i'll know it when i find it.

Do we all have some vague idea of what our future safe space of dreaming-and-scheming, creative projects, licking our wounds, laughing with our favorite characters, and laying our heads to rest will look like?

 

You know, home.

 

The home that when you walk in, you feel like the weight of the world has temporarily floated off to bother someone else for a change. The way your parent's house felt until one day, it didn't.

 

You know the one.

 

It comes in blurry half-frames and fleeting visions. Sometimes you look out the window of your car as you speed by and see a tree, THE TREE, that could someday, someday, provide perfect shade in the backyard of your eclectic little bungalow.

 

At least mine is an eclectic little bungalow, on the water, doused from every angle with the perfect combination of shade from massive trees and sun from the light steeping through. For some people maybe it's a brownstone, or a loft, or a sprawling mass of a structure set against a background of fields upon fields of flowers. But mine, mine is old and small. A place with character. Something that's passed the test of time. Something that needs a little TLC, so I can build a bond, take some sense of pride. A labor of love.

 

When I think of my place, what I'm working to find so I can work for it and perfect it and make it my own, I just feel my shoulders raise up toward my ears and my eyes squint and my mouth press into a little smile. Because I know what it will feel like, what it will sound like, what it will smell like. I have ideas of what I'd like it to look like, but that's not for me to decide, not fully.

 

But when I find it, I'll know.

 

Because it will be home.

 

A place where I will pour glass upon glass of wine and crank up Fleetwood Mac on the record player some nights whilst silly-dancing around with my best friends and laughing until we fall asleep in piles of mismatched blankets upon cushions and couches and beds with the windows open and a breeze whispering through. Have I mentioned the window treatments? Think vintage scarves of all patterns and colors sewn together and draped over a hand-crafted wooden rod. Yes, I dream in detail. And window treatments.

 

It will be a place where I'll come home and sit in my shaded backyard and pull weeds and talk to my plants and cry after a particularly draining day at work. Because no matter what you do, some days are just due for a good cry. God, the garden. So much green. And edible things. And blooms big and small. It will be my greatest pride.

 

It will be a place where I center the main living space around a fireplace and not a tv, because when I live, I like to be engaged and not plugged in. That doesn't mean I'm not going to have TV, because I like watching movies on plasma as much as the next 2012-ite... but really, I don't want to center my life around it.

 

Oh, I will have bookcases upon bookcases. For books. Books for days rainy and days sunny. Books for every occasion. I already have quite the collection, but by then I'll have doubled, tripled the volumes, with built in shelves, artfully displayed. And knick knacks and keepsakes from the travels of my own and those who love me.  But mostly, books. I will be surrounded by books and arty little prints and big colorful posters. 

 

I can see my front porch now. It's a sprawling affair.  And my front door, oh, it will be yellow. Or green. Or purple! I don't even know yet. My house and I haven't met, I'll wait to consult her personality for such a decision. But I can almost see her. She's beautiful. Just knowing she's out there, my little refuge from the world, it makes me feel better. I will find her.

 

 

I can almost see it. I'm so anxious for it to get here.

growing some green.

I'm going to be a real-life gardener!!!!!!!

 

 

Having a a garden to tend to is on the life-goal list. However, since I'm kind of a vagabond and always on the run renting, I've never felt compelled to sink a bunch of money into a garden that in three or four or six months I'll be leaving, forever. 

 

This is kind of an unfortunate fact, since I've been semi-obsessed with plants and soil- dwelling growth-forms since I can remember.

 

You see, it all started because my grandparent's had this lake-cottage in northern Michigan while I was growing up and I'd spend most of my summers there. It was the best thing, ever. The place in all honesty holds about 85% of my fondest memories from not just childhood, but life. STILL. So anyway, without dwelling on the fact that the cottage has now been sold to a pair of annoying young-rich from Texas who don't even LIVE THERE ALL SUMMER, thus sending myself into a downward spiral of depression that would be further perpetuated by reading all my old letters from friends and lovers and listening music from my late high school/early college  Bright Eyes phase, while subsisting on nothing but Nutella and boxed wine for the next several weeks until Manfriend runs an intervention on me, I'm going to get back on track.

 

My grandmother, we'll call her Nan, because that's what I call her, had the most glorious of gardens at said lake-house. Talk about colorful. This woman has a true green thumb. I would follow her around, learning plant varieties and helping her weed for HOURS every day. As a semi-ADD child, this was a fairly major accomplishment. Anyway, she'd teach me things and point out new buds on plants and we'd spend a large portion of each day tooling around the garden.

 

QUALITY TIME.

 

So anyway, that's where my love of gardening developed, and since I'm only a quasi-adult and not a full-blown-adult, I still use my parents' address as my "permanent residence" and I rent, so gardening hasn't really been in the cards for the past seven or so years. 

 

BUT, I do have several plants that I've been schlepping around with me for years, the most impressive of which is named Cash, who I acquired my sophomore year in college when he was merely twelve inches in height and is now AT LEAST four feet tall. And yes, I name my plants, and I also talk to them, because they're practically pets to me. Cash is getting REAL heavy. And I have to keep putting him in bigger pots so that his roots can breathe an whatnot. It's a love-love situation. I've kept him alive for SIX YEARS.

 

 

SIX YEARS. That's three times longer than my longest relationship. Cash and I are a TEAM. We've come a long way from me forgetting to water him for days at a time then stumbling home drunk and pouring half of my before-bed beer in his pot.  I think he stayed alive then just because I was willing to share. And a 19 year-old sharing their last beer with a plant in need of hydration is nothing short of heartwarming.

 

There are a couple other plants too, but Cash is my finest acheivement.

 

ANYWAY, I've been not only ansty for Spring to get here and defeat Winter, but I've also had this compulsion to dig around in the soil and deposit some seeds lately, which is kind of a drag because my lease is up in the middle of May and Katherine is moving to South America to escape the shitty state of affairs here teach English and frolic happily for an undisclosed amount of time down south. Manfriend will also be moving relatively soon, so that location is also a bust. 

My my desire to breed new life in a location completely outside of my own body cannot be squelched. 

 

There's a great deal of pride for me in making something grow, giving it life.... something that ISN'T a human child. And apparently in being really creepy about it, too.

 

So, this weekend, Manfriend purchased me a mini-greenhouse.

 

And I almost lost my shit right there, because WOAHHHH.

 

I'm now the owner of a mini-greenhouse!

This is going to be AWESOME, look at all those spout growing-holes.  






I plan on growing vegetables, so I can feel like I'm 'living off the land' and whatnot. 






I have no idea how long it's going to be before I need to start transplanting these little suckers, but I'm really hoping I have my new living situation figured out before their roots need more space to grow and I have to transplant all of them, because if I have to re-pot all of them before I move it's going to be like 348972398473978 pots and a total pain in the ass..... if they even grow to begin with.... which they will, obviously.






After all,  Cash survived!


I'll let you know how it goes. 


XO Sare