Weekly Photo Challenge: Home
Lately the concept of home has been on my mind quite a bit, so I jumped into this weeks photo challenge, with much more than my usual one or two photos. I have been contemplating where my home is right now, since I’m living in two places, and since I’ve resisted calling Florida my home for so long. The whole 15 years I’ve lived here, I’ve been trying to live somewhere else, up where it snows, where people are packed densely into cities, where every luxury and desire can be found within a short drive.
But right now, home is in Florida, and I have come to appreciate that, and at times, even embrace it. This is my home, in Gainesville, where the lake beckons to me, turning trees to liquid, and glowing with sunshine.
Home is where spring comes too early, in glorious bursts of color, after a weeklong winter, with nighttime temperatures in the 30s, and daytime ones in the 60s.
Where even hints of summer may be found in February.
Here, at home, weeds are pervasive no matter what the season, but are often beautiful, with faces like the sun.
Leaves unfurl like flowers in the middle of February, when so much of the world is covered with snow, but my home is green and lush.
And home is a little house, behind a maple tree, with helicopter seeds that glow red against the brilliantly blue sky. This is my home, where my family waits for me when I am in DeLand. It calls me to it, no matter how much I love my other little home, and no matter how much I want to spend my weekend at the beach.
They say that home is where you hang your hat and I can identify with that too. I have two homes, one in England and one in America. When I am in one, I pine for the other. That’s the way it is. I empathise.
That’s exactly how I feel!