Country Life

It's been a while since I wrote the last posting on my blog. After our "work phase," i.e., gardening, renovating, unpacking and getting settled in our new home, we finally entered a new stage in our country life, you could call it our "social phase." Some of our old friends came to visit, and our new friends introduced us to southern hospitality with new and informal ways of socializing.

Right after our guest quarters were finished, our first (non-family) visitors, two dear friends from Rutgers, Ted and Linda, arrived from Ohio on the way back to NJ. We had a wonderful time together and enjoyed showing them around our new neighborhood, which included a trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Devil's Backbone Brewery, Wintergreen, and Nellysford. We truly enjoyed their visit and are deeply grateful for the beautiful quilt Linda made for us as a house-warming/retirement present. It makes our kitchen look warm and cozy.
Ted and Linda, we hope that your retirement plans work out for both of you. We wish you good luck and all the best in your retirement, wherever and whenever that may be.

A week later, two other Rutgers friend, Julianne and Ed, came to Virginia for a couple of days. Julianne was performing in Farmville, about an hour from here. After spending a day at our house with these dear friends, we organized a dinner party in Farmville. We invited our German friends from Shipman to meet Julianne and Ed and to celebrate Axel birthday. Afterwards we were able to hear Julianne's magnificent voice in concert. What a treat! What a wonderful, memorable time we all had together.

A couple of days after our visitors had left, we heard a knock on our front door. Having no clue who that could be, we were pleasantly surprised to find out it was a new neighbor. We invited her in and found out that she used to be good friends with the previous owner of our current house. We had a nice visit, she left, promising to be back in touch. Well, not only did she call back the next day, this energetic lady also organized a welcome party for us at her house where we met many other local people, most of them retired, and many older widows, living alone. When everyone left, many invited us to "stop by and visit." Reluctantly, we did! (For us northern urbanites, it took a little effort to knock on someone's door without first calling.) However, we were surprised how much we enjoyed these informal visits. We made the rounds on Halloween to stop by and bring some home-made cookies and spooky candy. This gesture was very much appreciated and reciprocated with my taking home books to read. I was planning to volunteer for the Area Agency on Aging, but thanks to Nancy's match-making, I found a number of new friends (in their 80s and 90s) who are living alone and love to get company. Another neat thing is, these gracious ladies still write letters! Hence, I've been not only visiting, but also corresponding with some of our new friends.

We consider ourselves to be very fortunate to live in such a beautiful, scenic mountain region, surrounded by kind and generous neighbors --- who are becoming our friends.

Last Sunday, the first of Advent, we stopped at Nancy's and Phil's house to purchase a wreath for this holiday season. (We were told that Phil makes beautiful wreaths from the boxwoods, hollies and pine trees in his garden.) One of his lovely works of art now adorns our front door. Is there a better way to welcome our drop-in visitors?

A little visitor

About a month ago, while working on my computer, I heard a loud tapping on the window screen. Looking over I was startled to see a large moth, looking straight at me. It was huge, bigger than any moth I've ever seen before.

I called Bob to come and take a look. He right away recognized this "little" visitor: it was a luna moth, one of the largest moths in North America. I grabbed the camera and took some pictures which I'm sharing now with you.

Learning more about luna moths, I found out they only live for about a week. "The Luna moth has a wingspan of between 8–11.5 cm (3-4.5 in) with long, tapering hindwings, which have eyespots on them in order to confuse potential predators. Although rarely seen due to their very brief (1 week) adult lives, Luna moths are considered common. As with all Saturniidae, the adults do not eat or have mouths. They emerge as adults solely to mate, and as such, only live approximately one week." (Wikipedia)

With such a short life span, why was this little beautiful creature wasting her time visiting me? Obviously it was attracted to the light in my room. Mesmerized it clung to the screen, fluttering helplessly in her futile attempts to enter the room. I turned off the computer and the light, hoping she would fly away and follow her instincts to find a mate before her short stay on this earth was over.

I was excited that I had seen such a lovely, rarely seen insect. As I was trying to go to sleep, I couldn't help but wonder whether we humans resemble this lost little creature. Don't we also follow seemingly bright lights that pull us hither and dither, detracting us from our essence and purpose?

