The View

Every window in this house frames a view. Looking out to the back of the house, the picture is of treetops. Right now only a few leaves remain. When we first moved here in October, the leaves were turning gold and orange and a bit of red. When spring arrives in a few months, there will be thick green with occasional blossoms on mimosas, or Kentucky coffee-bean trees. Only the abundance of chattering squirrels promises to be constant.

These trees are tall and old, rooted in a thirty-foot ravine at the back of our property. Friday morning over coffee at my parents’ apartment, my dad and I pondered just what made that deep crevice. We each expressed surprise that there is no creek way down there at the bottom of the cliff - but Steve, the guy we bought the house from, stopped by on Saturday to retrieve some stray mail and he told us that there are several springs down there. When he was a kid, he would sneak off to play down there.

“Are there snakes?” Dave asked.

“Oh yeah, there are some snakes.”

I watched Dave carefully to see if he exhibited any signs of flight. He only replied, “You won’t catch me down there.”

Friday morning, laptop perched on a TV tray in the den, I faced a window on the front of the house that frames the tops of black bare trees across the street – two 50-year old maples, an old oak, and some crape myrtles. The sunrise sky behind them was striped with muted pink, mauve, lavender and blue. The softball field lights stood out, the only modern element in my morning still-life.

And then on Sunday, I hooked up all my computer and printer cables in my studio in the walk-out basement. My desk sits in front of two windows, much the same as it did at the old house – except the windows are now to my right instead of the left. I do not see the well-cultivated stone-edged garden that I never took for granted. No dogwood tree, holly hedge, yellow rose, daylilies, irises, cannas, purple barberries, coneflowers. No tall pines to screen our back yard from the neighbor’s.

I look out on the patio, the back yard, and the edge of the ravine through the nearest window. My view is limited to the treetops through the second window because of the Fedders cooling machine mounted in the window. That thing comes out very shortly… and it won’t go back in, either.

We brought the birdfeeders to the new house before we moved in. We wanted to “get established” with the local feathers and gain a reputation among their friends as a good place to gather. We’re hosting more chickadees than any other variety, although I do note an occasional yellow finch on the black thistle seed. I’ve seen a cardinal every morning in the brush below the trees, but the larger birds seem to have what they need in the old trees. Or maybe they’re just waiting for a travel report from the chickadees.

Saturday Dad tilled a piece of ground in the far corner of the back yard. “Just a place to put a few things and keep them alive over winter,” I said. “I’ll re-plant them in the spring.” I must get over to the old house to divide perennials and uproot a few small roses. I just don’t know where I want them yet.

“Well, I’ve decided where I want my garden if it’s okay with you,” Dad said. “I’d like to make some raised beds along that bank. I bet there’s some good soil there.”

Dave said he worries that I’ll take up with the studio so much that he’ll not see me too much and that we’ll become estranged in this new arrangement.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think I’ll actually be able to separate work and home a little better.”

We’ll see. I guess it all depends on your view. I know I can’t wait to see the view from my desk come spring.
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