wildwoodhomestead

There’s an old wooden, moss covered birdhouse perched way up high on a long pole in the backyard. I can hear something happening inside there. I was thinking to myself today, someone is in there Spring-cleaning! Maybe they are like us & just took possession of the place. I’m going to keep my eye on that little house. I’m anxious to get to know whoever lives there. There’s a bench positioned between the house & the pond. I sat there today & watched the kids make snowballs & listened to the sounds of the pine trees creaking in the breeze. I spent all day yesterday removing cabinet doors in the kitchen. Josh cleaned out the garage & removed some dead branches from a few of the trees around the house. I can tell he is chomping at the bit to start working the earth & planting, doing what he does, always making things beautiful everywhere we live. Our friends, Charlie, Jose, Alice, Grayson & Lindsey all made the hour or so trek from Norfolk today to see the new place. It was so neat to be out in the woods with all of them. It’s a good jaunt for them, but I think they’ll all benefit from having access to nature on the occasional weekend for campouts & garden time with us. Luckily no one got stranded on our driveway. It’s basically the muddiest place on the entire planet. This driveway is such a blessing & such a curse. It’s the greatest driveway in the world because it’s so incredibly long & it leads to the most amazing (in my opinion) secluded little nook in all of Pungo. But it’s the worst driveway in the world because there’s an abundance of chug holes that can be seen from outer space. Literally, from outer space. We know this because we logged on to Google Earth & the massive, mud-bog “swimming holes” on our driveway can be seen more clearly than the actual house. I have this nagging feeling that for all of the money we’re saving by purchasing a foreclosure, we’ll make up for in driveway maintenance costs this year. Holy Mudder Tires, It’s bad y’all! However, as we’ve been working on this real estate transaction over the past couple of months, I’ve found that every time we’ve had the opportunity to go out & visit the property & then come back to Norfolk, I look at my car with all of the caked-on mud & I pull off my boots outside the front door (also caked in mud) & this overwhelming, euphoric feeling of gratitude washes over me. I find such pleasure in knowing that we are headed somewhere so far away from the concrete of city life that we have no choice but to get filthy when we are there. I need mud in my life. Let there be mud!