LAST WINTERFOLD DAYS

It has been very quiet on the blogging front for me as there has been so much going on here...and still is! We sold our beautiful farm at auction about three weeks ago and were given five weeks until settlement and the big move. We could have asked for more time but we were lucky to sell and when there was pressure on us to move before Christmas we decided it was best to go. As I have said, when a bandaid is pulled off it hurts whether it is pulled off quickly or slowly and this is the case here. So we move in eleven days! Tomorrow we have a clearing sale...farm equipment, fence posts, in fact lots of leftover bits from general farming pursuits. Then there are household goods, all the detritus one saves because it might come in handy one day. I cannot believe how much we have laid out in the front paddock and on our verandah hoping that someone might think they can do something with it.

We hoped, hoped, hoped to have bought somewhere in the local town where we have decided to settle but it wasn't to be and so we have two moves ahead. Things to be packed to store and things we will use in the next few months and things I no longer have any use for. So the brain is working over time and I'm writing this for some light relief! Even finding a suitable rental was very difficult but much to the family's and my delight oit has a POOL! Not such delight from the husband who will be the one in charge of the cleaning....and who doesn't swim! The summers here are usually long and hot so having a pool sounds delicious!

I think I am saddest about leaving my garden and all the beautiful birds we have here, the thrushes that have been surrounding us with their lovely clear notes, the tiny pardalottes that have nested where the roof connects with the bricks outside my bedroom window...I see then darting in and out as I sip my morning cups of tea, the babies chirping with their need to be fed. The kookaburras and the cockatoos with their raucous cacophony night and morning. And in the garden all the 'bits' that have come from family and friends, all the memories that are signified with special plants. A beautiful Angel Face rose my brother gave me years ago before he died and has always been a special favourite. The Paul Cezanne rose and the Remember Me rose given when our beautiful son-in-law died. Then the new favourite, Double Delight which delights me every time I catch the perfume drifting past me.

And then there are the trees we have planted and nurtured, watching them grow and create the shade we need. The persimmon tree with its glorious fruit followed by the Autumn colours and the crepe myrtle beyond, one of the biggest I know, always a delight.

The persimmon is two or three times the size shown here and it was such a baby when planted....

I could keep meandering through my garden with you , showing you more and sharing more memories, because after all it is the memories that count, that warm the heart always.

I'm not complaining about our move, we have been incredibly blessed to live here, to have been the custodians of Winterfold. We know it is the right time for us to go and that we are to have a new and hopefully exciting road to take, a different direction. And we have each other, how lucky is that?

Actually I feel as though I am never going to whinge again...one of my oldest and dearest friends has breast cancer and another emailed me to say she had a nasty fall and broke her neck in two places, not  paraplegia thank goodness but still very serious, she also has a heart problem and was to have  an operation with the neck brace in place a few days ago. 

And a happy photo to leave you with, grandchildren and uncles/dads leaping from one of the rock walls!