Last summer, I purchased an 85-year-old house from a 92-year-old woman. She had lived here for 55 years. By all accounts, she was a master gardener in the past with the front yard being a right-proper English garden. Inside, the entire house had hooks in the ceiling from where she had hung plants just about everywhere. She had painted nearly every room in the house dark green. By the time I purchased the house, you literally couldn’t see the house from the street. The front yard was so overgrown, that the house looked abandoned.
After a lot of work and even more $$, I had restored the front yard to a lovely lawn with the perfect evergreen for decorating for the holidays. The front yard was as lush and green as a golf course.
But mother nature has her own opinions. And this spring, flowering bulbs had sprung up all over the place. I sincerely believe that planting bulbs must’ve been the previous owner’s life purpose. There are hundreds of them coming up in the front and back yards.
At first I was miffed. But then a wise gardening friend of mine said “So what? So they bloom all over the place and then when it’s time to cut the grass, they go away! Enjoy the show!”
Sage advice.
What is also fascinating to me is that I have never been able to successfully grow house plants. Seriously, I kill everything. Until moving into this home. Now suddenly – utterly to my dismay – the plants I purchased for what I thought was temporary life in the house, are flourishing. I kid you not I cannot explain it. I even went so far as to buy a chainsaw to work in the back yard with.
Say what!?!? Radleigh, are you okay?
Beyond that, I have developed an obsession for mid-century modern pots and planters. I can’t resist them.
Geez louise. Clearly, the previous owner’s energy is still lingering in the walls here. And yes, I had the house professionally cleared when I bought it. And yet somehow, I have started to grow a green thumb. Go figure.
But here’s the deeper truth: I think this house is teaching me something. Or perhaps, more accurately, reminding me of something I already knew. That when we enter a space where loving energy has been tended—when we step into something that’s been nurtured with purpose, patience, and a little bit of magic—it leaves an imprint. It calls to something inside us. And whether it’s gardening, personal growth, or spiritual exploration, that call has the power to awaken dormant parts of us we didn’t even know were waiting.