No, this isn’t a post about birds (though I imagine one or three will be forthcoming before the year is out). As I have already mentioned in this blog, Nancy and I are living in a new place: a house in New York’s Hudson River Valley. We’re on six acres of lovely land, with fruit trees, a pond, open grass, and wooded sections. Nancy has plans for a wildflower meadow, a vegetable garden, and lots of flower beds.
Right now, though, it’s too cold for all of that, and our attention is elsewhere.
We are nesting.
This, at least is the word my parents used to describe that phase after a move when one primps and polishes and purchases things for one’s new home. And, as a birder, I like the term.
We have been painting the house, room by room, for a few weeks now. I will not go so far as to say that the people who inhabited the house before us had terrible taste in wall color. But, bless their hearts (I may have left the South, but it hasn’t entirely left me . . .), they did chose some odd hues for a few of the rooms. We saw the potential of the house right away, but we also knew that we needed to lighten it considerably. This meant having the floors refinished before we moved in. They are wide plank Yellow Pine, and they’re beautiful, but they had been stained dark. And it also meant painting those dark walls a neutral, off-white, and painting the dark red trim (yes, that’s right: Dark. Red. Trim.) a soft beige, about the color of creamed coffee.
The new floors and walls have transformed the house, which actually has lots of windows and SHOULD be nice and bright. It’s now getting there.
We are also buying stuff. Yes, before moving, we threw away a bunch of our belongings and it felt great. We were lightening our load, downsizing to fit our new, smaller home. And we don’t want to undo all of that hard work. But the fact is, we need some things. We don’t have built-in bookshelves here, so we need bookcases. We have a wonderful outside patio that will require a fire pit at some point. We left our TV and our old stereo for the new owners of the old house. We gave away three beds when we moved and need to replace two of them with sleeper sofas. And we had two incredible vacations last year, and I am eager to turn some of my prized photos into framed art — even though, as Nancy points out again and again, we already have too much stuff to cover our newly painted walls . . . .
Mostly, we are moving stuff around, figuring out where things go, where furniture and art and lighting will look best and do the most good. It’s fun. It is something we are enjoying doing together. And we are slowly turning our new house into a new home, a place in which we will be happy and comfortable for years to come.
Nesting. Feathering the nest. Like some overgrown bower birds looking for shiny, colorful new objects with which to adorn our new domain. That’s us right now. As I say, it’s a lot of fun. Which doesn’t mean we’re not looking forward to being done and fully moved in.
Have a wonderful week!!