Reflections on Transitions and Retirement

We are in a major life transition. We are in process of leaving the world of work, the people and surroundings we've known most of our lives, family members, friends, colleagues, neighbors; the university, Philadelphia, the metropolitan Northeast. We are turning our backs to the hectic urban/suburban scene to embrace a more relaxed rural way of life: We are moving to retire to the green, rolling hills at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Not all transitions are easy, but this one feels good. We decided we wanted to retire in a quiet, serene and beautiful surrounding. We wanted to live in a place where we could pursue our goals of living a healthy life with simple pleasures. We wanted to enjoy the challenges of hard physical labor and its rewards before we no longer could do such work, before our knees are too stiff with arthritis and before we become too frail to live alone. We felt this is our chance; our window of opportunity to pursue our dreams -- before it is too late! Maybe we can have 5 or 10 years, and if we are really lucky, maybe a few more, but we don't want to be greedy...

As children we both loved the country. Bob spent many summers in the country with his family in the small village of Ripton in Vermont. My parents also took my sisters and me to a farm. Yet we lived in Germany and we visited a farm in Bavaria, where I was allowed to work side by side with the farmer's family raking hay, staking it onto the wagon, and riding home on the tractor. To this day, I love the smell of hay; it sets off fond memories of summer bliss. So both of us are coming full circle, reliving the summer dreams of our childhood in the autumn of our lives.

Why is our transition to retirement so easy, while some other people find it difficult?

First, our retirement is voluntary. Unlike many people who are losing their jobs, and are pushed into early retirement with worries and insecurity, we chose to retire.

Second, we carefully prepared for it. We saved as much as we could; we reflected on our values; we researched our options. We knew we didn't want to stay in SJ. There is too much traffic, housing is too expensive, life is too commercial---and most of all there are no mountains. (Bob likes to climb them and I love to look at them from below) Mountains, we decided were a necessary part of our retirement setting.

Third, we decided we wanted to opt out of the industrial food production. We wanted to grow our own food, our own vegetables. Last year we tested whether we could do this and joined a community garden in our neighborhood. We successfully harvested beautiful vegetables over the summer, gave away a lot, and still had more to freeze for the winter. This experience gave us the confidence that we could do it.

But one aspect of our planned move troubled us. We always knew that family and friends were extremely important to us. How could we balance our desire for self-reliance and solitude with our need to be close to those we care for deeply?

So, over the past two years we explored the Catskills to be with Eleanor; the hills of PA to be near Dave; the rural country-side in Maryland to be near John; and finally, we visited Nic and Alison in Charlottesville, VA, one of the "10 best places to retire in the U.S." As we started to look around, we fell in love with Nelson County, a beautiful, lush green agricultural county in Central Virginia, nestled below the Blue Ridge Parkway between Charlottesville and Lynchburg, VA. It is a quiet place, yet it also has the Wintergreen Resort which offers activities for visitors who enjoy skiing, golf, tennis, horseback riding, guided nature walks, or cultural events, like concerts. Nelson's natural beauty and its man-made attractions, we hoped, will draw family and friends to want to come and visit us. We wanted to make it comfortable and inviting, so we had to find a place that would meet all our requirements.

We believe, we found it. That made this transition so much easier. We are confident that we made the right decision. We bought a property that will keep us busy, but is not too big to overwhelm us. It seems that our kids and grandkids are enjoying our new home and we are delighted that they enjoyed their visit and want to come back. And in terms of friends, we have marked our calendar for our first visitors from Rutgers in October. (smile)

Not only is the natural scenery breathtakingly beautiful to enjoy and to delight in, we are also glad to have made new friends and met many generous and kind people who make us feel welcome and at home.

Although it's taking longer than I hoped to have all our belongings in one place, this transition is filled with anticipation and a growing love for our new little home and our neue Heimat at the foot the Blue Ridge mountains.

Wanted to head for the Hills, but

the rain stopped us from going. It was a dreary day today and the forecast for Roseland was even worse: rain on Saturday, rain on Sunday, rain on Monday, rain on Tuesday, etc....
So we decided to stay home. We were packing the good china and glasses and piled them in the garage with all kinds of stuff to go down to our new home.
Actually we both have grading to do, so that will be on our agenda instead of digging in the dirt... O, well!
We made a great Lasagna and salad to cheer us up (it did :) and now Bob is reading the newspaper and I'm trying to catch up on my blog.

Tomorrow we'll go through our closets for what is no longer needed for our new life in the country. That would be most of what we have. I guess, life will be cheaper with just jeans and a sweatshirt and sneakers.

