bon voyage to me

Oh what a delicious feeling it is to have everything packed and we just need to wait for the appointed time to leave. Almost every item is crossed off every list, except a few last-minute things to make sure we don’t leave anything in our hallway. No more worrying, no more thinking ahead to the kinds of things we *might* need in Cuba, no more worst case scenarios…

This time tomorrow, we should be in Cuba.

I’m not even that sad that I probably won’t see my bloodroot shoots come up, wrapped in their big funny leaves like a self-conscious woman in a wrap who needs a few stiff drinks before she sheds it and then suddenly she’s this audacious beauty of glowing white fineness in a world where everyone else is still just getting their green on.

And I’m only a little sad that I’m probably not going to see my backyard turn purple with these strange spring ephemerals that pop up in April to feed the winter-beaten bees and then die, leaving nothing to show for their week of sweet nectar and raucous colour but tiny colourless bulbs in the dirt.

Instead, I’ll have to settle for azure waves, palm trees and sticky sand. Poor me.

(I’m hoping to post from time to time but not sure how frequent it will be. Definitely won’t be able to visit you though, so if something big happens to you, please email me.)

Finally! A gardenerd post...

on woodies! Tempted?

Read on at mommyblogstoronto...

(And look! A post by a man who wears kilts to thrill the ladies at Hot and Bothered.)

long overdue

So yes, we did go to the Brick Works, some time ago, and I still haven't blogged about it. For one thing, I shot a lot of photos and wanted to spend some time editing them before I blogged. But for another, frankly, I was disappointed. The farmer's market really was local, but the problem with a local-only farmer's market in June is that there's really only strawberries (but yum -- organic strawberries!), wild leeks (which a vendor had made into pesto and which we didn't buy), and other greens. There was also a fair-trade, organic coffee vendor and some organic bakeries, but really, the selection was pretty limited. Not worth the trip to TO in itself, I'm afraid.

However, the native plant selection WAS good; they even sold shrubs and trees. But I'm not ready to buy shrubs and trees, so I only wanted herbaceous plants, and they pretty much only had species I already have. But that's also ok, because we planned to go downtown after the market and I wasn't sure how plants, or any other produce, would fair in a hot car.

The Brick Works is a really cool site and had lots of crumbling bricks, broken windows and graffiti -- although sadly, the graffiti was mostly in a fenced-off area that I guess hasn't been restored to safety yet. Bottom line? A cool place to go if you live in TO and you don't actually want to do your grocery shopping.



Afterwards, we wandered around Chinatown and along Dundas and had a nice afternoon.



I've taken a break from blogging to work on all the photos I've been shooting. I will post more soon.

life and death at MBT

My blanket flower is dead. The one that bloomed so vigorously all last summer, just weeks after I first planted its young roots, apparently decided it was better to burn out than to fade away. All summer long last year, it made me happy just to look at it, covered in raucous red and gold flowers the very essence of happiness. When its blooms were still boisterous in September, I did feel a hint of unease, wondering if perhaps it was behaving a bit too much like an annual, but I quelled it, believing that it was just so robust, it would only be stronger next (this) year.

Read more at MBT...

Native Plants at the Brick Works!

I have done a grave disservice to the readers of gardenerd who may actually want to buy some native plants. Remember when I mentioned the Brick Works? Well, I didn't see that they also have a native plant nursery every Saturday from May 26 to July 8. I did see they had plans to have a permanent native plant nursery by 2009, but didn't realize they had a temporary one RIGHT NOW.

See? It's true. So get thee to the Brick Works and buy some native plants! They also have a "certified-local" farmer's market on Saturdays from 8 till 2, which I believe means that there are only real growers there, not just peddlars of produce from the Food Terminal.

I have high hopes to go there today myself, provided Sugar D is game.

(cross-posted at MBT.)

Dame's Rocket

Alpha Dogma commented on my weeds post, asking my opinion of Dame's Rocket (hesperis matronalis). I discovered Dame's Rocket the same summer I discovered first love and the delicious freedom or my first summer with a fully valid driver's license. In the rolling hills of small-town southern Ontario, freedom is spelled with a driver's license (and parents nice enough to grant access to a car).

R, my first love, enjoyed the quiet and still places of the natural world, the places that when you visit quietly you discover are not so quiet and still.

