A new home, homemade wine, and no more armadillos in my garden!

Several months ago I had a vision of having a larger kitchen. And some storage space (oh, my kingdom for a closet.) And a bigger garden. And being more in community. These thoughts flashed through my mind, and then I let them go. I love where I lived, so there was really no reason to move.

Not much later I came home to find my friend Stephen, who was visiting Raven and I from Vashon Island in Washington, jumping up and down excitedly and telling me about an amazing house for sale down the hill from us.

You guessed it. Huge kitchen. Lots of storage. Enormous, fenced garden, already filled with waist-high plants.

Raven, Stephen and I spent an hour with the owner wandering the property with our months either widely smiling or dropped open at the house, the land, the springs, the feel of this place. It was perfect.

But after a few weeks of talking about numbers and feasibility we all realized that it was not time to buy anything. I was a bit sad, but I surrendered to reality. It was not time to move, not yet. Maybe next year Raven and I agreed.

Last week I received a call from one of our students who is researching the feasibility of moving to Texas to be near our community. As i was on the phone with her I turned off the main road into our subdivision (a middle of nowhere Texas country sub-division that is, which means that most houses are on fourteen acres and there are no building codes…) and I saw a tiny cardboard sign stuck up on a pole by the metal white rabbit that is the namesake for Hill Country Ranches.

In rough black felt pen the sign said HOUSE FOR LEASE $500/ROOM WILL RENT WHOLE HOUSE.

"Hey, a sign of power! I'll call them and check it out for you," I told Marilyn.

Little did I know the sign of power (or sacred nudge from the Universe) was for me.

I called the number, left a message, and in a few minutes received a call back from a cheerful man who started telling me about what he was offering.

And what he was offering was the same house Stephen, Raven, and I had fallen in love with but couldn't afford to buy. But now he was offering it for rent.

I immediately called Stephen. "Okay honey, I don't know why but our house is back…" This was on Friday. On Wednesday I gave our new landlord a deposit. Raven and I move October 1st; Stephen will have a bedroom for when he is in Texas.

And so I let go of a much loved house for one that I dreamed of months ago, and has now manifested in spades. It has everything I've wanted in a house, and things I couldn't even have named. Like a landlord who called me a few days ago and said, "Okay, what would you like me to plant in the garden for you this week so it will be ready when you move in?" and who gives us bottles of sweet wine that he makes from the muscadine grapes that grow everywhere on the property. And a treehouse in an old oak at the edge of the property. And water from the enormous rainwater tanks outside that are now full after the rains. And space for horses. And a garden that is fenced from the nibbles of deer and snouts of armadillos. And many things yet to be discovered…..