Despite being someone who screams in the presence of bugs (I’m working on that, I swear), something about nature still calls to me. I love gardens, brooks and streams; love walks in the woods and the quiet, the calm.

When I’m wandering a stone path, I can’t help but pretend I’m Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden — searching, restored and healed by nature. I fell in love with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic as a kid and loved the 1993 film just as much.

Though I have no idea how to go about it, I’m looking forward to planting our new yard. We have a flower box already with green shoots pushing upward; I have no clue what they are, but they look like bulbs. Potential flowers, hopefully. And the front yard? Around the stone path leading to the front door, the remnants of old beds still shift hopefully. Things are growing. Life is still forming.

I’ve never gardened. I shouldn’t feel so clueless and awkward asking for help, but I always do. And when a friend visited the new house last weekend, she immediately reached down to carefully pluck a spring of poison ivy from near the garage.

Poison ivy. Be still my terrified heart!

It’s fun to imagine learning, though. Though we’re more concerned with what’s happening in the house than out (short of cutting that grass) for a while, I’ve always wanted to cultivate a green thumb. I’d love to have an herb garden and window box filled with happy flowers. I’d love to see pops of color whenever we open our door.

Since we have to start where we are, I have to admit to knowing nothing about creating my own secret garden . . . beyond the fact that I’d like to. Eventually.

It’s exciting: the not-knowing. There’s excitement trusting I’ll learn.