Last week this was the view out my kitchen window.

And this is what I often saw on my daily walk with Xav.

This week, a two day car ride later, the change is radical.

I’ve exchanged the densely wooded and beloved surroundings of our “crooked house in the woods” in Virginia for this beautiful water view out the windows of our temporary home in Louisiana.

Everything about the ambience of my surroundings has changed.

I’ll miss having four seasons and I’ll miss walking for miles and miles in any direction through woods that change dramatically with each of those seasons.  Admittedly, one of my greatest challenges of living here will be getting used to a climate of either “summer” or “not summer” but I’ve lived here before and I have roots of sorts in this very city, not to mention good friends.  In no time at all this will be home.

Ambience, after all, can also come from within and I have always believed that we are, indeed, supposed to bloom where we are planted.

This little guy on my deck railing this morning reminds me that some things remain the same no matter what state I live in.  There’s no doubt the squirrels  in Louisiana will soon be stealing my bird seed just as aggressively as they did in Virginia!