Today was a day both of progress and of bittersweet moments here on the homestead.

We spent most of the day in the nursery, which has been patiently waiting for some TLC. It’s amazing how quickly weeds and time can take over when your attention is elsewhere (in our case, we had to prioritize taking care of my parents during their terminal diseases and hospice). I started to reclaim one of our sales areas, pulling weeds, composting plants that didn’t make it, and giving the survivors a good pruning. It felt so good to see some of our live plants shaped up and ready to shine again. Every cleared row made the space feel a little more like the bustling, cheerful nursery we want to reopen this spring. We have a long ways to go (it’s slow work), but as the old adage goes: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

Today also brought a hard goodbye. We had to cut down one of our favorite trees, a beautiful old Kwanzan cherry that had graced the space near our well house for years. It had been slowly losing its battle with disease, and the decline was too far gone. Standing in the shade of a tree you love, knowing it’s time to let it go, is never easy. But it was close enough to the well house that keeping it posed a risk, and we knew what we had to do.

On the brighter side, today marked a milestone for our 15-year-old: his first time using the chainsaw. My husband brought the tree down while our son and I pulled the ropes on it to ensure it fell away from the well house. But our son cut a lot of the thicker branches with the chainsaw with my husband right there beside him, guiding every step. Both were, of course, suited up in all the proper safety gear (ALWAYS): face guard, gloves, chaps, earplugs, steel-toed boots. It was one of those moments where you see your child stepping into new skills, a little taller, a little more capable than the day before.

By the end of the day, the nursery was tidier, the sales area more inviting… and an emptiness in the skyline where our cherry tree once bloomed. That’s homesteading life…part hard work, part learning, and sometimes, part letting go.