When R and I went to Scotland two summers ago, one consideration was to decide how we felt about spending so much time, effort and grandmotherly goodwill to leave the kids and visit a foreign country, only to spend the entire time on a tiny island. Wouldn’t it be better to take a tour and see more of the country? But the trip gave us a sense of depth, not necessarily breadth.
This fall has been like that. We are not in a stage of our lives in which we are Getting Out in Nature as much as we’d like. But the kids and I are getting to know the half-block between our house and the bus stop very well. We’ve witnessed the changing of the seasons, of course. But we’ve also seen a short retaining wall get built, brick by pink brick, by an elderly neighbor. And a sidewalk littered with acorns—an improbable occurrence this year, it would seem. And the birds who feed on our birdseed… and the squirrels, grateful for our messiness in filling the squirrel-proof feeder.
What do you see outside your window?
Photo: Virginia in Winter from this blog
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Asides
» There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. -Wendell Berry
» “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” -Barbara Kingsolver
» It’s National Procrastination Week (who comes up with these things?), and in honor of people like me who like to celebrate NPW all year long, here’s a good article.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Seriously, I see burglar bars first (the joys of living in the inner city) and then a whole world full of activity…the ambulance and fire truck that make almost daily visits to the assisted living place next door…the young kids in my building coming and going (I’m the dorm mom)…the occasional bag lady/homeless person…city squirrels and birds who aren’t afraid of people at all (that charmed your daughters that we could get so close to them before they would scatter)…and an occasional monument or two…life
From my upstairs home office window, I see my Chinese neighbor’s deck directly across the way; to the left is my Cuban neighbor’s porch and just to the right through a couple of tree is the deck of my neighbor from Iran. Further across in our neighbor with a pool in the backyard, they have lived here all their lives and have two young children. Most days, last in the day I see several deer grazing in our tiny yard. The cardinals love our apple tree as do the catbirds and an occasional hawk. The leaves are gone now so I can see much more than usual.
From our third-story living room, I have a bird’s eye of Lamar blvd. Its probably one of the more frequently traveled upon streets in Austin so we often hear wrecks happening in real time from our apartment. Lamar gets significantly less busy as the night progresses, so by the time midnight rolls around, its fairly vacant. Just beyond Lamar is Shoal Creek, where all of the young, hip, rarely shirted Austinites playing disc golf. Above the park is a steep hill on which Yuppies dwell.
I see multiple birdfeeders, each with a bright red Christmas bow in honor of the season. A great variety of birds fly back and forth between them and the bare woods behind, since there were indeed few acorns. So few that my beauty berry and winter berry bushes have no bright fruit to show through the cold weather and snow, but there does seem to be an increase in the traffic to the feeders.
Depth not breadth. What a cool way of looking at things.
My window looks out on the back yard where two dogs have trampled the ground into concrete. It’s ugly but they are fun to watch, which more than makes up for the decimated landscaping.
I see - through the sunroom windows, through our white LED lights across the street:
- lots of cars (rental house across the way filled with adults who each has a car)
- one house with a riot of lights, none matching thrown around with little planning
- another house with not a single sign of holiday spirit (and they also never have a pumpkin at Halloween or a flag on flag day, etc.). A little girl lives there with her parents (one of whom is a teacher) but they seem too sad or grumpy or something to acknowledge holidays.
- another house where 3 kids under the age of 3 live but they have perfect Christmas lights. How did that happen?
I feel blessed to have experienced breadth and depth in my life lately. I have been enjoying keeping in contact with friends from all over the world via Facebook and Holiday cards. My travels have definitely given me breadth.
Depth is something that I haven’t given as much thought. I also feel blessed with the many people that I cross paths with on a day to day basis.
I see neighbors who have served in Iraq, experienced brain injuries, filed for bankruptcy, sat in the hospital with a baby with cancer, filed for divorce, grieved over the loss of children, parents and spouses. I’ve watched several sets of neighborhood children growing up together. I watched the 15 year old in a wheelchair rolling down the middle of the street with the other children running after him and they were all laughing with the joy of being together. I love walking outside and hearing my young friends calling my name. I watch the young families sharing childcare. I answered the door on Halloween afternoon to find a young father with his children telling me that they would be back with a wagon collecting food for the needy.
Depth is definitely something to think about!
I see fields as far as the eyes will let me , where horses, cows, and now deer play. We enjoy living in the wide open spaces. Especially my son. Looks like a beautiful place that you live as well. Isn’t God great in giving us all this beauty.
I see red camellia blossoms!
Stopping in, rather late, to wish you a blessed and peaceful (may it be so) 2009. Outside my window I see white. And more white. And more white falling from the sky. The evergreen tree is lovely, I will say that much. It is -3 today, and I’m working at home!