Now you can see. Now you know. Now it’s clear why those first steps that told who you are and where you’re going with your home were so important.

It was in a coffee shop that we were first introduced a couple years ago. There we stood, on the fringe of the bustling room, chatting about the upcoming mountain festival where he'd be mountain bike racing, and where I'd trail raced a couple years running.

Are there pages full in that notebook of yours, the one that bears your house’s address and contains its strengths and deficiencies? If our houses are becoming home, this is where to start.

When we think of home, we often think of the home that’s tucked into our dreams; that one-day house that has all the right things, all the right spaces, and all the right feelings.

Something about the simplicity of the wood in its natural state. As if there was no stain, no varnish, no layers. Naked and beautiful.

It was the idea of texture that started it all

Spring’s eyelids are beginning to flutter in her sleep. Just over two weeks from now, the calendar says she’ll arrive

It was a quiet Thanksgiving, two week early

I have a steadfast belief that a small kitchen can be as enduring and beautiful as a large one.

A rinse-off under hot running water, a squirt of dish soap on the sponge, a rub-down of the dinner plate front and back, another hot rinse, and into the clean sink to drain and dry.

The shed was nearly buried by overgrown grasses, fallen branches, a rusting horse trailer, and a slapped-together, bent-wire dog run.

Sunday, I planted seeds. There, beside the creek (in which Nellie was wading, wading, wading) I spread out the seed packets, bags of starter mix, seed trays, and the handful of wooden markers I’d found in my potting bench drawer.