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Wistfully remembering…

For a long time, I hated our first house.  It was so small and hard to decorate, we had noisy neighbors, and the yard was a complete mess.

But, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I have been organizing photos in Memory Manager, and I keep coming across pictures of our first place.  Here was one of my favorite parts:

 

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The yard was very shady.  We lived in an old neighborhood with a lot of full grown trees.  Our house had previously been an ill-kept rental, and trees that had never been trimmed lined our lot.

But there was enough morning sun in this corner to grow a few things.  Those hostas were in their first year.  I transplanted them from a friend’s house.  I wonder what they will look like this summer, three years later?

The potty chair was a $1 garage sale find.  If only I had known that my mom would want an antique potty chair for her first grandbaby, I wouldn’t have let it sit outside getting ruined.  It was cute, though, right?

The tall, pink plants are “surprise lilies.”  They come up big and bushy in the spring, the foliage dies back, and then these babies bloom later in the summer.  Surprise!  I dug up a few of these and brought them with me – transplanted them in the rain two springs ago.  They are coming up green now!

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I wanted to bring a little country to town.  This washtub was my husband’s grandma’s, and the hydrant was from his grandparents’ farm. 

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Apparently, it was manufactured near us – it says, “Des Moines, Iowa” on it.

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I’m hoping to do some more fun outdoor projects around here next summer.  But in the meantime, I’ll enjoy all of the GREEN in these photos and reminisce about our first place.

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