Home

Funny thing about the Christmas season.  It gets you thinking about going home.  Wherever home is.  Maybe it is where you hang your hat.  Maybe it is where your mom is.  Maybe it is where your babies are.  Maybe it is all of those.  Mixed up or not.  I think that is the way it is for me.  Home is two things for me.  Home is the house I grew up in where my mom still lives.  Thank goodness for small miracles.  They tried to sell the house a couple years back and couldn't.  I love that I can bring my children to Grammy's house and we can stay in my old bedroom.  At the same time though the town I grew up in is no longer my home town.  It has changed so much that it just isn't the place where I grew up.  Now that portion of my feelings are more inclined to feel like my home town is where my husband and children are. 

At this point though our new town has not come to feel completely like home yet.  For me that is still Montana.  I know this will change over the years.  It took several years to feel like our home in Montana was that, home.  I'm finding myself missing odd things from our Montana home.  Besides my garden that is. :)  My yellow kitchen, our post mistress, the neighbor lady that walked by our house everyday, my kitchen window that looked out on the backyard so I could watch the kids play and I could see the garden, and the strangest one?  I miss all the hippy/crunchy/organic stores.  Even our tiny town had a thrift store that was part second hand store part bulk herb store.  Our little grocery store carried lots of organic food.  If you went to Missoula there were all sorts of organic food and clothing stores.

Here we have one health food store.  At least there is one.  None of the grocery stores carry much in the way of organic food.  There seem to be no baby stores that carry cloth diapers or organic cotton clothes and natural wood toys.  Everything comes in Styrofoam containers here!  And wrapped in plastic wrap!  And store clerks just have no idea what to do with your canvas grocery bags.  Coffee stands (the couple there are) serve your coffee in Styrofoam cups.  What happened to cardboard?!  What happened to recycling?  What happened to all the green movement?

I find it funny that I miss all this stuff that kind of bugged me about the Missoula area.  I didn't disagree with it but I didn't care for the holier-than-thou attitudes of many of the people around town and in those types of stores.  But here, there is very little of the attitude that one should even think about this stuff.  There is a farmers market and there are a couple of CSAs.  Thank goodness for that.

All of it has me thinking about what ways I could bring some of this stuff to this town.  I'm tossing around ideas of some sort of store/farmers market stall.  My problem is trying to decide on a product.  Herbs and flowers?  Hand spun yarn?  Natural baby products?  Cloth bags from upcycled clothing?  Rag rugs?  Knitted or crocheted items?  Maybe a little of all of it?  How do you display it then?  What do you call it?  How do you include books in that?  If only my interests weren't so varied.

I so far lean heaviest toward herbs, flowers, and hand spun yarn.  All things I've been interested in for some time now.  I do need a place to grow said herbs and flowers though so... 

These are all just random ideas for now that all tie into the idea of making this area my home.  Maybe there is some way I can help improve the community and make my little corner here too?