As I scrambled to clear the 30 Green Giant Arborvitaes that outline my property of the heavy snow that crushed them nearly in half on Saturday morning, I realized that my first blog about real estate trends just could not be about "days on market" or what's trending in paint color. It occurred to me that home ownership is really about the passion we have to create and maintain one small sliver of the world that we can call our own.  We joke about the "joys" of home ownership when water heaters burst or roofs leak, but there is true satisfaction in sitting back after tending, planting, painting, cleaning, renovating, decorating, or standing up to your knees in snow for hours tending to every snowy branch, and realizing that all of it, for better or worse, belongs to you!