Where is Home?

Today, a new friend asked me, "Where is home, Ann?"  An easy enough question but I did not know what to say.  What she really meant was,"Where do you feel at home?" and that is what gave me pause.  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend hours walking a northeast Pennsylvania woodland whose oaks, hickories, maples, black gums,  various viburnums and fall blooming asters and goldenrods glowed with the colors of fall. I felt a deep sense of "rightness", being in that space, one that overshadowed the awareness that I would soon be leaving to return to southern Maryland. I felt "at home" there, but those mountains were not where I live.

I lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for almost thirty years before moving to start life anew in Accokeek five and a half years ago. And many times over, in the course of these last five years, I have returned to visit my children and their children, good friends and familiar places in central Pennsylvania and I have longed to stay. There are memories everywhere I look... memories that span thirty years of my life. When I am there, central PA feels like home, but we do not live there either.

We have lived in southern Maryland for more than five years now,and lately I sense this place beginning to have a "homeness" to it that I have not experienced here before. Such an awareness is an unpredictable and transient realization these days, but at least it I recognize it when it comes, however briefly. As I always do, I am working on new gardens at this new/old place where we live now and recently I counted the number of gardens I have tended and then left in the last going-on-six years of moving around. I was startled that this is my fifth garden in almost as many years. I have read about gardeners who love to move and begin new gardens, but I am not one of them. 

As I thought of my friend's question this afternoon, I looked around at the woodlands that surround our home and questioned whether it was living in the midst of this splendor that is allowing that sense of "homeness" to come creeping in. But no, I have appreciated and enjoyed many beautiful natural settings without feeling connected to them with any sense of permanence, and so that isn't it. And then I realized what I have been doing the last couple of weeks, what I do every fall when the leaves begin their glorious transformation...I have been planting the landscape, once again, for color and for wildlife. I have planted dogwoods and crabapples for birds, more salvias for next years's hummingbirds, asters, goldenrods, thorougworts and a host of other natives for next years pollinators. As has been and will be for as long as I am able, it is the planting of habitat that links me to where I live, the partnering with the Creator in sustaining the life that lives around me. 

This afternoon, I wondered more about why this is so..why does creating homes for wildlife mean so much to me, other than that I value their presence? And then I realized...I grew up without a sense of home. My family moved twelve times in my first thirteen years and I attended four colleges before finally managing to finish. After graduating, I lived in nine different houses within eight communities in two countries over the course of the next eleven years, finally living at and coming to love the last house for twenty one years before moving to Maryland and beginning all over again, several times. Creating homes for wild creatures who need them is the only way I know to root myself into where I live. The transient life I have lived accounts, at least in part, for the deep longing and sense of vulnerability I sometimes feel...the tendency towards feeling lost and lonely, without moorings and the connection of place. Creating  spaces for creatures to live their lives in relative safety and stability affords me the opportunity to do the same. I am humbly grateful for their companionship and for that of our Creator God who lives among us.

Starting Over Again

Next month, it will be five years since we moved to Accokeek. We started out in this house, moved to the farm for three years, and now are back to where we began our life in Maryland. Now and again, I experience a fleeting remembrance of that initial wonder at living in this local landscape of woodlands, wetlands and fields all around us; of bald eagles, osprey, hermit thrushes, pileated and red-headed woodpeckers as common daily experience. It was about this time in February when my husband and I first explored the nearby boardwalk running between the almost-sleeping marsh and the Potomac River, and I realized that a long-held, but almost forgotten, hope to someday live near a wetland was soon to be fulfilled.