Read more at mbt...

weeds

I remember when we decided to buy our house. It was a late May evening, and we had come for a second viewing with my parents. We were in the backyard and the golden evening sun was slitting through the new green leaves on the trees. Bees were buzzing and it felt magical and alive. It was a haven.

Later, when we had the house inspected, the inspector pointed out a young tree growing right next to the house. "When the wind blows," he said, "its branches will rub against the roof of your addition and cause damage. It's not a good place for a tree to grow so you should really have it cut down. Besides, it's a weed tree, a Manitoba maple."

Although I didn't say anything, internally I bristled.

Read more from gardenerd at mbt...



(and Sugar D kept to his Mother's Day gift... he worked 6 hours a couple of weeks ago and moved our shed from the middle of our yard to the back. It makes the yard look SO much bigger!

The black plastic on the right side is halfway through the Great 2007 Covering of the Goutweed (read the mbt post for my rant against goutweed).

gardenerd

In honour of our national beer-drinking and/or gardening weekend, I have a new post up at mommyblogs toronto. With photos of sunshine and flowers, AND a cool place to check out if you'll be finding yourself in the vicinity of Toronto... check it out if you please...

the road less taken

Is it me or has the outside world suddenly erupted into green, yellow and blue abundance?

Every single day I look at my shade to part-shade front garden and it doesn't take much examination to note the changes every single day. This morning there are buds on my wild phlox and I suddenly remember how much I LOVE that plant. For a few beautiful weeks each spring, it gets covered in a profusion of surprising light purply blue flowers, and judging from its buds this morning, it's about to burst forth in blue.

[To continue down the native plant garden path, check out my latest post at mommy blogs toronto. But come back! Or stay here and click there when you're finished here... whatever.]

* * *

Inside, the shift to summer is more gradual. I get occasional shocks of recognition as the scents and sounds of summers past become present.

The clinks of another family's cutlery on plates marking the end of a distant meal float through our open windows. A neighbour's barking dog threatens Swee'pea's precarious sleep.

Heavy rain slaps the pavement after spilling out of the neighbour's broken old eavestroughs that have lost their downspouts.

I open the bathroom window and am nearly bowled over as the familiar scent of warm roof shingles meets fresh bathroom soapiness, and together they blow over the stairs.

Our minds begin to turn to old summer menus during the daily ritual of deciding what to have for dinner. Last night, potato salad with green beans and red peppers in a wasabi balsamic vinaigrette with veggie burgers. Tomorrow night salmon fillets with asparagus and fresh tomatoes.

Of course my freshest summer memories are from the other side of the earth just a few short months ago, and I find my mind tugged again and again back to the tip of Africa, where mountains butt into the split of two oceans. I pull out Swee'pea's summer clothes that he last wore in South Africa, and some of them even still fit.

The last time we were there, I remember we were both less enamoured of the place than we had been two years before, more aware of the inconveniences and discomforts of away. We said we would wait longer than we initially planned for our next trip. But that place pulls on me nevertheless, and I can't remember the rational discussions and reasons for waiting to return, only the joy of exploring the difference, of warm evenings and sharp brown mountains against pink skies. I thought I'd gotten the place out of my system with this last visit, but I am once again hungering to live there, to immerse myself in it and learn how we would adapt our lives and selves if we tried to live there for a while. So I guess we'll have to see what the future holds...

****

Last night I taped the advance preview of Traveler, and today I watched it. It's got everything: handsome young men as protagonists (just call me grandma), intrigue, suspense and conspiracy. I'm hooked. I keep thinking about it, like it's a really good book that I can't wait to dive back into and find out what's going to happen next, the kind of book that I slow down reading right before the end and then get all sad when the inevitable comes and I finish reading it. I think I've found my summer tv show.

A quick note

I have a new side-gig!

Remember how I said I was gonna do a semi-regular series about native plants? Well, I'm doing it at mommyblogstoronto instead of here.

