someone else´s dream

16 years ago my parents bought a piece of land just out of town (15 kilometers away). storytelling goes that that´s the place where they went on their first big date. anyway, nothing happened with the land until i left for school, then they had some fruit trees, then the veggie garden, and later - to top everything - they built a gate and a garage. i used to laugh about their project, especially how they spent most of their weekends working there. and now over the last couple of years they invested in almost-finishing this little cabin-type house.

our way there goes through a sort-of-suburb part of the town, then through a village, and there are lots of things to photograph - at least according to my parents, who are apparently very interested in my blog thing. case in point:

village house whose clear message is ´my owner has money to throw on tasteless roof decoration´. there are lots of them around in the romanian landscape, makes you wonder. also, notice how it isn´t really finished - maybe waiting for the next batch of money to spring for another rooftop for that wing there.
since mum stopped the car so i can take this from more than one angle, i have an extra:

and then at a pretty small distance you get a bunch of houses like this (sorry, poor lighting due to evening and car window):

i have to be romanian again and say: none of these house types or the living conditions they suggest is necessarily ´typical´ or representative of my country. they are occurrences that speak to me differently than to a non-romanian, and/but are realities nevertheless.

moving on, to the spring my parents take water from. i just found out yesterday that this is what we drink at our apartment:

and the neighbours´goats graciously accepted to be included on this blog:

and this is how they stack hay ¨in my country ¨ as opposed to north america. though please don´t get me started on what a thankless useless job hay-making is in the conditions of small household agriculture:

alright, so, getting to my parents´place. my first task is to check the strawberry plants for new production:

(hah not much, but you realize i first ate and only later thought of taking photos okay)

my mum relaxes for like two seconds before she starts slave-driving the rest of us.

and, because weeding the veggie garden is not very epic, i wanted to brag about my (inherited) house dress and its retro vibe:

here are my parents in the garden. not pictured:
- me actually doing some work
- mum side-eyeing all the old furniture kept on the terrace and planning its demise
- dad watering the plants from a funny green contraption strapped on his back
- dad going into the forest to look for mushrooms, missing for 3 hours, during which mum and i  cleaned the room downstairs (before today, a space of paint smell and reddish dust) and moved furniture in. uh and i painted the window grille - according to mum that was very funny.

and the anti-climax, with mum second guessing her choice of yellow for the walls, helped by the sun shining like crazy and all the three of us probably having sun-stroke by then.

the garden at dusk - best light of the day:

i hope everyone has a nice weekend!

c.