A week and a half ago, Clare and I shook hands on buying our anziano neighbor's property. It is a plot of land with plenty of fruit trees ( cherry, apple, fig, walnut ), a fenced orto ( veggie garden ) and a cute old building on it, 2 floors and 6 rooms: old stables and storage space.
In all honesty, we had set our eyes on it, soon after arriving on our land.
More on all that in 
10 days have passed now since the agreement with our neighbor and we are getting more and more impatient.
It might not seem like a long time for many of you but our fingers are itching to move over. This probably has partially to do with the fact that there were only two weeks between us seeing our current land for the very first time and acquiring it/ 'living' there ( camping in a tent ).
This was mid- to late July last year, 9 to 10 months ago.
We are back in a tent now because we never really managed to turn the building on that plot of land into a comfortable home. It is - and has been - too much work, especially on a shoestring budget.
To be fair, we have spent a lot more time working on our land ( 1.1 hectare ) than working on that house.
In fact, we were starting to get a bit desperate...
Just the thought of having to live through another Autumn and Winter in that same building felt like too much to handle. So much so that we were seriously considering to build a natural structure, a bit further away on our land. Then again, that seemed pretty challenging too, under time pressure.
Not managing to sell our/ Clare's old house isn't helping much either.
Now we're playing the waiting game.
And Tom Petty was right. It's hard.
Waiting for money to arrive and waiting for some kind of paperwork/ a sign from our neighbor. For the actual green light to start moving things over, to call the new place and plot 'ours'.
We couldn't help ourselves, we already claimed the new place a bit.
It's literally a meter away from our current house and it is ignored anyway.
We felt that tidying and cleaning it up is the least we can do.
So we started in the fenced courtyard ( where the old man's chickens used to roam in the shade of a fig tree ), weeding and removing brambles.
We also love to sit on our new (flat) roof, where we enjoy the mountain view, with our legs and feet dangling a couple of meters above the orto.
We also spent many hours, several days in a row, clearing a great deal of brambles that were taking over a bunch of cherry trees and reaching into the much ignored vegetable garden.
In all fairness, we are looking forward to a bit more clarity - so we can really start turning the place into something beautiful - and we really can't wait to give our old neighbor some funds for the amazing gift he is leaving us.
Fingers crossed for smooth sailing and us having a cleaner, safer and more comfortable home soonish.
TO BE CONVINUED...
Zoom in to see me sitting in one of our chill spots. All photos taken by Clare
