I'm going home

I'm going home. I began moving back to my old home and the chutney garden on Monday. It's been a bittersweet renovation and we've made significant changes to the garden and the house.Over the last 18 months, I've started an MFA, built a new garden in a rental house, and renovated our home.I've thought a lot about the idea of space and how it affects the things that engage us. While I loved living in the rental house, I did not blog. I wrote fiction instead. Now that I am going home, the urge to blog is back. The urge to take inspiration from my environment. I'm going home with mixed feelings. I've made very good friends where I am now and I know that I will be somewhat lonely but I am also excited to start a new garden. We put in a retaining wall, gaining a chunk of flat land that gets sun most of the day. This means that many of my old gardening patterns will change. We've also put in a pool which is, in essence, a large water feature. My challenge now is to keep the soft, fern-like green feel of the space even with all the renovations. It is hard though to look at the older pictures on the blog and realise that the spaces that are still so alive in my head are gone.The picture above shows a completely different garden. It's almost all gone now.
But because of the blog, I can rebuild large areas not just by visual references but also by re-reading posts that help me revisit mental spaces. I'm going home with extra baskets, one less dog (we lost our lovely Smalta last August), one new dog (Moka the mastiff joined our pack in October) and an increased awareness and appreciation of what space does to the things we choose to write about. See you back in the garden soon.