30 Day Blog Challenge--Day 24: Describe My Home

Our home is for sale. It is the best home in the world. We've got 10 acres of woods in the backyard, a swimming pool and a rusty old swing set that has too many happy memories to give away just yet. My favorite trees are the maple in the front yard, the hemlock near the mailbox that the kids always climb, and the oak tree I planted when we had a still born baby. There are huge boulders in the backyard, at the beginning of the woods, and the kids have each claimed one. In between D's boulder and L's boulder, there is a firepit--well, it's more just a charred place with some rocks around it, but we cook s'mores out there once in a while.

The only garden I ever loved is right there too, where the woods meets the back lawn. It's wrapped around a pine tree and a birch tree--trees that I ought to add to my list of favorites. How can I move away from my trees??? My garden has at least 4 kinds of hosta, some astilbe and bellflowers. I once ignorantly planted mint in my garden. Do not do that unless you mean it! Mint is determined to take over the world. I am happy to say that my garden is mint free, though it took several years of pitched battle before I finally emerged victorious.

Japanese Spurge (Not my garden)

I've also got Sweet William, Goatsbeard and Stinging Dead Nettle, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous plant, in spite of its dreadful name. For some reason, my very favorite plant is an unobtrusive plant called Japanese Spurge. Mine doesn't look like this picture at all. It always just barely hangs on, and I rejoice every time it sends out a new shoot. It hardly grows, for some reason, and yet it is always there, tough enough to hold its own, even when other plants try to crowd it out.

I'm not sure why we've got Virginia Creeper up here in Maine, but if I leave my garden alone for very long (which I often do) when I come back I've got to pull long spiralling vines of it away from my flowers. It is so pretty, especially in the fall, that I think it is a shame Virginia Creeper is so intent on destruction.

A rock wall runs along the front of our property. Rock walls are amazing things. Have you lifted a rock lately? They are so much heavier than I ever expect them to be. And the people who first cleared this land dug them up, one by one, and carried them to the wall. I wonder if they were crazy or if they just didn't know that huge rocks grow in Maine soil, and no matter how hard you try, more immdeiately pop to the surface.

So why are we leaving, if we live in the best home in the world? Sometimes that just happens. It's time to move on. We live so far away from church and work--which are not even in the same direction--that we spend massive amounts of time traveling. Next year we'll add in early morning seminary. I know people who can travel 35 minutes, spend 40 minutes at seminary and then travel 35 minutes to the high school every morning for four years and still have time for a life, but we are not those people.