FINDING MY GREAT BIG LOVE: A Seed Takes Root

"You spend money like it’s burning a hole in your pocket" was one of my dad’s classic expressions. It was always said disapprovingly because my dad was a frugal accountant who kept meticulous track of every penny he spent.

Sadly this little acorn fell far from that tree, and I can confirm it’s true: I am a spendthrift. If I have money, I spend it. And once I became a homeowner, even when I didn’t have it, I spent it, racking up credit card debt and maxing out my line of credit was how I rolled, baby!

Until I couldn’t anymore.

Truthfully this approach to money has gotten me into some very uncomfortable situations in the past 20 years or so. But I’ve discovered that being broke can be easily solved by selling my house and uprooting my entire life—which I did again this past summer when my latest home (and glamping business) closed on July 7th.

And if you’re not sure if I’m being facetious, I am. There’s nothing easy about any of that, and selling my home is a very emotional thing for me. To be clear, there were other mitigating factors when I sold each house (for a deeper dive about this topic you can read my blog trilogy Finding My Great Big Love here), but a money crunch is definitely one of them.

That said, I’m actually pretty good with money in many ways and I’ve spent my adult life learning how to live well on a shoestring budget. One reason for that was ingrained in me at a young age by my dad.

One of my favourite Billisms is "comparative shopping is a consumer's only weapon." As a teenager growing up in the 80’s under the watchful eye of my frugal father, the people pleaser in me utilized the Yellow Pages on many occasions to get the best price on whatever it was I was shopping for. Back then it was usually a Lacoste T-shirt, or Tretorns, or something of equal importance.

It was never impulsive, it usually required a great deal of research, and the golden rule of thumb was that I had to get at least three quotes before purchasing said item.

Today, the Internet does most of that work for me, but the principle remains. I research everything, overthink it thoroughly, and then—once I’m satisfied I’m getting the best bang for my buck—I move quickly and don’t look back.

Anyhow, I digress.

This is a very long way of saying that next chapter of The Wildflower School of Life has officially begun. I bought a new house and what has been the seed of an idea up until now finally has a place to plant itself and take root.

And I know it’s cliché to say it, but I definitely feel like the luckiest girl in the world right now.

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is it really luck though?

What exactly is luck?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as the force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts and abilities.

I disagree. Kind of.

That’s one definition, sure, and some cultures and people think that charms, rituals, or abstaining from particular behaviours can affect or foretell luck. Then there’s the unique set of circumstances each of us is born into that influence the trajectory of our lives. To be born into a “good” family in an amazing country like Canada, such as myself, is just plain old dumb luck.

But I believe there’s another kind of luck.

Psychologists suggest that people who consider themselves lucky are often more likely to notice opportunities, trust their intuition and turn difficult situations into positive ones through their attitude.

I love this, and my favourite definition that aligns with this version came from a musician I once heard interviewed on the radio:

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

That idea has always resonated with me, and if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with buying a house, please stick with me as I pull all of these threads together.

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living life according to check lists

For the past six months, I’ve had Realtor.ca notifications set up to alert me whenever a property came onto the market that met my basic criteria: primarily location, price and acreage.

There were usually about five listings a day, and I often had over one hundred properties saved in 'My Favourites' at any given time. Yet none of them ticked enough boxes on my checklist or felt quite right, it usually played out like this.

If I liked the house, it was out of my budget or situated in a city or town, whereas I wanted a country property close to my tribe—ideally within 30 minutes of Collingwood and under $700,000.

If I could afford it, and it was in the countryside, it was usually vacant land; or a hunt camp with a grimy trailer on it and limited access to it; or a complete tear down; or something the current owners started to work on but ran out of money so it’s half finished; or on a tiny plot of land with neighbours right next door.

You get the idea. This quest was starting to feel impossible.

Then, one Wednesday night in mid-August, I was at our family cottage scrolling through my Realtor.ca notification emails when a new listing caught my eye.

So I clicked on it.

And OMG. It ticked every box.

• Country location close to my tribe

• Quaint old farmhouse

• Small enough to heat in winter without breaking the bank but large enough to live in comfortably

• Small acreage, but surrounded by larger properties so it feels much bigger

• Big sky views, trees and fields—check, check, check, check and check!

Then there were the would-be-nice-to-haves, none of which were dealbreakers:

• A bright kitchen with a window over the sink

• A working fireplace

• A bedroom big enough to fit a king bed and when I lie on my left side I can see out a window

• Original floorboards and good bones preserved but dated enough that I can justify putting my own decorating touches on it without feeling guilty

• The essential, expensive and unsexy things are already done (a metal roof was put on in 2025!)

• An English country cottage feel to it

• A front porch

• Some sort of water feature (it is bordered by a creek, so check!)