Bob's Retirement Party

Bob's retirement party was held yesterday at Ted's and Linda's house. It was a great event. Many of our best friends and long-time colleagues were there: Sherry, Janet Golden, Drew, Sheila and Herb, Barry and Ruth, Bill Whitlow, Don Rainey, Stuart Charme, Michelle and little Morgan, Gail, Dorothy Stanaitis, Margaret and Howard, Sue and Bob Evans, Patrick, Katrina, Jane Siegel. (Julianne and Ed unfortunately couldn't make it, but they already took us out to a wonderful Thai restaurant in Center City.)

Some of the highlights were Ted's moving speech, Sherry sharing her sweet anecdote about us and giving us the T-shirts with "Virginia is for Lovers" and, Linda's fabulous quilt. We also got a certificate for some Virginia apple trees! How wonderful.

Here are some more pictures from the party.

A rainy day

We taught another day... another week is checked off, closer to retirement. :)

Dave was here today for dinner and to pick up Bob's old computer and to give me some work on his website :) He also helped Bob put together his first farm tool, a well-made handtool to turn over soil without disturbing delicate make-up. We found out that his nice, new and expensive truck has been in the shop a couple of times already.... no wonder these American car makers are going broke...

As most nights, I looked at the New York Times before heading to bed. There was an interesting article which caught my eye. It compares the European response to the economic crisis to that of the American government's. For a change the Times doesn't have its usual attitude about the European welfare state, it acknowledges that there is something to be said for a REAL safety net.

At Home in VA

Here are two very happy campers in front of their "mountain chalet."

The tulips are peeking out of the ground and the forsythias are in bloom, but the weeping cherry still has only small buds. I hope we won't miss the time when it is in its full glory.

Anke sent us these pictures she took on the day we decided to buy the house. As you can see we already had a party on the front steps.

We all got to enjoy the mild spring sunshine and the bread and cheese lunch with apple cider. Bob and I already felt at home and can't wait to start our new life in the country.

Here are a few more of Anke's snap shots from the area.


The picture with the snow landscape is from Anke's Lady Bug Farm on a previous visit.

We woke up in a magical winter wonderland, and took off to meet with our realtor and home inspector while the roads were still covered with snow. (We were very glad to have bought ourselves our little new playmobile - it handled very well on the snow covered roads.)But, (un-)fortunately, the gorgeous scenery melted away in a couple of hours and signs of Spring were back.







(left) Here we are with Anke in her kitchen. I guess, Bob and I liked Axel's joke better than his wife.



On the right are two little pigs at the Black Eagle Farm we visited on Saturday morning. As we say in Germany: "Schweine bringen Glueck," or roughly translated: pigs bring good luck!

Sorting and Packing

Today we decided to clean out the hall closet. I sorted all the boxes with hats, scarves, and gloves. Among the gloves pile I found three single gloves. Since two almost match (one was black, the other brown, but otherwise they are the same kind), I told Bob he could still use them to shovel snow in VA. He thought this was very silly considering that he had at least 5 other perfectly good snow-shovelling pairs of gloves. I finally conceded, but this is really hard --- I am just not good at throwing things out, if one can still can find some use for them!

Speaking of finding a good use:
Bob found on the internet a photography school in Bethesda, MD which takes old cameras, lenses, filters, bags, etc..... so he packed up our non-digital photography selection and we're planning to drop the box off when we head south the next time. At least two drawers are empty now! .... and some students still can utilize Opa's, Bob's and Bob's father's old camera equipment. I like that!

Dave is supposed to come tomorrow and maybe I can convince him to take some of his stuff -- otherwise it will go to either the Goodwill or the curb.

Now I have to do some class preparations for tomorrow. Cleaning house is so much more fun!!!

Another Day in Oma's Life

I'm starting this blog because I want to remember the excitement I felt when we were planning a new chapter in our book of life.
Retirement!
Retirement. This word sounds full of promise of leisurely days: growing vegetables, sleeping in on rainy days, enjoying the beautiful landscape, hiking and biking, lounging and working on projects of choice... heaven - yet there is also the knowledge of finality. This will chapter, too, will come to a close.

My mother often tells us to enjoy our days now - these warm and joyous days will end. Before we know it, we will no longer be the same people as we are now. Decline will set in and limit the amount of things we can do. So, goes my mother's advice: Enjoy it now!

That's what we are determined to do: enjoy the simple life as long as we are able to work the ground and live at home.