"...I'm gonna swing this song...just one more time...when I come by..."

Buying my first house was one of the very best, yet scariest things I ever did.

Owning a house to my mind was just the best thing a person could do.

To never be homeless? To never have to think "I guess I could just sleep in my car." was a safety net of incomparable measure.

Although I hit my very lowest point in life while I still owned the house, I still credit that act as helping facilitate every decision I made after.

I think in Zok's life plan owning a house was always a 'given'.  Somehow even though our lives were so different, many of our values are the same.

So we like to play the 'Let's move to the bush (country). Let's invest in land. Let's get a place and rent it out.' game.  This is a marvel, like the 'winning the lottery' game, and idea that we could invest outside of our house. But, I have to say that my time of life and place where I live has changed my outlook.  I have seen huge changes in the world and the cities that I have lived in.  Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and even here in Hobart.  People keep multiplying, cities keep growing, industries I could have imagined are thriving and the zombie plague has yet to arrive.

By playing this game, I, of course, am also constantly realizing some truth or another I had over looked. 

A block of land in the middle of very little here means taking out your own garbage, digging your own water source or living off rain water, paying to bring in power or living off the grid.  Creating and/or paving your own road.  A 2+ hour trip to get to a movie theater or large store of any kind.

Also of course by spending so much time in Stockholm, Hobart no longer seems crowded the way it did when I was here all the time.  Also the attraction of not having streets lights, or people on all sides, and more wildlife and bird life is strong as well.

And yet...I am attracted to this development we went to look at- not up the coast but down the coast.  It is a bit of a peninsula, so in fact the area looks back to our area, but it is about an hours drive.

The area is called 'Sloping Main' which is not nearly as cool as Pirates Bay or nearby 'Doo'ville which has all 'Doo' names like the food truck 'Doo-liscious'.

It has large blocks but already has a road and power poles. Of course I like the high lots because really if the Zombies do arrive there is a tactical advantage to having the high ground.

 

...like a clock whose hands are sweeping...

Öland is an island- 137 km long and 16 km long.

At one point in history the island had over two-thousand windmills.  They were apparently a sign of status.  The island is also a Unesco World Heritage site because the farm land has been in contiuous use from the Stone Age.  Although the Loppis shops here were a let down, and the day was grey with continuous drizzle, I wanted to try and find at least one-hundred of the remaining four-hundred windmills.

Zok did not agree with this plan.

True, many of the windmills were similar in model, as if someone came along with a windmill kit that could be flat-packed and delivered for assembly IKEA style.

We were not staying here but continuing on to catch a ferry from Oskarshamn to Gotland another island.

 

The day after the day after Christmas

Truthfully summer in Tasmania is a very subtle sensation-
when I wake up I am not cold, I can wander around the house and yard with my feet uncovered. I do not have to light a fire.
I can not leave the house without a sweater or shawl. If I think that the day is warm and I can sit on the porch, reading and letting the sun work its way though the sunblock, I may well be let down by a sudden cold wind, or a cloud formation covering the sun.
I have a house guest who also likes to read, and we have been chased from the yard to the porch and back into the house again by these continuing changes of weather.
I recall Californian summers to be three solid months of blue skies and high temperatures, I remember Washington summers to be a least a month in length, Tasmania is too crafty to be so easily defined.

"...I think you have me confused for a better man..."

Here are the plants grown together and joined by weeds.

Sure this looks like the photo above but actually this is about five hours of weeding and pruning away from that photo.

Here is what the area looks when it has been cut back, in the dry of summer.

Here you see the same corner before I went away.

The yard is trying to kill me.