Forget Have-a-Heart

We have-a-hawk!



Actually, we have a hawk family.  They seem to reside in one of our old oak trees and they have pretty much eradicated our chipmunk population, which we estimated to be in the hundreds, if not thousands (lots of dead wood in these woods, left by the builder).  We've also noticed that our flying squirrels have either relocated or worse and our garage doesn't seem to have any mice this summer.  All good things in my book.



Now, if only we could teach the hawks not to scream at each other all morning we might get to sleep past 7am!

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

And so we wait and my head is filled with questions that are insignificant and cumbersome all at once: Do I divide my perennials and bring duplicates of them with me, without having any idea what horticultural treasures may already be in place at the new house?  Do I dig up the mock orange that grows outside of Harrison's room, the one that once grew outside of my bedroom window when I was a child?  What furniture should we bring, or ditch altogether?  What color will we paint the living room, the room that we both agree must be the first room painted?  How on earth are we going to move without movers?  And while we're talking about that, might it not be intelligent to hire some movers, if only for the big furniture?

There are things here that my heart will ache with missing, like the gardens in front of our porch that we made rise from the dust with our bare hands, lots of labor, and the sheer will to make things grow.  It is, if I say so myself, a place of beauty and I will hate leaving it behind.  In weak moments I will miss the completedness of our house here, the fact that the rooms are all painted and the curtains are hung, that the artwork is placed just so on the walls.  But I know, too, that we can make more gardens rise from the earth, that we can paint rooms and tile floors and tidy up kitchens and make bathrooms sparkle and eventually it will shine just like this house does.   And I know, too, that many of these concerns are about trivial things and that our reasons for moving (more house; less yardwork; walk-ability to downtown, library, and parks; a community with greater diversity; proximity to our target school; better financial positioning) far outweigh the trivial unknowns we are about to face.

I know that the most important things, memories and family and friends, are coming with us no matter where we go and that knowledge melts away all fears, leaving me filled with excitement for this new adventure.

Feeling better, so....

I thought you might enjoy seeing the before (actually they had already started cutting, but I forgot to take a 'before' shot) and after pictures of our backyard:




That is the left hand corner of the deck in the bottom right of the photos...we've opened the yard up to let in sunlight and to allow better viewing of those majestic oak trees (of which you can only see one in the picture). It looks HUGE to us out there right now, and I may very well spend the rest of my summers here mowing the lawn, but the quality of light in our house has vastly improved and I can visualize how to use our outdoor spaces now.

And what fun it was to watch! The men cutting the trees were amazingly skilled at figuring our which direction a tree would fall, and they only had an 'almost' once, as in they had one tree that started falling toward the garage but they stopped it by holding it up until that yellow vehicle (first photo) came in and saved the day by pushing the tree away from the house. After that I had less fun watching, but it was still amazing how quickly and easily they took care of 40+ trees.

Oh, and Grandma is recovering from her surgery nicely, but she'd like you all to know that the rumors about hospital food are true. She very serioulsy told my mom today that her family is full of such good cooks that she's been utterly spoiled until now! Note to self: bring food upon next visit.