This old house is on the other side of the street
where we live (I took this picture from our driveway).
When we built our own house (we moved in in 1993),
an old lady and her unmarried son lived here.
He must have been in his 50s at that time.
The mother spent her days working in the garden
and she often watched our boys and their friends
play basketball from one of the upper windows.
When she died, her son planted the garden for
one more year, before he probably realized that
it was way too much work to only feed one person.
One day he bought a campervan and disappeared
to Portugal and we didn't see him for years.
Then, a couple of years later, people from the village told
us that he had married a portuguese woman.
We only saw them once or twice in all those years
and the house stayed empty.
Until one morning, not so long ago, when we
noticed that all the windows were open
and there were clothes drying in the garden.
His wife told us that her husband had passed
away in Portugal.
A couple of months later we heard that the
house was on the market. There was a real estate
sign in the window, which has been taken out in the meantime, so we assume the house has been sold.
I hope with all my heart that it was bought by
somebody who is willing to renovate this lovely
old house with so much potential. We're afraid
the house will be torn down by some real estate
broker and a new house (or even two or three smaller houses) will be built in its place.
That would be so sad!