Loving where I live

It's easy to love this place.  I feel very lucky to live here.  Our cottage is very special.  It was designed and built by an artist and his family, with their own hands, from the very laterite (coffee rock) that is all around us here.  It made up of warm brown, orange and cream stone and reclaimed timber and windows. It's full of character and soul.

It's easy to be an artist here, and a writer. My paintings are set off beautifully against the uncovered stone walls and those same walls and old windows end up in my works all the time. 

      
It's not always convenient, because we pretty much live in one room, but we love it and it's perfect for Andyroo and me and our pets. We have my mum just a walk away across the property.  We are surrounded by trees that I love. We have space to breathe.

We've done some much needed work on it to make it more comfortable, and in the process we've confirmed that we're a fantastic team at even quite big projects, like the time we hired scaffolding and completely insulated and lined the (up to then) plain corrugated tin roof. I've yet to look up at the beautiful pine ceiling we now have and not appreciate it, because we did it, and it's mellow and non-toxic,  and it fits in with the cottage just right.

That's me looking my very best while cutting the endy, fussy bits of wall boards!  This pic always makes me smile.

 We did it! Right to the top!

  

 Beautiful!

Anyway, I got to thinking the other day about how we live in places, and we love so many aspects of them, but we generally only photograph them from the usual angles, and yet some of my favorite views of our magic cottage are little ones, glimpses I only get through the trees.  So, I took my camera out and took a few pics, just in case we ever move!

This is a view I love, up through what was our horse shelter. No horses any more.  Maybe I'll talk about that one day.  I certainly never thought I would be without a horse in this life and it's meant big a change of thinking for me!  Anyway, I like this view at this time of year, when our pet Hydrangea, Pompom is flowering and being set off so beautifully by the coffee rock walls.

When I sit at that window up there to crochet or do art, I can look down this way and see the birds at the horse trough that is now a birdbath.  In the old days, I could see my horses too, but the birds are a pretty good substitute. 

This is a view of the south side of the cottage, one we only recently got back because we demolished a crappy shed that had hidden it from this direction for nearly twenty years. I love this view!  It's very fairytale!

   

By the way, that's our vegie garden there too.  My tomatoes are now twice that height and have got to the stage they always do at this time of year, where they have reached the tops of the tripod bamboo stakes and then go bonkers and grow in all directions because I don't know what to do with them!

We've been happy in other places, and I'm sure we will again one day, but for now we are very, very happy to be back here, the place where I've lived longest of anywhere, and where thinking like a creative person is easy-peasy!