It is curious what you miss after a life change. A year ago today, a blog post announced the hole in the ground at Solstice Place. And, in the days and months that followed, we focused on choices – which granite slab would best anchor our kitchen, the paint color for the walls (Sherman Williams Zurich White), and the location of extra grab bars to safely grow old in place.

Among our many decisions, I deliberated about transplanting three key garden features from the First Street house. The four blueberry bushes – gifts from Momma; the chives – inherited with the house; and the rhubarb – from Grandma’s Vine Street garden transplanted to Rochester via my childhood house on Fourteenth Street. But in the end, timing simply didn’t comply. Too many other tasks demanded our focus as we decluttered for rightsizing, packed, and moved. Plus, there were just too many unknowns with a “little house on the prairie” (our one lone boulevard tree would not be planted until weeks after moving in.) Add to that, the vagaries of first-time membership in a Homeowners’ Association and thoughts of future gardens was remote.

And so, my Grandmother’s rhubarb (that is no longer mine) grows vibrant green on the south side of the new owner’s garage and not at Solstice Place. Rationally, I knew when we moved that I could easily source rhubarb from friends or through a visit to the farmers’ market. But a month into Spring and I haven’t done either. It was so much easier to walk out the door and simply twist and pull the needed stalks. Then finally last week, before returning from birthday celebrations at Momma’s, I harvested a small quantity of the tart vegetable from her garden. But rather than immediately gather flour and eggs and set to baking, I curiously treated them like stashed treasure vacillating between scones and crisp, with the crisp winning the baking challenge.

Even without these garden mainstays, I have been “playing in the dirt” at our new location. I planted the first four of what may be a proliferation of pots with companion pairings – Early Girl Tomato with purple basil, a combo of oregano, rosemary, and English thyme in another along with dill paired with parsley in a third, and then a pot filled with just sweet basil as you can never have too much of this fragrant culinary herb. Yet to come, this weekend, I will be filling the blue ceramic pots with bursts of color to set against the indigo backdrop of the front porch. I am still debating which perennials will best suit our two compact north facing front beds, currently landscaped with river rock and hosting one lone Hosta, three small grass mounds, and a hydrangea of yet unknown color.

All the while missing rhubarb.