Last time I gave you some big news: that the Mustard Yellow House was for sale, that we were moving to a regular house, and that we were getting a puppy. Time for an update! The Mustard Yellow House is still for sale. We’ve shown a series of people through, and lots of them like the house and even fall in love with it. But none have bought it, yet. The thing about the tiny house sector is that few people are doing it, but lots of people dream of doing it. At any given moment those dreamers are at different stages of getting their dream ready: sorting out their budget, deciding about land, won ..read more

The Mustard Yellow House is on the market. There it is on TradeMe, quickly gathering views, watchlist adds, and questions that the listing already answers. How did we get to this point? A short answer to that question might be “2020”. Yes, it’s all about this stinker of a year — if I’m allowed to add to calendar-2020 the final three months of 2019, which I might as well do to make it a full 12 months. Here is a longer answer. Eleven months ago our dogs died, on consecutive days. Only now am I starting to understand the impact of that. Connor (left) and Phoebe. Tom and I drove away from the gr ..read more

Tom and I live in 23 square metres, indoors. Outdoors, the space is more generous: 14 hectares of forest, paddocks and buildings that make up Makahuri. This fact is an enormous consolation right now. This is the end of week 2 of lockdown. New Zealanders have to stay at home apart from essential trips such as to the supermarket or pharmacy. We have to stay with those in our “bubble”. Tom, the other component in my bubble, is working from home, spared his usual long commute and doing all his tasks by way of internet. Just before the lockdown, Tom and I marched in the pride parade in We ..read more

“Two Kiwi guys, two little dogs, one tiny home.” That was the little marketing identifier, the three-part high-concept description, that I added to this blog title when I started it two and a half years ago. Since October, the two little dogs are no more. Phoebe and Connor died, a day apart. Phoebe and Connor at Waikanae Beach.My nine-word identifier for this blog has lost its middle third, and sometimes it really has felt as though the middle third of my recent life, the bit that had charm, beauty and fun, has suddenly vanished. This is hard to write about, again — I wrote about it o ..read more

I’m still here. I haven’t blogged in three months, which means autumn has been and gone. Here is what’s happening at the Mustard Yellow House and the Paddock World it occupies. Winter came The frosts, when they’ve hit, have iced the paddock, stiffened the frost cloth that I drape over the ambitiously chosen plants in our yard (papaya, passionfruit etc), but not yet frozen the pipes as they did once last winter. Paddock World on a frosty July morning. But those frosty mornings grow into glorious middays when I can open the french doors on the north side and the dogs can spread out o ..read more

Today at 1.32pm I sat on a folding chair on our sunny “porch” of shipping pallets and shared the national two minutes of silence for the 50 fellow Kiwis murdered exactly a week earlier in two Christchurch mosques. Halfway through those two minutes, Phoebe trotted up to me so I picked her up and cuddled her in the early-autumn sun. At 1.34 I headed back inside. I am lucky in having a safe, peaceful life in the country where I was born. I am lucky to have a beautiful little house in a green field, and a husband who loves me. I am lucky to be alive. One week ago, at 1.32pm, I was ..read more