As you can see, this is a long and very specific checklist, but it checked every one of them. The only thing it didn’t have was a clawfoot tub, but it had some unexpected bonuses:

• A pool (I seriously never thought I’d own a pool, but life is full of surprises)

• A screened in porch

• A perennial garden to die for “designed by an award winning Toronto landscaper” (The Wildflower Farm has already begun!)

• In the heart of Mennonite country which is something I’ve strangely quietly coveted

• The closest town hamlet is called Badjeros, how badass sounding is that?

• Most importantly: an insanely low price—$499,000!

In fact this price was so insanely low that my first thought was it must be a typo.

In my excitement I popped into my brother’s cabin and told him, “I think I just found my house!”

He put down his book and we looked through the listing on my laptop together. He agreed: it looked perfect for me, and the price was too good to be true, in fact it was suspiciously good. We concluded that it could be a typo.

Then I popped into another cabin on our island to show Lisa, my friend and cottage neighbour, and she also thought it looked amazing. At that price the bargain hunter in me was willing to take a gamble and figure out what skeletons were hiding in the closet later. I mean, really, how bad could they be?

“I’m ready to buy this property right now off the internet,” I told her. “I don’t even need to see it.”

It was close to 11 p.m. by this point, but she quickly got caught up in my enthusiasm and didn’t think I was completely crazy.

To put this in context, Lisa and her husband (Matt McGovern), lived in Thailand for 18 years. When they moved back to Canada in 2022, they were house hunting from our little island in Georgian Bay. After a whiskey fuelled evening, they boldly bought a house off the internet in the middle of the night and didn’t see it in person until after they’d put in the offer.

“All the expats do that,” replied Lisa, referring to the buying-a-house-off-the-internet part, not necessarily the boozy part, although they probably often do go hand-in-hand.

All of this made me feel like I was in good company, and I’m sure that if I’d suggested we break out a bottle of whiskey and buy me a gosh-darned house, Lisa would have happily indulged me.

But I remembered that although Matt and Lisa love their house, she did have a hangover and some buyer’s remorse the next day, so I decided not to suggest it.

Instead I did the sensible thing and contacted the listing agent explaining that I really want to see this property ASAP but my real estate agent (Meredith Cudney), was up north staging another property. I know this because Mere is also a good friend of mine, and although I didn’t want to cut her out of the deal, I also really wanted this house and I knew it wouldn’t be on the market long at this price, which I still strongly suspected was a typo.

The agent emailed me back on Thursday morning suggesting that if Mere couldn’t make it back in time, they’d show me the property and give her the referral, and this seemed like a good compromise to me, so we set a time for a showing on Friday morning.

There was also no mention of a price typo, which felt like a good omen.

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cutting a long story (kind of) short

Fortunately the stars aligned and Mere was able to wrap up her staging and show me the property.

I tossed and turned the night before, losing sleep over my dad’s comparative shopping is a consumer’s only weapon rule. So in the morning I asked Mere to arrange two other last-minute viewings from 'My Favourites' list on realtor.ca before I set out on the 2.5 hour drive to Collingwood.

These places had been on the market for a while, and I have to confess that I was tire kicking them, mostly because they were much more expensive. But if it’s been ingrained in a person from a young age that they needed three quotes to buy something as inconsequential as a Lacoste T-shirt, then surely I need to at least compare three houses before putting in an offer on one of them.

A modern new build on three acres with an intimidatingly large mowed lawn was conditionally sold so we didn’t go and see it. The other one, a log cabin in a ski village cull de sac, was super cute, but not quite right for me. It also smelled very strongly of a propane gas leak in the basement, so we practically ran out of it and promptly notified the agent.

My little farmhouse—as I was already secretly referring to it—was exactly what I’d hoped it would be and I loved it immediately, even the abandoned car growing into the lawn somehow charmed me.

It did smell musty, though, which perhaps explained the price. However, the current owners had been using it as a three-season place, and they were elderly and hadn’t made it up there this season so it had it had been closed up for over a year, which explained the smell.

Mere, being the responsible real estate agent that she is, played devil’s advocate to test my enthusiasm.

It’s old, what if it's poorly constructed? What if the musty smell was a mould infestation? Winters this high up on the escarpment will be brutal and long. The pool hasn’t been opened up this year and might not work. And yes, Collingwood is just 30 minutes away, but it’s still a 30 minute drive, wouldn’t a newly built townhouse in town make more sense?

Not to me.

My gut was telling me: this house was meant to be mine.

So at 3 p.m., less than 48 hours after it had first come on the market, we put in an offer.

There were already two other offers on the table, so I offered them a quick closing and $520,000 cash because thanks to the sale of my last house, I literally had that much money sitting in the bank.

