What are you staring out the window at?

[ritchey]

Our neighbor Matt is a real go-getter and has built a lovely brick patio to replace the gross mud driveway that was once what I stared out the window at. Now I stare out the window at a lovely brick patio with a pot of geraniums on it. It is a major improvement.

Further afield out the window I stare at stuff through (my office window, where I am for most of every day): a fruit tree the same neighbor has planted; the hood of his Prius just peeping in the left side of my window frame; the wrap-around porch of the neighbor across the street where cats frolic and where one time I saw a cat walk up to another cat that was sleeping on the porch rail and deliberately shove it off; a telephone pole; electric lines; one large branch of I believe a sycamore tree; a robin eating a worm currently; part of a coiled garden hose; the black cat who shits in my neighbor's yard every morning, now coming across the street to do its business; that's pretty much it. Oh a guy with a big black dog just walked by!

Collectively, what I stare out the window at is a sleepy New England residential street

On the east coast of the continent of North America

At a pretty high latitude relative to the rest of the the country of America if not the continent of North America

in the Western Hemisphere

on the Earth

in the Milky Way galaxy

in the universe God made 4,000 years ago

fast zoom-in back on the cat shitting

[alex]

IMG_9032.jpg (133.3 KiB) Viewed 1142 times

[yourfriendclaire]

fast zoom-in back on the cat shitting

LOL

We have a real nice view from our bedroom of our aforementioned rangy garden of blooming California natives, edged by a long concrete driveway (I fantasize every night before going to sleep of sledgehammering our driveway into pieces) leading to a ramshackle garage/deep storage/future music studio that is rotting in place. The driveway is currently host to two large planter boxes and about six 30-gallon fabric grow bags and various buckets of quarantine victory garden materiel, including beans, squash, radishes, peas, chard, cucumber, and kale. Compost bin next to the fence that I turn over by hand like a maniac once a week. Birds and squirrels and lizards and earwigs just ROCKIN OUT back there every day makes for an ever-changing view for which I am very grateful. Our palo verde is in bloom and (especially at dusk) practically glows yellow. Saw a hummingbird yesterday floating among the fine cup-like flowers of a blooming morning glory that serves as the shaggy shade structure of the large blue trellis directly outside the sliding-glass door.

However right now I'm in my office with the blinds closed

[ritchey]

Hahaha

[Evan.V.N.S.J.]

We have become really attuned to the various animals that wander through the front yard of our condo building, the cats are also transfixed and terrified by them especially when it's another cat. Occasionally its a nice rabbit


Since it's a condo we don't have a yard but it has been nice to create this zone to make the non teaching parts of WFH feel less cloistered. I never realized how much I would miss the ability to just, like, read a book in a different room/building from the room/building I normally read a book in.



It's still honestly a little too cold for this to really be that fun, but I have acclimated enough to prairie life to still feel the need to be outside regularly if the sun is out and there is no ice on the ground, regardless of the actual temperature. Anyway there will be mosquitoes soon so this is probably preferable.

[m o l l y]

I like seeing what you are seeing!
[mention]Evan.V.N.S.J.[/mention] Nice book, nerd.

[Evan.V.N.S.J.]

Did I tell anyone here about how we now live about 20 feet from where we used to live? There is a long and depressing saga about how we got here, but I'll save it for another time. I'm reminded of this after seeing that image again because another thing I've been staring at out my window at is that house on the right side of the second image.

It is very beautiful in a boring suburban fantasy way, and I have coveted it basically from the day we moved in to our original apartment about 4 years ago. But that building was behind the one we live in now and faced south. Now we face north and I can just look out the window and see it any time I choose. We're getting closer and closer...

[m o l l y]

Window of bedroom/office/sewing space/yoga room (back side of building). Dude with cowbell stands on one of those dangerously sloping tiled roofs night after night.

[ritchey]

lovely!!

[Evan.V.N.S.J.]

I like seeing what you are seeing!
@Evan.V.N.S.J. Nice book, nerd.

it's a good book!

the fun thing about reading books in the 21st century is that reading a book made out of paper (instead of one on a screen) feels like a real indulgence

[RCH]

Lush, green, as-yet-untouched by summer grasses, loud, slow drizzle.

I just coined the term "rainshine" to describe this kind of pleasant rainy weather.

Through my bedroom window, past a low chain link fence wrapped in vines, I behold my neighbor's DIY grow shed, an unused antenna tower, his garage, his neighbor's garage, and enormously tall old deciduous trees. These suckers are about 5 stories high and they're all over the place.

This region has a strange combination of clearcut agricultural land interspersed with mixed tree species that look hundreds of years old to me. Interestingly, there are no native conifers here. When the land was managed by Indigenous nations, it was predominantly maple. You see a lot of conifers around farm land because they are cheap and grow fast... how short-sighted and gauche!!

[meadows]

gauche is an incredibly good word to describe most/all of american landscaping and gardening choices