The last year has been one of the most challenging of my life, as we faced the need to move from the farm I had hoped would be our home for as long as we lived in Maryland. Lately, I have been more closely examining just why the prospect of starting over, yet again, has been so traumatic and, recently, was led to an article that finally brought clarity, and with the clarity, an understanding that allows me to move forward. The author of the article had been raised in a military family, as had I, and, like me, she moved every two or three years of her life, never putting down roots or thinking of any place as home. When she was faced with moving from the first little house she ever owned, it caused the same aching anguish that I experienced when we moved from Pennsylvania, and again, when we moved from the farm back to this house. It wasn't that the places we were moving toward were not filled with possibility and promise, but that, for the first time in our lives, we belonged to a place and a place belonged to us... a place that held and nourished us, that vibrated with memories lived and made, that was ours. 

Sometimes, just affirming our emotions and the origins from which they spring is enough to grant us the freedom to move on. I am tentatively working towards believing that home doesn't need to promise permanence in order to be a place of belonging in the now. Come spring, the house in the picture will be alive with the native plants I have tucked into the landscape, even in the depths of winter, and the creatures who will come to visit them. That some of the plants and shrubs I planted here three years ago have survived, and even thrived, is a most welcome gift and a reminder that nothing we do is ever lost. We may no longer be able to see the effects of our labors, or of our loving, but surely the good that we do will surely continue to ripple out, blessing the world, its creatures and its people in one way or another. 

Autumn Brilliance

The exuberance of autumn is already winding down and we are moving into a more subdued season. But even as we watch the last of the leaves swirl down and pull our sweaters more tightly around us against the November chill, this is a good time to think about next year's autumn landscape and what it might offer to us and to migrating birds and butterflies. What follows is a piece I wrote a few weeks ago for a native plant landscaping newsletter. Just as the bulb catalogs arrive in early spring so that we may gaze upon our landscapes and muse, "what if?" now is the time to consider what we might want to add to our autumn landscapes.

If you were asked what you treasure most about autumn, 

what would you answer? Would it be the magnificent color of the mid-Atlantic landscape, or the cool crisp days that call you to spend as much time as possible outdoors?  How about the sights and sounds of migrating warblers, thrushes and sparrows, foraging in the underbrush or perhaps the dwindling song of the season’s crickets and katydids on warm sunny days or chilly evenings?

Each year, as fall approaches I am restless to become a part 

of its story, to be a participant in its grandeur, and to add 

whatever I am able to the glory and abundance of the season. PIanting for autumn has become an integral component of my landscape planning, and as I work to meet the needs of birds and insects, I also revel in the seemingly endless palette of color possibilities. Surrounded by hues of reds, yellows, purples and oranges, I delight in the presence of grey catbirds, bluebirds and cedar waxwings picking berries from the Virginia Creeper and native viburnums that grow in the hedgerow, and thrushes, towhees and brown creepers busily scratching though the leaf litter below. Every autumn the yard is filled with migrating ruby-throated hummingbirds stopping by to nectar at the garden phlox, white turtlehead, obedient plant and jewelweed on their way south. Sparrows, indigo buntings, goldfinches, and chickadees perch unsteadily on seed heads of goldenrods, asters, black-eyed Susans, green-headed coneflowers and native grasses swaying in the breezes and eating their fill.

Planting for beauty and wildlife’s needs in autumn can be one

of the most rewarding aspects of the season. This autumn, take a look around your landscape and notice where you would like to have more color. Our native shrubs and trees take on tones of reds, purples, oranges and yellows and many have colorful berries that will be appreciated by birds needing nourishment as they migrate or prepare for winter. Herbaceous plants for shade that flower well into fall include: zig-zag goldenrod, blue stem goldenrod, white wood aster and blue wood aster. Herbaceous fall flowering plants for sun include: garden phlox, white and pink turtlehead, smooth aster, New York aster, and several beautiful goldenrod species. Of particular note for late fall color in sunny spots is the duo of the bright yellow late black-eyed Susan and the lovely fragrant, light purple aromatic aster .

What better way to enjoy the glorious season of autumn than being outdoors in your own yard, surrounded by birds and bees and butterflies, crickets and katydids, a participant in the natural world and immersed in the beauty and vibrancy of the season.