Blog Break

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well and enjoying the summer.

It's time for me to talk about what has been keeping me so busy this Spring and Summer.   As you know sometimes things happen in life that changes what we thought would be our path.    As a result of past events we found it necessary to sell our home in the country to downsize (or right size as some have pointed out) to a home on a small property in town.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with living simply with less upkeep, it's been an emotional roller coaster ride and a ton of work the past few months.  We've put our heart into our home & property and it makes us sad to leave our mature trees, gardens and nature.  However we feel positive about living closer to conveniences, a new adventure in a different lifestyle and making new memories. 

We have massive gardens where we currently live and the new owners cannot look after so many.  Therefore we helped them by removing a large 2,000 square foot garden.   There are still many left for them to enjoy along with the 80 trees that we planted.    Sadly the garden that is now 'gone' is the one that you see on my current blog header.    I dug up at minimum 500 clumps of plants for family, friends and friends of friends.   My husband spent 12 hours cutting down rose shrubs and other friends took away the fence & arbor materials.     I have potted & nurtured 40 large containers of plants to bring with us.  We will create new much smaller gardens at the new home.   Fortunately I enjoy designing gardens and have a 'blank canvas' to work with. 

The new house is 1/2 the size so we've had the huge job of purging 'stuff' that we've accumulated over the years along with trying to keep up with the yard work, downsizing the gardens, working on minor home repairs, cleaning nooks & crannies and of course all the packing.   The emotional stress has been draining and at times I've been fatigued and haven't been in a creative mood but some days it gave me a stress release.

My craft 'studio' will be packed up very soon so I will not be able to create or blog for a while.  However I do have scheduled blog posts in August.   I will have even less time than I've had lately to visit blogs as we pack, move, unpack, create new gardens, prepare a new craft room etc..  Also we are having trouble with our current Internet service, it's been very slow and at times I cannot open blogs.  I'm sorry that I haven't been around much to see my fellow bloggers beautiful designs.   Hopefully our service at the new home will be much faster.

I also find it necessary to take a break from the Chocolate Baroque & Designs by Ryn Design Teams.   I'm lucky that both Glenda (of CB) and Ryn are kind and understanding in giving me the time.   I'm already missing 'working' with my kind and talented  'teamies' and look forward to being back with them in the Fall. I've also missed joining into the challenges over at Art Journal Journey for the past several months.

Here is the garden as it was:

And here it is during the work with the backhoe.  It was not fun to have huge equipment around the property but it was necessary, we could not physically do it ourselves.  Sadly a lot of plants were taken away but hundreds found happy new homes :)  Why did we do this for the new owners?  Partly because we already needed to have heavy equipment in for a minor repair (minor repairs can be major work) and also part of the agreement was to move out a huge pile of sod and plants that accumulated in the back corner over the years.  We knew they were going to take out this garden so we helped by giving tons of plants away and keeping some for ourselves.    

Take good care everyone, enjoy the rest of your summer and your artwork.   As I mentioned I will have scheduled posts over the few weeks and then it will be quiet here :(

Shirleyx