I’m moving away. It’s early May, and I’m going to be leaving this home, the only place I’ve ever lived.

It’s not a big house. Originally five rooms – living room, dining room, kitchen to the left, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom on the right, divided by a hall, and with a nice alcove off the dining room. Previous owners had added on to the back, a utility room with pantry and laundry tubs, and a bedroom larger than any other room in the house. There’s an attic that’s big enough to have been finished, but never was. I used to worry about that attic.

When I was a kid, I had found a leaflet that daddy brought home from England during World War II. It described “what to do if an incendiary comes through your roof,” among other things. According to the leaflet, we should have had an inch of sand on the attic floor, and a bucket of sand and a bucket of water in front of each window. Our attic just had lots of old clothes and broken toys, magazines, piles of “National Geographic’s” but no water and no sand.

I didn’t know what an incendiary was and I never asked anyone about it; in time I guess I just decided it had nothing to do with us. If you turn on a light switch in that house, I can tell you what room you’re in just by the sound. Every single one sounds different. There’s a small furnace room off the kitchen; it’s a grand place to sit after you’ve walked home from school in January, all cold and mama’s made molasses cookies. And there’s a fireplace in the living room. We have fires often during the winter, burning bags of coal in a grate daddy made just for that purpose. We always have to have a fire on Christmas Day.

Of course, the temperature in coastal Virginia on Dec. 25 might just be in the low 70s, and you have to open the front door as long as the fire is burning. When that happens, we just burn the wrapping paper from all the presents, and then let the fire go out. Even though he died long ago, I can still hear daddy’s footsteps on the wood floors. During the late 40s, he had collapsed a lung, and always after had poor circulation on that side. When he walked, one foot always hit down a little harder than the other. But best of all is the yard. Oh that yard.

There’s a big dogwood tree, one of the largest I’ve ever seen. Every spring it’s loaded with blooms. So are the azaleas, the pink ones especially. The white are pretty and so are the fuchsia, but I’ve always loved the pink ones best. The border of the flower beds is a delight. Lots of basket-o-gold, with its pretty little yellow flowers and the queer cool smell of the foliage; huge white clumps of candy tuft that always look so soft you want to rest your head there. In front of those are the pansies. They always make me smile, with their fat little faces, often muddy, but still shining up in the sunshine. Farther back are the tulips and iris.

The tulips are rose and yellow and salmon colored, with tall, wavy stems, graceful, thin. And the iris always make me think of dressed-up young ladies – purple and white silk with yellow velvet trim; they smell like ladies, too. The violets grow in their own little patch toward the back of the house; such delicate little purple things, like little butterflies. Next to them is the lily-of-the valley bed. They’re just beginning to come up. Right now they’re slender, young boys in green velveteen; tomorrow they’ll each hold a stalk of a miniature gladiolus, like a salute.

All along the side of the house are spirea shrubs, their blooms looking like thousands of tiny white roses. The forsythia has lost it’s color, its long whips with now showing bright green leaves. When they bloom, they’re always the first glimpse of spring. The roses are coming along. There are no blooms yet, just hundred of buds, waiting expectantly for hotter weather, for June.

My favorite little sweetheart rose is climbing over the back fence. When their buds open, the flowers won’t be any larger than the tip of my little finger, but they carry a very strong myrrh fragrance. So odd for a rose and I always love to see the old Pauls Scarlet climber, going up the white chimney. The sweet shrub is exactly like its name, not as sweet this year as usual, just barely there, drawing you closer to catch the apple scent. The hydrangeas are just starting to burst open; those big blue heads will soon be drooping downward from their own weight. There are even a few daffodils, stragglers still hanging on. All the big clumps have bloomed out. But it fills my heart just to see those few.

That whole yard, front, back and sides: A beautiful tumble of white and green, pink, yellow, purple, rose; thousands of hues of so many colors. There’s that scrawny maple tree I don’t believe will ever grow up, and the huge juniper that makes wonderful Christmas wreaths and mantle decorations. The green, glossy-leaved camellias are so big, but I can remember when I could jump over them. Standing tall against the blue sky to the east are the two old cedar trees and that wonderful pecan with such sweet, small nuts. And the gum and maple trees rise up, towering behind the house.

It’s all so beautiful, so lovely. I cry about having to leave it all. I think about mama working in that yard for so many years, and I cry.

PATSY MIESSLER is the Raines Tavern correspondent. Her email address is pmiessler@hughes.net.