Yesterday was a very good day. I stepped outside into the backyard of our cottage style home right into a warm sunny day. I walked over to check on a new small tree we had planted because it was going through some major stress due to its relocation. (These moves are hard on both humans and trees alike.) I thought to myself as I stroked its tender branches with a myriad of browning leaves, “welcome to the club buddy, I can relate to your stress but frankly, YOU are not even close to being as old as I am!”. Lol!

I have to say, My husband and I are feeling pretty proud of ourselves, having managed a move at this point in our life. Spending time going through a lifetime of memories….sorting, discarding, deciding to keep some things for sentimental reasons, it all takes its toll because essentially, one relives everything one touches as one go through the process. It was almost akin to a life review.

This is our second downsize. The first time we chose to go smaller, I wasn’t quite ready to face the fact that the kids had, indeed, been launched. Our last home was our empty nest house, and while we did downsize from the previous home, it still ended up being way more than we needed or ended up using fully. But, we enjoyed it for almost 25 years and it was time to consider something smaller yet, and easier to manage.

When we searched for a home, we knew that we wanted a place where we could lock and leave to go on trips anytime we wanted. This meant a yard that had almost zero maintenance. This one is xeriscaped! We feel as if we are in the country with no neighbors. We have neighbors to each side of us, but not the back. We especially wanted a home that would not be too large to manage for one when the other of us eventually takes our leave of earth.

I smile to myself as I send up thanks yet again to God for granting our wishes to be unencumbered in our older age. Funny how all the things that at one time I thought I just had to have now mean very little to me. It is true you know….the less you have the less you have to worry about.

In our new smaller surroundings I get to enjoy my morning cup of coffee in front of a window where I can watch walkers go by. We have a tiny table for two sitting there and at each meal it feels like we snagged a good table at a local bistro.

There is very little traffic on our street and we love this fact. It is a very quiet street! The kitchen sits on the front of the house and the living room sits at the back with triple patio doors that look through a porch onto a greenbelt.

This house came with a dining room space at the kitchen side of the living room, but I scratched that because we rarely do formal sit down dinners anymore, so I added that space to the living room which makes it feel more like a great room than a small living room. I did buy a flip top table, a very cool invention, which looks like a thin console table but if you want to set it up for dining, there are two long leaves resting on top of each other that flip outward and form a dining table. It will be interesting to see how often I make use of this table in the years to come.

This house is an older home, so we had the interior repainted a neutral color throughout and added a wood floor to the Master Bedroom which then gave us a house with no carpet. My allergies are happy about this. We chose an older home because the older homes do not sit on top of each other as the new builds so often do these days.

Yesterday, after I communed with our new tree, I began to tackle a very tired looking garden path that leads to nowhere. I pulled up bricks for use elsewhere in our yard and proceeded to disperse the crushed granite as well. I was thinking of a sign I had at our other home that was etched with a cute phrase. “Old gardeners never die…they just spade away”.. Lol! So true. I will never again garden to the degree I did previously, but until my dying day, I just have to have a little patch of dirt in which to plunge my gloveless hands, turning it and readying it for some little plant wanting a new home out in the yard under sunny skies. I like to walk barefoot on the grass as well and am grateful the neighbors can’t see that country girl aspect of my personality, I actually read recently that the earth gives off healing energy to those who walk barefoot and I am hoping this is the case as I enjoy feeling the soft green grass tickling my toes.

Well, this musing has gone on long enough! I have also read that we create our own reality with our thoughts and I tend to think this is true. I was born an optimist and have always been open to any possibility. Prayer is powerful and the key to prayer is the belief that God will provide. He has indeed provided for us. We basically have everything we need in this last stop before our journey to heaven and while it is modest in scope, it is grand in the freedom we now feel!

God is good!

jjb/12/16/2022