I figure the structure of doing it on another blog will motivate me to actually write the posts instead of just adding them to the list of a million other posts I'd love to write here. If you feel like it, check it out:

I love that I am starting this new gig just as spring is emerging; the grass is greening and the old friends I planted in seasons past are rising. I am also discovering plants that are familiar, definitely deliberately planted, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they are. I will need to wait until the foliage unveils itself, confident that winter really is gone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I think I need to offer a few caveats before we get started. Read more...

face plant

Yesterday I made it out to our small front garden to do some spring cleaning. I took down last year's seed heads that fed the birds who stuck around over the winter, and cleared away the old leaves, and dug out some baby weeds. I studied the tiny new shoots coming up and admired the purplish backside of the bloodroot's leaves wrapped tightly around their stems until they reach full height of about six inches and they unfurl them in their irregular, flat hand-like glory.

I was nearly finished that bed when Swee'pea came out, the first time we've really let him walk around outside. It's hard to believe it's been just about a month since he took his very first steps ever, and now he's an expert. Well, almost. He toddled into the garden with its very uneven soil. My first thought was, "Nooooo! My baby plants!" then as he lost his footing it was, "Noooo! My baby!" But it was like I was moving through molasses. He did a total face plant just in front of the mounds of new columbine, thankfully several inches from introducing his teeth or nose to the concrete edge of our porch. But the poor little guy had dirt in his eye.

We wiped him up but didn't know how to get at the dirt IN his eye. We called telehealth to see if it would work itself out or whether we should begin a campaign to remove it. After about 20 minutes of questions, they finally said we should really flush it out with tepid water, so we tried. Swee'pea didn't like it but eventually it worked, and it appears that there is no lasting damage. Unlike poor little Miss M.

Green Day

Yesterday was so warm and beautiful, it reminded me of a passion I've forgotten: native plant gardening. I am not a good gardener. It's way too much like hard work. But what I am good at is reading books, choosing plants, and dreaming. Luckily, I have a friend around the corner from me who is a brilliant gardener, even though he uses exotics (bleagh), and he very kindly helps out with some of the hard work in my garden (and there's lots).

So, I've decided to start a new series on my blog: Green Day (I haven't decided which day yet). Each post will feature a plant that's native to my area (southern Ontario), preferably even living in my garden. Likely, this series will bore the pants off you, but it's my wee attempt at activism. If just one of you decides to try just one native plant as a result of my blog, please tell me, and all the boredom will be worth it.

I've touched on it here before, but allow me to repeat myself. There are MANY reasons to choose native plants for your garden, among them:

1. they're easier than exotics; you don't have to do a thing, really, except thin them out from time to time, and give a little water to seedlings if the weather is particularly dry.
2. they use fewer resources than exotics, i.e., less water, no pesticides, no fertilizers
3. they contribute to biodiversity and provide food and homes for fauna whose homes and food are increasingly threatened, especially butterflies and birds
4. they don't threaten our natural, native plant ecosystems; while there are some exotics that are well behave and don't escape into the wild, many of our favourites like lily of the valley and myrtle are invasive and outcompete our native species. Lily of the valley and myrtle are by far not the worst culprits for invasion (no the worst ones are in my backyard: goutweed and Manitoba maples) but they're popular. And a lot of nurseries don't warn you or sell only the well behaved ones (I think tulips, daffodils and lilacs would count as well behaved).
5. They're beautiful in a slightly less showy less bloomy but more appealing with nicer foliage way (to me anyways).
   
6. They attract butterflies, bees and birds (just in case that point got buried above).

If you decide to give a native plant a try, try to make sure you buy the proper species. Lots of nurseries SAY it's native, but it's really a selected breed, with likely some of the traits that birds and butterflies like bred out of them. It's good to learn the Latin names too, because sometimes two different species native to two opposite ends of the continent have the same common name. There are many nurseries that specialize in native plants, which are the best and most knowledgeable sources of native plants. If you want to find one in your area, I'd be more than happy to help. Also, make sure that wherever you buy them from, they state clearly that they don't collect from the while unless it's from land slotted for development, in which case the rescue saves the plant community from destruction. Don't collect from the wild yourself either.

Ok, so now that I've gotten the preamble taken care of, I give you today's feature plant: sanguinaria canadensis or Bloodroot.


It's a woodland plant, preferring shady conditions, especially deciduous shade (the kind that means full, bright spring sunshine with shade from the harsher summer sun), but it does fine in my northeastern facing front garden, which only gets morning sun in the later summer. This afternoon, only a day or two after the snow finally melted from this shaded area, I saw its orangeish reddish greenish white pointy tips piercing the soil already. It gets lovely white blooms, bigger than you'd expect but also more delicate and prone to getting blown away. The broad, irregularly shaped leaves, though, are my favourite part of this plant. They last way longer than the blooms, and they just seem so damn whimsical to me, especially the way they wrap around the stem as it grows up, then unfurls itself like an open hand waiting for a handout.

