Keeping occupied

So, this time last year, Lady Kirsten and I decided to go house-hunting. We wanted to stay in the area but I wanted an easier ride to work in the morning. In Wiltingen, it took me 90 minutes to get to work and 2 hours to come home, which i didn't mind, considering I don't go every day and we lived in a water mill in the middle of some stunning countryside. Moving was always going to be hard, considering the nature of the place we lived in, so wherever we went would really have to be tip-top.
We didn't have long to wait. I ran a search on the main property website for the area, and found an absolute beauty in Saarburg. It was the very first place we viewed in the late autumn and we would compare it against any other property we looked at thereafter.

It was on a fairly steep incline, but the views over the valley and surrounding hills was memorable, and the roofed terrace (seen above on the right of the house) was perfect to survey the natural landscape all around.

The downside was that even though it bordered on the forest, there were some busy roads nearby, including a spaghetti-style slip-road system that is soon to be adapted, and the planned building of a supermarket only a minute away, with all the palaver of construction and destruction. However, the bus to Luxembourg leaves from only 200 metres from the front door.

The most poignant thing about the house was that it had a certain dignified air, as if to say "like me or loathe me, this is what you get". And considering its most advantageous selling price, there were no major renovation issues, which baffled me and still leaves me wondering why, come the following spring, it was still on the market. Looking at other houses of various shapes and sizes in the meantime, nothing compared to that one, and so we put in a bid for it. It was the best decision we made.

On the top floor are four light and spacious bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway, on the upper ground floor is a huge kitchen, a large dining room, a living room and a smaller room doing nothing, so we converted it into a library. The ground floor is a second residence, which helps to pay a large chunk of our mortgage, and behind that, built into the land, is a cellar large enough to use it for washing clothes, storing a huge amount of boxes and housing the gardening equipment until I built a garden shed.

The roofed terrace is a delightful place to sit and we decked it out with hanging baskets filled with long-lasting plants. We added some further plants and even tomatoes and peppers, which produced a small but rewarding yield in September. The main work was in the garden and upper meadow, where there is a huge empty space, just waiting to be landscaped. This will not happen overnight, but I wanted to get things going this summer and I built a shed (as I mentioned), although not one of those you hammer the panels together, like there is already in the garden (see photo below), but rather a cabin-style shed where you bang in the planks so they overlap. It may take longer, but it is a satisfactory feeling to know you built it yourself. I had to shift a lot of earth, as the incline of the hill would have not been a wise place to build foundations. With that soil, I made a heather rockery and kitchen garden.

We hope to stay here for many years.

Uphill:

A balloon passes overhead. Our nut trees (right of photo) provided the local deer with a huge Sunday breakfast one morning in October.

Building a garden shed:
Lady Kirsten deciphering the instructions for putting on the roof. The hardest part about building the shed was shifting the soil beneath to level off the ground. I filled the hole with fine gravel to keep it dry.

Taking a short break:

Me, discussing a shisha break with Iman, our renter. As an Iranian descendent, he has access to some of the finest flavoured shisha tobaccoes in Germany.

The completed shed:

Roof on, wood stained and heather rockery planted, I built a bird house with the remaining pieces of plank. It has become a focal point of our cats' entertainment. I still need to affix the guttering to the shed and place the blue barrels below to provide water for the plants come the spring.

Old and new:

The old shed will be sawn up and used to heat us up in midwinter. In its place will come a pergola and seating area for us to relax with a good book, some cheese, wine and bread. The grass area between the heather rockery and the wheel barrow will become a terrace next year.

Deer in the garden:
We are frequently visited by all sorts of wild animals, including a trio of deer one Sunday morning. I spent about 45 minutes admiring them in our and next door's gardens, munching on the grass. My admiration turned a little sour when I went outside later on in the day and found they had eaten literally every living and growing thing in the garden. They were great substitutes for my hedge trimmers but they could have stopped when they got to the worcesterberry, raspberry and blackberry plants...
Still, it has solved one problem for me: I know what I'll be cooking for dinner on 25th December now.