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Working Al Fresco

Working Al Fresco

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I feel like a kid who finally has to come inside because the street lights are on. For the first day this week, I’m working inside. It was quite a run: four straight days of al fresco work. 

I’ve been writing this blog on the deck, editing articles, crafting talking points, and, yesterday, sending out a newsletter to 5,500 people, also from the deck. Kinda scary that one can do all this from the backyard … but that’s the way we roll now. 
Meanwhile, I go through two changes of clothes a day (it’s been in the 90s with 70-percent humidity), drink glass after glass of water or iced tea, and every day when the accumulated heat of the day seems ready to collapse upon itself, I plug in a small fan to ease my way to quitting time.
Minor discomforts aside, working outside is divine. I type to the rise and fall of cicada song, I answer emails while birds settle in the azalea bush behind me. Though I don’t hunt for worms or sip nectar to keep body and soul together, working outside makes me feel a part of the natural world in a way few other things have.  
Tomatoes!

Tomatoes!

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The tomato plant on the deck is bending from the weight of its top-heavy stalk. There are almost a dozen little tomatoes-in-the making in various stages of fruitiness. Toward the bottom of the stalk one of a trio is almost completely red. It will no doubt ripen while I’m gone next week.

Meanwhile, in what seems like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk fashion, the plant continues to climb, with clumps of tomato flowers turning, magically, into tomatoes themselves, albeit still tiny.

As backyard garden operations grow, it’s not a big one. But like any backyard garden operation it’s a reminder that much of what we eat comes from the soil — or from animals who eat things that come from the soil — not from hermetically sealed packages in the grocery store. 

Soil, fertilizer, summer sun and rain … when the combinations are right, there is growth, there is harvest … there is a tomato on your plate.
The Weeds

The Weeds

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Since I work outside most days now I’m constantly reminded that there will always be work to do for those who lift up their heads and look around. I say this because of the weeds, which will always be with us. 

Whereas I used to walk around the office, make my way to the kitchen and brew a cup of tea, now I walk down the deck stairs into the backyard and pull a bunch of stilt grass … or crab grass … or dandelions.

Weed eradication is strangely satisfying. It’s a way to improve the yard that takes no imagination or forethought. The material is always at hand, and there are infinite possibilities. It’s also not unlike editing. Instead of removing the errant dash or comma, I pull up the wild strawberry. 
It’s all in a day’s work. And like all sweet toil, there is never an end to it, only a pause. 
The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist

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Today, Virginia enters “Phase 3,” which means that pools open, gyms can operate at 75-percent capacity and gatherings of 250 may be held.  But for many of us, I suspect, life will continue on its oh-so-different track.

Book group tonight will still be virtual. Going for groceries will remain my only weekly outside-the-house errand. Working-from-home has become routine, as have my take-a-quick-break strolls around the backyard.

It was on one of those yesterday that it dawned on me that this new life is making me a miniaturist. Not someone who builds tiny dollhouses or paints illuminated manuscripts, as tempting as those occupations might be, but “miniaturist” in the sense of paying attention to small things.

I notice the gall on the poplar and the chicory that has sprung up by the fence. Those parts of the yard that I seldom used to enter have become my secondary landscape, the place I go to make the world go away. And there is beauty in the small and quiet, the “violet by the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye.” 

When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide

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Working outside means that my worlds collide. 

I sit in the office chair retrieved on Tuesday, a shiny, heavy object with padding everywhere a body needs it — but yesterday I pulled it out onto the deck in full view of the wood bees and the red-shouldered hawk family next door and the knockout rose bush, just planted on the side of the yard. 
In the way that white noise makes one concentrate, the sights and sounds of the outdoors do the same for me. And to concentrate while also seated in comfort is … divine.
So let the worlds collide. I’m fine with it! 
Victory Lap

Victory Lap

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Copper is an old doggie now who has twice torn his ACL. He gets around fine most of the time but is stiff after long sleeps and odd twists. Consequently, he has developed a reticence for going up or down the eight wooden deck stairs that provide access to the back yard with all of its canine potty potential. 

This, of course, has become an issue for the humans in Copper’s life, who have been known to lure him down the steps with treats, bouncing balls and plain old cajoling.

Most mornings, Copper makes it up and back without encouragement, prompted by urgency, I suppose. But lately he’s taken to celebrating this once-routine accomplishment by bursting through the back door and running around the house. 
I know that we humans must avoid the tendency to anthropomorphize our pet’s behaviors, but it’s hard not to see this as a victory lap.  Once again, Copper has prevailed over stiff joints and old age. He’s made it down and back up again. He has triumphed. And surely this is worth a little celebration. 
Walking the Fence

Walking the Fence

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These days when I need a quick break from the computer, instead of making my way to the office kitchen to make a cup of tea or get a glass of water, I leave the house, descend the deck stairs and stroll around the back yard.

It’s not a bad idea to inspect the boundaries occasionally, to find missing pickets or other spots where Copper might sneak out. And to monitor the undergrowth, this year’s poison ivy crop and the Arbor Foundation saplings, which are still scrawny but now as tall as I am.

I started walking the fence back in early spring when the ground was still hard and plants were asleep. Since then I’ve watched the season unfold from these leisurely strolls around the property.

Mostly, it’s such a lovely way to take a break — being outside amidst green and growing things. Taking leave, if only for a few moments, of the keystrokes that define my life.

I Feel the Earth Move

I Feel the Earth Move

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From next door comes the sound of whirring chain saws. The tree guys have been at it for two days, felling a 100-footer with much skill, hard work and fearlessness.  To hang from the very tree you’re taking down — while holding a chain saw — requires a kind of courage I can scarcely imagine.

Meanwhile I sit here with my little computer keyboard, moving words around on a page. Yesterday I listened from inside, alternately opening and closing the window depending upon the state of tree demolition and whether or not I was on the phone.

But today I’m on the deck with a front row seat for the experience. Occasionally, there will be a thud as yet another large limb or chunk of the massive trunk hits the ground. And that’s when … I feel the earth move.

The Roses, Again

The Roses, Again

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The climbing roses have burst into bloom. Pale buds are blossoming into creamy pink flowers, are shading the deck table, are hanging overhead even as I write these words.


Does nature produce any flower as lovely as the New Dawn climbing rose? The shiny green foliage, the shy petals, the subtle color, like the barest of blushes.

I trained the roses to shade the deck, to cover the pergola, and now they almost do. As a result, the best view is from a second-floor window — odd, but a feature of this plant, which grows up and out.

And how can you not love a plant like that? One with such high aspirations, with such beauty and patience (because the buds were ready to burst open for weeks it seemed)? One with such poise and determination?

I write about the roses this time every year. I know I’m being repetitive … but I just can’t help myself.

Brilliant Green

Brilliant Green

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I walked outside today into a world of green, all shades of green. Dark firs, emerald hedges and verdant lawns, lush and mower-striped. Weeds are greening too, but I chose to ignore them this morning.

The lawn is an English invention, and it rains all the time in England. So said a gardening expert we talked to in early March before purchasing lime and seed. The message was, don’t worry too much about your lawn; it will never look good.

But this year the weather has been English and lawns are greening accordingly. Ah, but it does a soul good to see a lawn stretching from house to street — a greensward, a tribute, an invitation to doff shoes and run through it.

I see the point of a cottage garden, of a wild and natural look. But there’s something about a lawn, too. And there especially seemed to be something about it this brilliant green morning.