Friday Favs: Spring is Here!

For those new to my little corner of the interwebs, here a fun fact about me: I lived on a farm for about two-and-a-half-years.

I'd love to tell you that I was some sort of local co-op farmer who grew organic veggies for a CSA and each week customers came by and picked their own or some crazy, made up story like that.

Hardly.

It was a big change for me to live out there. I am a city kid to the core. And to live on a farm where the water was so hard turned your toilet orange (even with softener salt), the infestation of those Japanese beetles every year, where a trip to town was a planned event...it was hard for me. My husband loved it of course. But for me, let's just say I absolutely took one for the team.

How did we end up there? I changed jobs which brought my husband and I back to the area where he grew up. And we needed a place to live--so my in-laws offered us the second house on the family farm. In fact, it was the house my husband grew up in!

And yes. That's right. Two houses on the property. My in-laws were right across the yard.

No. It wasn't odd, actually. We had good boundaries, including calling each other to come over when we got the wrong mail by accident.

Anyway.

As much as the farm wasn't my jam, you know what I do miss?

Lilac bushes.

The bushes were so big that they actually created a natural fence around the property, splitting the farmstead (where the houses and buildings are located) and the farm land (the field for crops).

This was taken three years ago when we made the decision to buy a house in town. The best part about them? When the wind blew, the whole house smelled like lilacs. It was incredible. They were all purple--some dark, some light. I don't remember any white lilacs.

Farm life may not have been for me, but man. I miss those lilacs.

When we moved, we bought a house with a giant backyard. It has apple trees, a plum tree, raspberry bushes, strawberries...but no lilacs. Our good friends, as a housewarming gift, gave us a gift certificate to a local nursery for the purpose of buying lilac bushes.

How freakin' sweet were they to think of that?

(answer: pretty freakin' sweet)

So we did.

And they've slowly been growing and spring has finally sprung because they leaves are starting to pop out.

I LOVE that about spring.

LOVE. IT.