What Makes A House A Home?

It took four truckloads in a 14 ft U-Haul to get almost all of our stuff here. Almost one whole truckload was Roger's tools. The bigger, heavier, wreck-your-back stuff is being picked up Monday morning by movers who will probably do it all in less than an hour. (Oh to be young and brawny!)

We've got most of the stuff for the kitchen, baths, and bedrooms put away. But there's still a garage full of boxes filled with things that we haven't looked at since we packed it all two years ago. Some of the stuff we haven't even seen (or missed) for the past six years. Maybe we'll be surprised when we finally get to all of it (I doubt it).
Moving makes us wonder what makes a house a home? First two days here I kept expecting the previous owners to come in and catch us as interlopers in their house. We're strangers here, figuring out where all the light switches are and how to turn the heat on (it's not just an on/off switch with temperature gauge). I smudged the house with burning sage. It's supposed to get rid of old weird energy. It sure made the house smell wonderful. We replace their ambiance with our own-- mostly through cooking and sometimes a little incense. Our furniture, our rugs, our laughter fill the place with a deep sense of us too. Day after day the house becomes our own.
Luckily there are surprises everyday. The place is just teeming with hummingbirds, for whom I've already made a batch of sugar/water nectar. They are most appreciative. There are two platform feeders for the goldfinches, nuthatches, stellar's jays, and others. We will get rid of those as soon as we find and unpack our birdfeeders. The previous owners also left us some plastic grow pack boxes on the deck. One is filled with lettuce starts, the other is empty but had the cutest little frog hiding behind it. Why is this little froggy on the deck when there are so many other grand places to be? Ah, now we have our first mystery. It's one of the things that also makes a house a home for us.