance and dedication, I work around the problems. And I do believe that learning is a life-long endeavour, so I am always open to new experiences.

We made it, we saw the light of the morning…

The first night with just Zeek and myself wasn’t too terrible. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy as Zeek is not a good sleeper. We had a good run until 00:50 and after that, it was pretty hard as he woke up maybe a dozen times between then and 08:00. The worst one was at 00:50 where he seemed to have woken from a nightmare and couldn’t stop crying for 30 or 40 min … the next times, were just waking up and a 5-10 min calming him down and back to sleep.

So, we survived even though it was tough, it wasn’t impossible.

The boyz night in

Today is the first night that I will spend with Zeek by myself as Danielle is in Sydney for a birthday of a good friend of ours. In light of my post about how fatherhood is hard, I wanted to reflect a little bit before the night passes.

I have to admit, I am afraid that I won’t be able to deal with Zeek in the middle of the night when he wakes up and always gets the cuddles from mom. I was terrified about just being with him and not being good enough however so far it’s been great! We played together for a couple of hours, I fed him, bathed him, cuddled him to sleep. Everything went without a single problem, he is not in any particularly stressed up mood nor he seems to mind that Danielle is not around (which is a bit worrying for her, I guess ).

This is telling me, at least at the beginning of the night, that I worry too much and I should just do what I do, i.e. give Zeek all my love and everything will be fine. And maybe, after all, fatherhood is not hard if you have love to give…

The green spiky thing gets dissected ….

Can you guess what this weird and wonderful thing is?

So, how does it all start (part 3)

[continuing from part 2]

Our initial search for a home was focussed on Adelaide. Why? At the time I was working for Rising Sun Pictures, a great visual effects company, and our main office was located there. As a city, it has all the ammenities: good schools, parks, hills, great wine regions, good food, good coffee, great chocolate, etc. It’s still small enough that you don’t get too many traffic jams and you can cycle (except if you have to go through the Hills, then you need to be really fit). And I wouldn’t have to look for work, as I could work from our Adelaide office. Everything seemed to be perfect, right?

Well, not so. See, when we started looking for a property to buy, the “realestate boom” was starting to slow down considerably in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. Adelaide, for some reason was behind schedule, it was picking up steam there. Our budget was getting us less and less by the month. The market was growing very fast and the properties we could afford were, of course, larger and nicer than what we could have ever dreamed in Sydney however they were not The House we were looking for. None of the houses that were in our range seduced us both at first sight.

It’s amazing, sometimes one spends more time shopping for cloths, trying them on, than looking at a house that would put us in a stupidely deep level of debt. A house, you go to the opening, if you like it, you get it inspected, etc … but you usually don’t get back there too many times. How much time did we spend on houses that we then went to auctions for? Max 1.5h in total .. maybe 2h. It’s weird. And then we are expected to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.

We also had to deal with real estate agents that greeted us with: “Oh! we love you, Sydney people, coming over here full of cash” (if only he knew).

Anyway, after several months, and probably two dozen properties viewed (remember: we were living in Sydney at the time, so every time we had to check a place, we had to go to Adelaide), we selected two or three that we were really serious about (still not the dream place we had in our heads but …). We made an offer on one or two, went to auction on another one and didn’t even get close to negotiate. Maybe our offers were way low in relation to the owners expectations. Only if they knew about the sub-prime and what was to come, I am sure our offers would have been accepted. Back in May, June 2008, there was still a belief that whatever was happening in the US wouldn’t affect Australia, after all, we have the “resources boom” going on.

I have to acknowledge the generosity and warmth with which two different families (I won’t name them as I haven’t checked with them if it’s OK to put their names on my blog yet) received us every time we went to Adelaide to check places. They helped us so much, it’s a debt that we have with them and we shall treasure the beautiful moments we had with them in Adelaide.

