If you place easy chairs in strategic locations around your yard, then “sit in them.” They may be ornamental or decorative in a sense, but they can be spots to stop for a moment and focus upon the world around you. These chairs can be used to rest or relax from the work you’re doing.
Anyway, perhaps because I am lazy, I find opportunities to slide my butt onto one of my casual chairs. Two of these are located on the back lawn not far from the garden. So I can plant a few things, walk a few paces, and plop down to relax. Or I can shut off the lawnmower, stroll across a bit of greenery, and succumb to my need to rest my tired body.
This behavior works well for me, partly because I enjoy noting things around me. I can watch my hard-working neighbours stay far ahead of me in yard maintenance. I can listen to the automobiles roar by on the street or hear people talking as they walk their dogs along the far-off sidewalk. Occasionally, a plane flies over, and I watch it till it slips out of sight.
Because I’m loathe to get back to work, I watch the sparrows, chickadees, and warblers streaking across the yard to my neighbour’s bird feeders. I spend time gazing at the robins that land in the yard and bob their heads as they search for worms. I listen for the clacking of the stellar jays that have nested in the nearby spruce trees, and I clap my hands and yell loudly when the crows arrive.
I love this activity of sitting out in the yard. It’s wonderful to bask in the sunshine or find the shade if the weather is too hot. I even like to rest my limbs in these chairs if it’s a damp day. And when it rains, if I don’t feel like going into the house, I move one of the chairs under the deck. Then I sit amid the bags of peat moss, the lawn mower and the wheelbarrow and listen to the rhythm of the falling rain.
It’s probably telling me what a fool I am, but for me there’s nothing much better than being cozy and still almost in the rain. Sometimes I simply walk up the back stairs and find a deck chair under the awning and watch the patter of the raindrops. Once in a while I am rewarded by the sun’s rays filtering through a hole in the clouds. Sometimes I get to admire rainbows arcing across the valley.
I especially enjoy sitting on the deck after darkness descends. In fact, I go out of my way to turn off all the “offending” lights in the house. On the deck — particularly in the summer after the green leaves have filled out the trees — it’s pleasant to sit there, enclosed in a sense, and contemplate the nature of things.
Why is there only one cricket chirping? Where did that whisper of a bat come from? How far off is the dog I can barely hear barking? Don’t those people who are walking along the sidewalk know I can hear every word they’re saying? How long will the moon remain in the sky before it’s overtaken by those dark clouds to the west?
Questions like this float through my mind along with other more profound topics. It simply proves that I’m a strange bird comfortable in my own nest — which in this instance happens to be a yard-chair.