Weird Gardening

With temperatures predicted to go up to 11 C today, I am feeling the pull to get outside in the gardens.

I will remind you that I am not a gardener.  I just plant stuff and hope for the best.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.  And to be perfectly honest, I think most of my desire to get out there today isn't so much about getting ready to grow stuff.  It just feels good.  Feels like Spring.  

Right now everything is in the 'first things' stage.  Rake up those old leaves, pick up the winter-blown branches, dethatch the lawn, loosen up the dirt, clip back those vicious blackberry vines.  It's way too soon to plant anything, of course.  Even I know that.  But just getting things ready outside in the sunshine is enough for now.

Normally speaking, the next thing would be to wait a bit and then put some colour in.  I do annuals mostly.  I have some hostas, and something I bought and planted last year seems to be sprouting in the warmth we've already had.  Yay!  But most of the colour comes from the plant shelves outside the grocery store.  Or impatiens.  I know how to do impatiens.  

This year it's all a little different, though.  By the time it's warm enough to do those next steps in the garden, this might not be my garden anymore.  And in truth, even the 'first things' things I'm working on very likely won't be laying the groundwork for anything Ken and I will enjoy.

If plans unfold as we hope, by the time we'd be out on the patio or the front porch, we won't even be living here.  

I think about this a lot right now.  Not just in the garden, but in all the spring cleaning and painting and touch ups we're doing.  Soon enough, Lord willing, someone else will have this space.  And other than our understandable hope to get a good return on our real estate investment (that's the business side of things), all that we're doing around the house, inside and out, isn't really for us.  It's for them.

There's a lot "big feels" about moving out of the home you've lived in for the past 36 years.  Likely, as the time approaches and we have a closing date, I'll be writing more and more about it.  

But for this morning, on a day when it's going to be warm enough to get outside and work on a garden I won't be sitting in come summer, I'll just feel that little bit of weirdness that comes from realizing someone else will live here.

And I haven't really processed it much beyond that.  Except that it prompts me to pray for them, whoever they are.  For their well-being.  For their peace.  That this house will bring much blessing and love and safety to their lives.  That they will thrive here, like we have.  That the blessings we've received from these four walls, this yard, will continue to cover all their comings and going through these doors.  

Hope you get outside today, perhaps for less weird reasons :).

Happy Monday, and may the week unfold in ways that encourage and strengthen you!!!