Time to use this isolation period more productively

Genealogy has been taking more of a backseat with me of late but that is now going to change! My schedule changed in late February when our daughter finished working full time to gain a better work life balance and spend more time with the children. Which means that I am no longer the grandchildren’s daycare provider five days a week, from 8am to 5pm (our oldest granddaughter started school this year so we had her for less of the day). This has been a great move for them all and we are blessed to still get to spend quality time with them, as they are all the light of our lives! Then March came along with Covid-19 impacting lives around the world and our routines changed yet again. I have spent the past month pottering around a little aimlessly, sorting out random things around the house, finally establishing the new vegetable gardens at this house and making new plans!

We got flooded in 2010 and knowing that the possibility of it happening again was high we eventually sold our house (to a buyer who knew the risk) and purchased our current one in mid 2011 but unfortunately we have had a real rebound relationship with this current house. We had invested a lot of time and energy in the old house (the first we had ever purchased after sixteen years, nine other houses and one flat together) taking it from a bare block to a house and yard that were almost exactly what we wanted it to be by the time we sold it. We had a rooster and chickens, fruit and nut trees that were just giving us decent crops, gardens I had designed and planted from scratch and a village lifestyle that we enjoyed. The flood caused a lot of damage to the house and we lost most of our household items, so we spent months living in first a borrowed caravan on our block and then our repaired garage waiting for the insurance to be sorted out and the house repaired; before a mouse plague and the cold weather made us purchase this house quickly. The new house was an established house and yard in town, high on a hill so would never flood, was warm and had no mice so it was perfect at the time! The purchase went quickly and smoothly but left us with two mortgages until our first house was repaired and sold, which I would not recommend and would never have happened in any other circumstances! So when we started living here we were still very much invested in our old house. Eventually the repairs were completed and our former house was finished exactly how we always wanted it, the yard was also almost done to our original plans for it and the sale went through. Leaving King our bantam one eyed rooster and and the other chickens (who we gave to a neighbour, as we couldn’t have a rooster in town and we wouldn’t split them up) and garden was harder for me than leaving the house, as the whole flood and insurance process had worn us down and we had great plans for the new house. We started well doing some renovations and yard improvements but over the last almost nine years we have been regularly sidetracked away from such endeavours.
So we are finally using the self isolation rules current at the moment to become more invested in this house and yard and work out what our new normal will be for a while. Plans for a couple of new chickens, more vegetable patches, more fruit trees and a new front yard design have already been decided on and a loose schedule for getting these things done worked out. I have also decided that I am going to devote more time to my research and blog and have plans to establish a dedicated genealogy research space once again in the house to help motivate me to do so, as I have been without one for the last couple of years and I miss it greatly!