As we spend our free time going through 23 years of raising a family, homeschooling and just making a life on Timothy Lane, I ponder leaving this place. Is a condominium on Catawba where we will be happy for the next 23 years? At times I have my doubts.
Once in a condo, my grandchildren won't know that I loved to garden. They won't be able to plant, water, weed, harvest, and just enjoy the rhythm of the garden with me.
They won't ever know that I prized my stunning deep red and soft cream colored peonies and relish in their intoxicating fragrance. They won't know that their grandmother stood breathless at the sight of her blue-black iris as it's petals unfolded. They won't know that the two lilacs planted on the west side of the house were my treasures. The full double, light lavender and single, dark lavender heads were picked to make fragrant bouquets on the kitchen table in the Spring.
I will miss all of it. The fresh chives for Sunday brunch scrambled eggs, accompanied by scrumptious pearls of cherry tomatoes. The fresh picked lettuce and spinach for impromptu dinner salads. I'll miss the rhubarb in the Spring, plucked to make rhubarb sauce that tastes oh so yummy over buttery pound cake made from scratch, topped with homemade whipped cream. The little patch of varigated thyme that I use to make homemade tomato soup with will remain here. The lavendar shrub won't be going either. The savory sage, will hopefully flavor the roasts and sauces of the new inhabitants of Timothy Lane.
No longer can I step into the backyard and pick my own "organic" apples and make "Apple Pie Applesauce" or the pears to make "Cinnamon Pears", the cherries to make cherry freezer jam, ... my heart grows heavy with a tinge of mourning at the loss. The paw-paw, peach and plum trees were just beginning to come into their own this summer. They'll be at full tilt in 2012 to be sure.
If I am going to move forward, I need to stop this melancholy wander down Memory Lane. We'll have to find other ways to make gardening memories for ourselves and the grandchildren.
It was a wonderful homestead to raise a family. Most certainly God has a family in mind for the next phase of Timothy Lane. May they be blessed by what we did to transform this empty patch of clay.
