By Els
Gabrielius wrote about the trees that were cut. One of the previous owners (his name is Alvydas) did it without telling us, and that was really not nice, to say the least… And he was bringing more problems…
When we bought the house we agreed with the previous owners that they would clean all the mess. But there was so much stuff in the house, the barn and around that they could not manage to finish before we went to the notary. So we agreed with Alvydas that he could stay longer to clean after we sign the papers. When we started with the house renovation, he moved from the house to the barn. It was still warm outside and he could stay inside for the night and he also made a little kitchen with a table, refrigerator and a portable gas cooking stove. This was all fine for us. In the end we also needed him to clean all the mess so we didn’t need to do it ourselves.
Alvydas told us many times that the energy in this forest was so good and that he was sleeping so well. We liked to talk with him about the history of the place and about how he grew up there. It felt for us that it was also hard for him to say goodbye to his childhood house and for us it was fine that he was staying longer to clean.
But what he was actually doing was selling wood that was stored outside and inside the barn. Already a few times we saw unknown cars and people showing up, picking up things. Gabrielius and I were discussing about when it is still called cleaning and when it is just selling stuff… Outside there were piles of big old canisters with petroleum, old broken electric equipment, broken TV and a few refrigerators, a pile of old rubber tires. Chemicals were leaking into the soil and polluting the nature. We wanted him to take care of these things first. However, it was not a priority for him. And at one point it became really clear that he was just making money.
One day a guy we never saw before came to take out the dried wood from the barn! That was the limit for us and we told Alvydas to leave. He was making a lot of apologies and still wanted to stay, but we told him it was his time to go. And apparently it really was so because the next day he showed up again but he could not enter because there was a big canal dug across the entry road for the new sewage system and he could not pass it. It was actually kind of funny, he was standing there for a while, not knowing what to do and then he left. And we never saw him again… It is sad that it had to be like this… We wanted to remain friends with the people who lived here before but at the same time it is also not possible to stay friends with everybody. Sometimes you just have to claim what is yours…