The plant is named for its red sap, and I think it has been used for medicinal properties, but I can't remember what they are, and I'm pretty sure it carries significant and dangerous side effects.

I think it's native to most of northeastern North America. Feel free to check out some of the web and print resources I listed in this post.

And yay! Kgirl, who I love love love got awarded for a thinking blogger award. Her combination of responsible organizer yet hipster earth mother always makes me think. Yippee! AND she passed on the honour to me. Mad also proclaimed me a thinking a blogger, a while back, so I'll point you to the post I did then because I'm feeling lazy.

I will take advantage to kindly remind kgirl that I tagged her a LONG time ago for whenever she started blogging again... and look, she's blogging again... if she's up for it.

Lawn Bowling and Native Plants

There is a lawn bowling club near us; we walk past it between parks along the river. This afternoon we went for a walk and went past the lawn bowling green. The wind was high and the clouds were moving fast. This morning's weather forecast called for rain this afternoon, and for rain on two or three other days later this week. There were large puddles in the gravel driveway and parking lot that surround the green. My point is it's been wet and they're calling for more wet. But there were big sprinklers watering the green! It looked like the heavens were about to open any minute and they're watering the green?!?

Recently I've been noticing new signs around Guelph like this one. I don't know very much about this issue but it is my vague understanding that the municipality has created a 50-year water plan and are proposing to build a pipeline from Lake Erie to meet the city's increasing water needs. I understand there will be another pipe that runs alongside it to take waste back to Lake Erie. People are up in arms because of the enormous economic and ecological impact such a pipeline would have. I intend to do more research about this issue but haven't yet. People are rising quickly to protest and the signs are multiplying. My husband joked that all the people who have been fighting Walmart for the last several years need a new cause now Walmart has made it in. (It's just a joke, not intended to offend anyone. We opposed Walmart too.)

I guess the main reason we need more water is because Guelph is developing like mad, especially in the south end, which is close to Highway 401 and therefore very attractive to commuters. Every time we go out of town, it takes longer and longer to get out of the city and there is less and less green space between it and the 401.

On one of those 50 degree days we had in July, a Very Kind Mum invited Swee'pea and I to hang out at her air-conditioned house deep in the south end. As I drove through her subdivision at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, I saw a woman watering her grass and the sidewalk -- on a day when it really did feel like I was in a sauna! First off, I absolutely don't condone watering lawns; well, I just don't see the point. My lawn is mostly full of weeds that stay green in droughts but even if it weren't. Lawns go brown in summer; who cares? BUT, if you are going to water your lawn (and some of my friends do and I'm still friends with them so I'm not that militant), DO IT IN THE EARLY MORNING OR EVENING, PEOPLE! Not at the peak of heat in the day when it's so hot I can guarantee no water is actually making it to the roots of your grass because it is evaporating so fast.

Wow, this has turned into a rant. I intended for it just to be a series of observations but I guess I'm a bit passionate about this. So... if you want to conserve water, which we all should if we want our children and their children to survive and thrive when we're gone, a great way to do it is to do away with your lawn and grow native plants. They're also beautiful and provide habitat for the creatures that live near you, including all the pretty butterflies and birds. Since I began gardening with native plants, my standards of beauty have changed. I have learned to identify invasive aliens and many native species and I find that some of the invasives I once thought pretty are no longer because I know they are destroying wild plant communities and threatening our forests. I still love lilacs -- after all they're pretty well-behaved and aren't much of a threat -- but I find more and more I love the native berrying shrubs that flower in the spring and early summer, the midsummer milkweeds and autumn asters.

It really annoys me when I watch a gardening program and the 'experts' talk like watering your garden is just a fact of life. I have seen many segments telling you how you can go on vacation and still have your garden survive. Mostly they involve planting in new absorbent materials so water is provided slowly. But it doesn't have to be this way. If you use native plants you only have to water them while they're young; once they're established, unless you have a crazy, unusual for your area drought, you don't have to water them again.