After the last failed auction, we came back to Sydney, quite depressed frankly. We had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in travel, car rentals, inspections, fees, and still, nothing and everything seemed to be getting more expensive by the day. That night we had dinner with friends who own a property in Bellingen and had put it on the market (they need a larger home, with a kid and a second one on the way). They showed us the website of the real-estate agent and as we were browsing we saw this property, within our budget and Danielle and I looked at each other and we knew, “this is IT”. We didn’t think about what it meant to move to the country, we didn’t think about the implications, we just dreamed about a beautiful place in paradise, with enough land to allow us to drastically reduce our environmental impact, quite close to a beautiful little town in country NSW.

Many of the implications of what purchasing this place would mean, came to us later. The “tree-change” as it is known, was an after thought. We wanted a place that would allow Zeek to grow in an environment that wouldn’t be as superficial as Bondi Beach is nowadays, that would allow him to run amok and play in a park without fear of cars or needles from junkies, that we could go to work without having to drive.

We came here, inspected the property and over the following couple of days made an offer, negotiated it a little bit and it was accepted. We settled and on July 5th took possession of our place! It was very fast, very simple and straight forward.

It seems like an impulsive purchase. In a sense, I guess it was but if you come and visit us, you will see how beautiful this land is, the valley talks to you and you cannot but fall in love with this place. Everything else that’s not love and family would have to take a second order of priority.

In the next installments, I will describe what we did in order to move here. The major changes that we had to put in place, the risks that we ran and we are still running and, well, how our experience has been.

[to be continued...]

The abundance of summer

I love the abundance of summer, especially when I have a great new cook book to guide my hand when dicing and splicing. This is what our table near the window looks like:

Summer fruits and an excellent cook book

One day I will be growing fruit and vegetables just like this! In the meantime though, it’s good to sink your teeth into something fresh and sweet in the heat of an afternoon

Fatherhood is hard

As I type this, Zeek is crying his lungs out (Zeek is just 10 days over 13 months), having tantrums in the middle of the night (11.15pm). Danielle is trying to get him to calm down and go to sleep, it sounds almost like an effort in vain if one would listen to his desperate cries… You see, Zeek is teething, he’s also just started to walk and he had his first “yummies” denied to him today! I guess that would upset any of us! “I wanted sultanas instead of dinner! How dare my parents deny me such pleasures! They shall suffer” or maybe a bit more “guaaaahhh, dah! argh!” like

As I’ve walked the past 13 months of my shared life with Zeek, I’ve realised that fatherhood is really hard. The loss of the personal space, the personal time is something that for me has proven to be very difficult. I used to enjoy at least one or two hours a day just for me. Sometimes I would spent it cycling (well, when I was back in Sydney I would cycle 1h each way to and from work), sometimes I would just spend it (if you know what I mean). Not that I was doing something super productive with that time, well, maybe when I was cycling I was doing something for myself that was quite productive. Anyway, the point of this is that once Zeek came along, that time was gone… not completely of course, because I have the most wonderful partner (Danielle). I am not sure how it is for other parents however in conversations with recent fathers, I think this is a common theme.

How do you deal with the loss of that time? Do you take it while at work? Not at work?

New theme

We’ve changed the look and feel of greenbackyard … I really liked the previous one however it was getting a bit old and I thought that changing it to something a bit more “zen” like or minimalist would suit what we are doing now, with our move to the country and reducing our impact on our environment -or maybe that’s taking it too far?-. I hope you like it.

BTW the picture on the header is from an Illawarra Flame Tree on our property.

More on the mysterious green spiky thing

One of the great things about getting a big old established property is that people before us have planted trees and species we have no idea about! Here is some more information on the mysterious spiky green thing we have growing one the side of the house – I’ve taken pictures of the trunk and the leaves, as requested by the good people on the permaculture forums.

Trunk:

The tree trunk of the mysterious green spiky things

Leaves:

The leaves of the tree with the green spiky things.

More spiky things:

Do you know what these are?

here i