My Yard

I knew I would love this house when I saw it. An old country house set back behind a large front yard, looking out on the street from under its brow of low hanging hundred year old Oak trees. Like so many farm houses from my childhood, it’s got an old aluminum cattle gate at the side of the house granting access through the long driveway into the back yard that hangs crooked on its hinges and squeaks tiredly when nudged from the same old position it’s been in for so many years.

My neighbors are a quirky combination of young and hip, old and hippie, and they’re always willing to sit on one of our front porches and catch up for a bit over a beer. Just last week I was carving a pumpkin on my front porch stoop. Such an inviting neighborhood delights people to casually walk by, and these new people feel it too; they always smile and wave. It was the time of day when the afternoon sun perfectly finds its way through the leaves and warms the right side of my face just enough. Of course there is a delightful array of birds that loves to dance in the wisteria vines and other green havens provided by Sean and Shana’s yard to the left. There they are just out of reach of the young tabby cat that has made each of our porches her home. The way the sun is sliding in over the hedge row along the driveway, and just low enough to slip in below the trees, it reveals a thousand silvery rivers of fragile spider webbing that have so delicately been created on the fallen leaves and blades of grass. Just about this time, Shana starts playing her harp in her front living room. The sounds float softly over my ears providing the perfect background music for the thoughts revealing themselves as smiles on my face.