A milestone today ....

The Kalamazoo Bug House has been sold.

This has come with mixed feelings for Rick and me. I haven't blogged in a few days, mostly because Rick arrived last Thursday night in a 26-foot U-Haul, and we've been digging through our possessions ever since. I've moved into a lot of places in the last 30 or so years, but the Rochester Bug House is the first place I've ever had to move into twice.

The Kalamazoo Bug House has been sold.

We sold it to a longtime acquaintance who had always wanted to buy it. He will take good care of it -- he's a builder, for one thing. He's done work on it before; he fell in love with the place when he was putting in some improvements for us, and it was worth the bureaucratic hassle to make sure it was sold to him.

He'll remodel the kitchen and bathroom, but he won't spray the garden. He won't dig up our milkweed patch. He'll almost certainly keep the rhubarb plant in the back yard.

It doesn't make any difference that I grew up in Connecticut and spent my early adult years in the Boston area. It makes little difference that I never set foot in Kalamazoo until I was 34 years old, and didn't move there for more than a year later. In a very real sense, I'm now a person from Kalamazoo, only living somewhere else.

It may be a while before we own a home again. Just like the first time: We'll do it when (and where) we're ready.

I'm a native New Englander from Kalamazoo, Michigan, now living in Rochester, New York. When my husband finally moved into the new place with me, he brought me some sprigs of my beloved bleeding heart from behind the Kalamazoo Bug House.

I've loved bleeding heart since I was a kid in Connecticut; my mother pointed it out to me in a neighbor's yard long ago, and I thought the flowers were pretty and the name was funny. I could never resist that combination.

Maybe someday I'll have bleeding heart in my back yard again. Unless, of course, my next back yard is some place where bleeding heart doesn't grow.

The Kalamazoo Bug House has been sold. The temporary Rochester Bug House now contains a mated pair.

Watch this space.