Needless to say, my metaphorical Gypsy Jeans circa 1980’s felt like they were on fire.

We gave them until 9 p.m. to sign the offer back and the only condition we put in was a home inspection, more for Mere’s peace of mind than mine. I was willing to take a gamble on it at this point, but I know she’s the expert, so I followed her advice. Then I wrote a nice Choose Me!  letter and was on my way back to my cottage.

As I drove back up north each mile just made me want that house more, but knowing I was up against two other offers I was also trying to prepare myself for potential disappointment.

I told myself: if you don’t get it, it just means that although it feels like “this is the one”, it’s not meant to be, and there’s something even better, and more perfect for you, waiting around the next corner, but you just don’t know it yet.

This is the pep talk I give myself when I shop for things that are one-of-a-kind, like a new used car, or when I am entertaining the soul crushing world of internet dating. It’s a useful little tool to have in my other back pocket—the one that wasn’t smouldering—because it provides much-needed consolation when things don’t go according to plan, which in my experience has been often. Especially when it comes to internet dating.

At 8 p.m. I arrived at my cottage and was ready to discuss a sign back if I got one. As if reading my mind, Mere texted me to say that she didn’t think I got it because it was getting late and they were probably working with one of the other offers.

I was picking up the phone to call her back and optimistically quote a sports metaphor—it’s not over until it’s over—when seconds later my phone rang.

It was Mere.

I got it.

No sign-back. No changes. They accepted my offer as-is.

Six weeks later, I’m still pinching myself in disbelief, especially about the price.

The house passed the home inspection with flying colours and I know this cute little farmhouse is modest by some people’s standards, and (again) it’s cliché to say it, but I definitely feel like the luckiest girl in the world right now.

However, it’s the best kind of luck: the kind that finds you when preparation meets opportunity.

(I finally pulled those threads together. You’re welcome.)

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just a little magical thinking

Whenever I think about my new house, I’m equal parts excited and missing my dad, who passed away in May.

This is exactly the kind of thing I would have loved sharing with him. I know he’d be delighted for me, especially because for the first in my adult life it leaves me with a bit of cash still sitting in the bank burning a hole in my pocket.

It’s not a huge amount, definitely not enough to retire on, but it’s enough for me to make this house my own and pay my living expenses for a year or so while I try to get The Wildflower School of Life up and running.

Because even if all else fails, I can start it up on a small scale from this property next spring.

I know I can.

There’s also something wonderfully serendipitous about the property because it’s two doors down from a piece of vacant land owned by Reet, our cottage neighbour and the McGovern family matriarch. Reet has owned this land since 1974 and she knows all my immediate Mennonite neighbours, so I already have a foot in the door with what can be a tight-knit community.

To explain the importance of this connection, our families have been happily entwined since 1981 when my parents and Reet bought our tiny island in Georgian Bay together. These roots run deep—for example Reet gave the toast to the bride at my wedding—and discovering this connection feels like one more precious little piece of the puzzle falling into place.

The practical part of me knows that buying this particular house, at this particular time, was probably just dumb luck—a series of random events with a very happy outcome.

But the kid in me who is missing her dad wants to believe that there’s something more to it.

Maybe it was heaven-sent.

So I’ll push all the practical arguments aside and indulge in some magical thinking, because it helps me feel like my dad’s still with me, nudging me forward as I begin this daunting new chapter.

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embracing my latest great big love

In my blog trilogy Finding My Great Big Love I wrote about how each of the three houses I have owned in the past represented an important part of my story, and why selling each of them was part of my growth journey, even though I didn’t necessarily know it at the time.

The last blog subtitled My Chrysalis in the Country written in June of 2024, ended with me happily ensconced in my yellow farmhouse in the Almaguin Highlands, running my glamping business, learning to love my imperfect self and trying to figure out how to embrace my messy life.

But the truth is that when I bought that house, I knew it wasn’t going to be my forever home, whereas this one feels like it could be.

As Glennan Doyle wrote in her book Untamed, “Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.”

Personal growth asks us to let go of old expectations, relationships, or identities that no longer fit our authentic selves. Stepping into a truer version of ourself means the old version must be shed so a new one can be born, and this has never felt more true—or more important—to me than it does at this moment.

Because there’s a question I keep asking myself:

Can someone be pulled out of addiction and mental illness simply by giving them a sense of belonging?

I think it’s possible.

And I want The Wildflower School of Life to be an experiment that sets out to prove it.

This metaphorical seed has been a thought experiment for a while now, and with the closing of my badass little farmhouse in Badjeros today, it will finally have a place where it can grow.

A place to call home.

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UPCOMING BLOGS

Dog vs. Human: The Gentle Leader Approach

Belonging: How it can Create Connection and Bridge Divides

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture