...nature and chairs...

One year ago, I started my garden at our new house. The perennial hibiscus plants started producing blooms this week. Those blooms and the Daylily blooms have kept my heart swooning. I have Bela Lugosi, Nosferatu, Whoopy, Little Grapette, and Custard Candy Daylilies blooming right now. The butterfly bushes and butterfly mint are in full bloom. The bees are in heaven.

The place is starting to feel like home. There is the excitement of seeing the transplanted plants flourish, and there is also joy is deciding what I will plant next.

I spend a great deal of time on our back porch because it’s screened-in and I can see my backyard garden and my side garden. My fella really wanted rocking chairs for our front porch. I think that was one of the spaces that was mostly forgotten. I have decorated it with flower baskets and plants framing our front door, and I’ve added seasonal decor but there really was not place to sit and just be. 

Yesterday, I found rocking chairs that I loved so I brought them home (in two trips since my car isn’t very big but at least the store was close by). I bought a shiny white rocking chair for my fella and a shiny black one for me. I’ve always enjoyed seeing people sit on their front porches when I’m walking. Sometimes when I walk by the super fancy houses with gorgeous wrap-around porches, I wonder why they’re not being used more. After adding the rocking chairs, I moved some of my herbs to the other side of the front porch just so the space feels more like a place. It’s actually quite convenient since I use the herbs and this makes it easier for me when I’m cooking to simply snip what I need without going out into the garden.

I have been reading a great deal about haunted houses, haunted places, and ghosts. I’m developing a course on ghosts and haunted history; and, I’m simply interested in the topic. When I placed the rocking chairs into their new spots yesterday, I remember the old house with the tin roof that I used to walk by. It was my dream home, a place I thought could be saved. Instead, one day the home was torn down and replaced with a new McMansion-style monstrosity. The day it was torn down, I wept partly because it was a surprise that it was happening and partly because a chair was left near the debris. It struck me as the saddest view. A seat to face what had been done.

We have been putting in a great deal of time and money into our new home. For over a decade, this house was used as rental property. As we excavate, we find treasures. This place was once very loved. And then, for some reason, it was let go. Ivy consumed the back of the property. I wonder if it would have made its way into a state like the abandoned house that was torn down.  We’re just going to keep loving this home. As we sit on our rocking chairs, we will look out at nature that surrounds us and I will dream of more garden projects.