We all long for a *better* home. Remember model homes? I used to go see them and return to wherever I lived and feel so depressed. Home isn’t just the house or where the house is sitting. It’s recognizing that at some point you have to realize you’re home. You reached that conclusion long before I did.

Our “gardens” always sound better than they are because it’s too hot here to spend a lot of time outdoors (though some people don’t mind). But I’m so eager for the robins to set up housekeeping because they have much to teach me. I’ve been a bird-watcher all my life but I haven’t learned to *observe.* This journal makes me feel a little tiny bit like Thoreau.

I’ve followed your FB posts about selling your house and moving, just haven’t been able to comment. I felt a pang when I realized you’d be leaving that beautiful garden and those roses and hummingbirds. But it will be wonderful to pick out/build a house that suits you both at this stage in your life. I do understand that, after years of renting and moving around myself.

That’s why I told my husband when he suggested moving I’d only go if this house could be moved! I wish you the very best in nest-building. You won’t have to carry your own mud!

I know how you feel, Elizabeth. It’s unsettling and hard for us “nesters” to not feel at home. For the longest time I kept waiting for someplace better to come along. We looked at property. Looked at houses. Until we got too old to look. I think if you’re at one place long enough, like we are, you have to accept that that is home. But you are still young and there is room for change in your future. Home may still be out there, just waiting for you.