Scraps from a small place we've been building since 2019.

The plot was not for sale, exactly. It belonged to three brothers who had been arguing about it for eleven years. We told them we'd wait. They were, quietly, relieved. While we waited we kept driving back to sit on the rock. The dogs from the edge of the water eventually started sitting with us.

"We did not come out to build a hotel. We came out to sit on a rock. The hotel happened around the rock."

By the end of 2019 we had a signed piece of paper and no idea what to do with it. The water was the clearest thing we had. Everything else arrived slowly.

Boho showed up on the 14th night. We think he'd been watching us learn. He stayed. He remains, in some way, the architect of everything that came later — the decision to be pet-friendly, the decision to stop calling this a property and start calling it a home.

We are not trying to be a bigger place. The rooms stopped at eleven because we met eleven. The next year is mostly about the farm — getting the kitchen to source more than half of itself from across the road — and a very small library we're building in what used to be a tool shed. It will have a fireplace. It will smell like damp books and, occasionally, dog.

"If you come, bring a book. We'll take the wrapper off."