When Your Oven Won't Work...

because you haven't yet figured out that the clock must be set on your Defy 731T Thermofan before anything but the stove-top burners will operate, and you really want some kind of Sunday morning baked good, remember: you pan-bake English muffins. Win.

Pine Valley

And that's the view from our deck. Needless to say, it didn't take long for us to decide to move. Living close to city center had it's perks, especially as we were getting set up, but after spending the last few weeks in our new house, we couldn't be happier with our move to the country. 

About 10km from downtown Mbabane, Pine Valley sits snugly between two sets of rolling hills. A river cuts through the center of the valley and Sibebe, the world's largest granite outcrop, if Swazi promotional materials are to be believed, juts along one side for most of the drive to our house. Cows wander into the road. Two days ago, a dozen monkeys climbed onto our deck, taking in the view and peering through the wood-paned windows. I tried to keep them away from the fruiting loquat tree. After playing on our roof for a bit they seemed to retreat. Guinea fowl scamper in groups of two or three, rustling among fallen banana leaves on the border of the garden. But here's the thing, we can't talk about the house without confronting the elephant in the room: it is way too big for the two of us. We need visitors, fast. Like, long-term, sabbatical, finally-write-that-damn-book, unpaid-leave-from-work type visitors. Consider that an invite.  

The house has beautiful stone floors and wood ceilings downstairs; it's all wood upstairs.  

We have too many rooms to fill on our own, so for now that means rolling out a yoga mat and calling it a "yoga" room, or sliding a guitar in another space and calling it done, as if each hobby needs its own dedicated area with a closing door. 

The property itself is expansive and littered with fruit and nut trees that we are only beginning to identify. Here's our running list: avocado; lemon; orange; kumquat; guava; fig; pear; plum; apple; peach (so many small green fruits right now on several trees); apricot; banana; papaya; lychee; mango; loquat (amazingly good and so productive right now); mulberry; granadilla/passion fruit; wild raspberry; macadamia nut; and grapes. It. Is. Unbelievable. To say nothing of the roses and jasmine; hyacinth and honeysuckle; and all of the other flowers we discover each time we take a walk.  

Or the seventeen (!) garden plots that we, and, mostly, a neighbor for hire, laboriously turned over to prepare for planting.   

It's like this property was built with us in mind, designed to take advantage of all of our free time and send us on this one, particular path.