stef makes.art creative projects by stephanie paulantis

On the Move Again

June 19, 2013

The last few days have been pretty busy. We moved. Again! This is the fourth time we’ve moved the vardo and let me tell you, it has not gotten any less nervewracking watching my house be towed across the county.

vardo-hitched-up moving-the-garden

Of course it arrived safe and sound.

gulley

It is hard to be excited about our new circumstances without feeling like I may be conveying that I am somehow unpleased with where we’ve been living. I really enjoyed living in town with the family who we were staying with, it was a really nice little sense of community and such a cute little homestead in middle of Bellingham. I had a great time living there and am very sad to have to say goodbye. Thankfully I know we are leaving on very good terms, and I look forward to getting together with David and his family many times in the future

That being said, this new place is just fantastic and Jason and I are both very optimistic that we will be able to settle here for some time. It is going to be just fantastic for our doggies, and we have a lot of potential for things to work on with our new landlord on his property. So many potential projects!

stefs-new-home

The property we are now on abuts a large piece of city owned forest land. It is pretty dang awesome. I took the dogs up the stream just behind where we have our vardo parked, and oh my goodness they were happy as clams.

Calliope was especially excited. She’s been a little cooped up in her crate during the moving process as we have been too busy to be keeping an eye on her and making sure she’s not running off getting into trouble with the new neighbors, so when I took her for a walk today she was just tearing up and down the stream.

calliope-runs-downstream

In the next few days (or when we get back from our upcoming road trip) we’ll be building a fence around the vardo which will be super sweet, the dogs will be able to lounge around outside without us worrying that they’re off digging, barking, or pooping somewhere they shouldn’t.

I often forget that Calliope still a very young dog, and there are some things she hasn’t quite figured out yet in her limited experience. Running water is one of those things. It was pretty hilarious to watch her puzzle over this new concept. She kept sticking her nose in the stream, and then digging at it, and then just looking at it confused. It was like she thought it was something she could catch, or that there was something underneath it she could catch. She still isn’t a very strong swimmer, but she certainly loves running through shallow water. The stream is definitely an upgrade from the plastic box she would go wading in back in town.

calliope-learns-about-water02 calliope-learns-about-water01

Franki, being an old lady, stuck her nose in the air at such nonsense. She far prefers the grass out front that can get a good back scratching roll in.

franki-rolling-in-the-green

I myself am pretty impressed with the fern gulley we have as a back yard. Not too shabby. Not. Too. Shabby.

fern-gulley

What is shabby is the current state of our “front yard.” We have quite a bit of work to do to make things look nice again (even nicer than in vardo spots past!) and I am looking forward to it being done. Jason is off right now building us a little deck(!) to put out front, and soon we’ll be able to have friends over for drinks and potlucks and such, it’s going to be so nice! We haven’t really lived in places that we’ve been comfortable having friends over the last few times, so it will be nice to get back into that for the remainder of summer time. I am looking forward to covering the deck and surrounding areas with potted plants, I’m finally starting to feel confident/excited about gardening, which is a very new thing for me. We basically live at a nursery now, so I will have no shortage of experience coming up on that front.

front-deck-to-be

Hope you are all having some nice last days of spring!