asakiyume puts it at the beginning of her most recent post: I'm "Feeling lonesome for past times: past childhood,.."That is not to say I'm malcontent with my present, but as I was walking and taking pictures the other day, seeking my touchstone with nature (to borrow from
pjthompson ), I happened past a garden that transported me to my childhood New Mexico with its heady aroma of sun-warmed dill. 
(Garden by the Loire)
I loved that we had a garden and I never had to go hungry there. I loved the bounty and the work that came with it, shucking corn and shelling peas. I loved my guardian's homemade pickles and pantry full of preserves. I loved that she ground her own flour from wheat her husband grew and gathered eggs from her own hens. When I think of my little family's Someday, that moment when we decide to stop traipsing the world and settle down with a house of our own, I want to have a garden. I know the landscape around it won't be similar to what I knew for those brief years as a child, but I hope the feeling of plenty and contentment will be the same.
(Gentleman gardening by the Loire)
I know the New Mexico I miss is not necessarily a place--it's the time that I was rescued, when my life bloomed, when I found out the world had more in it than roach motels, food stamps, and fear.
I never have and I never will miss West Texas with its air that smells all too often of flatulence from the gas wells, its pumpjacks like skeletal birds, condemned to eternally peck the same bit of barren ground.
I've moved on to different pastures, not always greener, but better, infinitely better.
Ha! Bet you didn't know I was going to sneak in a picture of the Sprout! :P
