My friend the drummer from the ship's quintet has been counting down for over a month. Now it's just a matter of several days until his contract is up. He leaves on Sunday.

I'd heard that the last part of a contract feels the longest, and I'm experiencing it now. I started my countdown last Sunday with 6 weeks remaining.

The end of February marked five months at sea for me.

I'm really looking forward to getting home (wherever that is). I have dreams about it. But when I start feeling too homesick I just remind myself that it's still winter back in Canada, and the closer I get to my departure date, the less wintry it will be. I checked the webcams on the QEW this morning, and saw that it is most definitely still winter in Ontario. I can hang on out here in paradise for a while longer yet.

When I return spring will be well underway. Even now the snowdrops should be poking up through the snow back at 83 Holyrood. They were always up for Eva's birthday on the 25th of February. By the end of March they should be opening. When I return in April the crocuses will be up. Then the numerous randomly located daffodils.

I remember a video of a very young Paul tracking down and counting the daffodils one Easter Sunday back on Holyrood.

I hope the new owners of old number 83 appreciate the trilliums and bleeding-hearts that come out in May. And the heady scent of lily-of-the-valley, called maiglockchen – little May bells - in our family.

They probably won't notice the wild leeks under the juniper, or the morels hidden among the dry leaves back by the hammock trees and around the stone circle. But they'll notice the fiddlehead ferns. You can't miss those. In a good year there would be enough spare fiddleheads and morels to make a decent side dish for a spring brunch. I would often cook up some wild rice, too, for a truly native Canadian meal.

They also won't miss the rhubarb or the red currants in the front 'yard'.

And if it's a good year, the pink flowering dogwood should provide a wonderful display. What a beautiful tree that is. If they're really lucky, it will also be a good year for the native opuntia with its unbelievably brilliant yellow flowers.

I meant to give the new owners a list of all the things that grow at 83 Holyrood, along with a yard plan, but I didn't. It's not too late, though. Eva kept copious notes of everything that grew at our house – over 70 varieties of plant and flower, most of which she introduced during our 25 years there.

Eva also kept a yearly record of which beds the vegetables were planted in, so as to maintain the integrity of the crop rotation cycle from year to year. These records go back about 20 years, and the new owners should have them, too.

I admit it – I'm nostalgic about 83 Holyrood, and the wonderful years we all lived there. An oddity in the neighbourhood, to be sure, but a place you could truly love - so much love went into it.

They say you can't go home again, or at least somebody said that. As much as I loved living there, during the last few years things began to change. The houses around us were being sold and either replaced with newer, bigger models, or renovated beyond recognition.

The character of the street was changing, and the type of people choosing to live there was changing. People who don't do their own yard work, but hire professionals to do it for them. People who illegally remove trees to allow an unobstructed view of the lake from their illegally constructed deck.

The noise was becoming intolerable, too. It was always something – noisey, stinking lawnmowers, or worse, whining, stinking leaf blowers (relative newcomers in the history of infernal machines). No peace.

Our new neighbour disapproved of the wildness of our naturalistic landscaping. I'm sure that Eva would have turned over in her grave (if she had a grave, that is) to hear our new neighbour as he informed me that he was a 'neat freak' when it came to landscaping, and that he found our property personally offensive.

(The first thing he did after moving in next door was to dig out all the gardens and replant them with grass – right up to the foundation of his house. He spent the remainder of that season applying fertilizers and chemicals to get the grass to 'take'. And it did. And continues to do so.)

You can't live next-door to someone like that.

So now I spend a good deal of time daydreaming about where and how I want to live when I return this spring. Being homeless was OK for a little while, and going to sea for the winter is good, but I realize I want and need a place to call home again.

I'm not looking for much – I don't want much. Just someplace where it's dark at night, and relatively peaceful and quiet during the day. Where the taxes and service charges are low. Someplace not like contemporary Oakville.

In any case - be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. And the humbler, the better, if you ask me.