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Adelaide Shaw

Renewal

Our new home will eventually be in the country. We go there often to paint and work in the yard.

It's early May. The rolling hills are lush with new grass. The road bends and turns. A red barn and silo. Holsteins and horses standing quietly in pastures. Dogwood along the road, the delicate limbs spreading outward.

So much to see. I want to go slowly to absorb it all, to have this beauty become a permanent part of my being.

All too soon we reach our house where work awaits. Once…someone's pride. Now…overgrown grass to cut, bushes to prune, dead wood to remove. So many trees and shrubs left to wither and die. Years of neglect to undo.

the old house—
finding in the side yard
white lilacs