And Spring Comes Again

Winter is ending in the Ozarks and the sure signs of spring have arrived. Daffodils are blooming in the fields and it is as though each bloom invites you to sigh with relaxation that spring is about pretty up the whole place.

It’s a good thing, for we’re entering the next season of choosing to downsize and move from town to this cottage in the Ozarks.

Our last few years have been focused on doing the necessary things for our cottage. It had been sorely neglected and when we purchased it, it lacked floor boards, a decent roof and begged for fresh paint.

Anyone who has done renovations as a project knows that no matter what television or streaming shows, it’s an arduous process to create and renovate home in an older cottage.

Last year we loved working to build a simple fence for the front of the cottage. We appreciated getting the new roof and front porch completed. We re-wired the kitchen to keep electricity safer, and we painted the cottage and replaced all the window shades.

This spring and summer we’ll focus on beautifying and making the garden more productive and a larger project of continuing to finalize releasing more of what was stored after the moves from three homes to our property. We did a fairly good job of releasing over 6,000 sft of stuff from the 3 houses to keep only what works in a 990 sft cottage, but there were some things, antiques and such, that we’ve held onto. There’s always been discussion of whether or not to build another cottage on the property, and it continues, so some pieces have been held onto for that reason.

My friend said that we’d rebuild our lives as we rebuilt the cottage and it has been a true prediction. I barely recognize the person I was five years ago based on how my life is today. I think that’s a good thing. Covid changed how we function in our businesses, and it encouraged us to function differently in our daily lives as well.

I am so very thankful we were given this opportunity to buy the cottage. To face the hardships and challenges of choosing to downsize though we never planned to it be. The land we are on, a small acreage, is peace-giving, and encouraging. It’s location between ranches and farms that remind us that slow living is a good thing.

It is a season of new beginnings and creating, and spring just seems to encourage us in so many ways. As we prepare for Resurrection Sunday and spring gardens, there are so many ways we are planting into our lives…growing is always such a good thing to do.