There are many great websites and books that can help you if you want to give it a try:

• Canadian Wild Federation
• Evergreen
• North American Native Plant Society
• Tending the Earth: The Gardener's Manifesto by Lorraine Johnson
• The New Ontario Naturalized Garden, 100 Easy to Grow Native Plants for Canadian Gardens and Grow Wild! by Lorraine Johnson
• Noah's Garden and Planting Noah's Garden by Sara Stein
• In the US, anything by Sally and Andy Wasowski

And there are no rules. Just try planting one native species and see if you like it.

Swee'pea with (red) Cardinal plant (lobelia cardinalis) and (pink) Joe Pye Weed (don't remember the latin).

I saw HBM's call to action to write about a passionate cause. I didn't do anything about it because I felt like a knob writing about this piddly little cause when compared to the real human causes others have written about, particularly HBM's piece about the disease her nephew is suffering from. I was paralysed by that piece. But my post today has come about organically, like my garden, and I realize that it is not a piddly little cause at all but is also a human cause. We are all 80 per cent water and our lives and children's lives depend on it.

Oh - and while I'm on my soapbox about green things, buy local produce.

My garden in July, L to R: (white) foxglove beardtongue (penstemon digitalis), puple coneflower (echinacea purpurea), (yellow) mexican hat (ratibida columnifera), (yellow) shrubby St. John's wort, (red) blanket flower (gaillarda or something like that), and (yellow) black-eyed susan (rudbeckia something).

Joining

I've been toying with the idea of joining the Waterloo-Wellington Wildflower Society. I'm not exactly sure what all they do but I know they have a plant sale at the Farmer's Market every spring and a garden tour every summer. I think they also have monthly meetings with guest speakers and perhaps occasional plant rescues when land with native plants is slated for development. This sounds mostly good to a plant geek like me.

But those people are passionate with a capital P about native plant gardening and, judging from the garden tour, they work hard. I'm passionate about the theory of native plant gardening but not so much about the gardening. I don't think I have what it takes to be a real gardener. I love learning about plants and deciding which ones to put where and I like planting new ones. But I'm not so keen on digging new beds, transplanting adult plants when they didn't work out as I planned, pulling the endless weeds in my garden, basically all the rehabilitation required to make my yard what I want it to be. That's way too much like hard work.

The fact is, I'm just a slacker at heart. I do the bare minimum to keep afloat. Even with the things I'm passionate about. Well, occasionally I go overboard (case in point: how often I've been posting) but it doesn't take long for the obsession to wane and I go back to the minimum.

native plant rant

I just watched a bit of a show about flowers. It's called Flower Power and each episode focuses on a different flower and how it's been cultivated. I know... I am so lame. Today's show was about lupins and how they grow wild in England and how they're the cinderella of flowers. Now, I didn't pay huge attention and turned it off before it was over but I didn't see it once mention that lupins are native to North America and were just perfect before they were cultivated and hybridized for the garden industry and how they're the only larval food for the Blue Karner Butterfly (or something like that), which are becoming extinct because all the native lupins are disappearing while everyone plants garden cultivars, which the butterflies don't like. Arrggh.

That said, my lupins do feed an awful lot of aphids and their beautiful foliage often disappears while they flower. Here is a picture of one of my lupins.
Sadly it died mysteriously just after I took this picture. But it self-seeds readily so I have lots of others.
tag: native plants

Native Plant Geek

I discovered this weekend that I am a native plant geek. I've taken an online nerd test before and actually registered as barely nerdy at all (which is just fine with me because I've always figured Dave is the real nerd in the family) but native plants were not on the exam. The evidence is in the following conversations while on a garden tour put on by the Waterloo-Wellington Wildflower Society.

A man, fingering the leaves of a small tree, "I think this is a cornus."

Me: "Yes, it's cornus alternifolia."

Him: "I have a cornus florida. It's a little more rare than cornus alternifolia."

Me: "Wow, they're really pretty."

Then later, with two women:

Them: "Do you know what those small trees with the big leaves are?"

Me: "Yes they're pawpaws, in the banana family. They're the only tree in the banana family that are native to Ontario and the fruits are edible." (Sadly, I couldn't remember the latin name but I have known it in the past - I blame the baby brain aka dumb mum.)

And in another garden, with the owner:

Her: "The black-eyed susans are stunning but I don't what these are."

