Dear Wisteria....

I will miss you...

You've grown so strong and healthy over the years.  Your blooms have brought beauty in the spring, and your branches have provided privacy all summer long.  I will miss sitting underneath you each morning as I read.  You are one of the many things I will miss about this house that has become our home....

You are sometimes hard to keep up with..you grow so quickly and grab hold of anything that sits nearby.  But you've lived a good life with us...

It's hard to believe you started out as small as this. 

And even harder to believe you will be dug up and discarded when your new owners arrive!  I will miss you when I drive by, straining my neck to see how the old homestead is surviving our absense.  Apparently you cause allergies, but don't take offense...you've done your job well for us.

We will miss you...

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,

where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."

~John Muir

In your stead we will inherit one of these...

she is also beauty and grows abundantly...

and one of these...

a bit overgrown from neglect, but still beauty awaiting an appreciative glance. 

I guess it's a little case of give and take...

And in the end, it's all good...

all of it.

"Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons."

~James Russell Lowell