Me: "It's rudbeckia triloba. But I don't know that one."

Anyways, just in case anyone's interested, the tour provided great inspiration. The first garden was nice but had lots of non-native plants, which don't do much for me. The next garden was in a huge backyard with large oak trees and belonged to someone who shares my passion for native plants. There were many native shrubs and she'd even gone to the trouble of labelling many of the plants. Being a native plant geek, I especially pleased that she even included the latin names. The best discovery was her black elderberry, a large shrub in full sun with beautiful clusters of shiny black berries... now I just need to figure out where to plant one in my yard.

The third garden belonged to Henry Kock, a U of Guelph professor, eco-activist, key player at the university's arboretum and all-round character. Unfortunately, he passed away this past Christmas but volunteers have been maintaining his garden, Hotel of the Trees, in his absence. He has a great collection of unusual native and non-native trees. This garden had a sign reminding me of the arboretum's plant sale, so I've gotten a catalogue and am planning my purchases.

I may have to talk about some of my favourite native plants on this blog in the future...

Kirstenbosch, Native Plants, and Babies

Over the Victoria Day weekend in 2003, I read a book that changed my life. It's probably not the kind of book you're thinking of. It was The Gardener's Manifesto: Changing the World and Creating Beauty One Garden at a Time by Lorraine Johnson, and after I read it, I decided to buy a house so that I could have a garden with plants indigenous to my part of Ontario. No doubt there are easier ways to get a garden, especially with all the community gardens around. But many of my friends were buying houses and I wanted to join in on the fun.

So a few weeks later we found a house and bought it and took possession on July 18, 2003. It was a fixer-upper and cheap but in a central neighbourhood on a quiet street. I thought it would be a great project. After six weeks of ripping up floors, removing 50-year-old doggy carpet and yucky 70's fake wood panelling, painting, melting and nearly breaking up in the hot summer, we moved in. I started gardening immediately, bored with the house renovations already. I removed some hedges in front of the porch and began planting native plants. And then waited to see the results next summer.

Next summer we got married and I started planting flowers in a former vegetable garden that was far too shady for vegetables. Plus, being in an old, slightly industrial neighbourhood I didn't trust the soil for veggies. And veggies are just way too much work. A big reason for planting native perennials was for the low maintenance. I like planting but I've never been great at the maintenance. Anyways, again, I waited to see the results in the following year. The front garden didn't look so great. The right side flowered in the early summer and the left side flowered in the late summer so it was all very unbalanced. On to 2005.

In February 2005, my husband and I went to South Africa. He grew up there and all of his family except for his mum still live there. For details of my trip, see the emails I sent while we were gone. Our first day in Cape Town, we went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. I was very keen to go because I've always loved flowers and now I was especially interested in the indigenous plants, especially the fynbos. My favourite place in Kirstenbosch is the medicinal plants garden, which describes how each plant has been used traditionally. By this time in our lives, my husband and I were beginning to talk babies. Well, ok, I'd been talking babies for a few years but finally my husband had joined in. For some reason I was scared I would struggle with infertility once we started trying. So one plant that really struck me in the medicinal plants garden was agapanthus. It's a blue flower in the lily family and very pretty. I think it was backlit in the actual garden when we were there so I couldn't get a good shot of it in Kirstenbosch. Traditionally it was used as a fertility charm. I wanted a charm like this to take home with me. So I spent the rest of the trip with my eyes peeled for agapanthus so I could take a photo for my fertility charm. Eventually, I found one at the Storm River's Mouth in Tsitsikamma National Park.

Shortly after we returned to Canada, we started trying to make a baby. Two months later, I was pregnant. After we had Ezra, my husband's employer sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to congratulate us. It was blue, I guess because we had a boy, and in it were two beautiful agapanthus flowers.

Anyways, back to my garden: I didn't do much during the summer I was pregnant and here we are in the next summer and I'm too busy with Ezra. But I have a friend who is a fantastic gardener and has improved my gardens immensely. I like my front garden now and I just know my back garden will look great next year. Oh - and on our house: it's slightly more fixed up than when we bought it but it's still very much an unfixed-up fixer-upper. We've discovered that not only are we completely unhandy but we also don't much like renovating. Luckily, we've also discovered we really like our house and don't want to live in any other house.