ljgeoff

I've lived in the same house for 12 years now. It has a large-ish back yard with grass and trees and bushes that I water some and weed occasionally and mow in the spring and rake leaves in the fall, but mostly leave alone. There are a couple of raised beds near the house that I fuss over more often, but currently I'm not growing anything in there because it hasn't been raining at all and I didn't want to have to water that much.

Once a year I hire someone to whack the hedges back and perhaps battle the encroaching ivy into temporary retreat.

What I do the most back there is sit on the back steps and enjoy looking into the greenness, and pet Basil if he's about. I often eat my lunch or dinner there if it's not too hot/cold/wet.

I've often felt that it's way too much yard for me, and if I'd understood the fierce growth of Pacific Northwest plant life when I moved here, I would have chosen a place with a much smaller yard.

Lately though, I've been appreciating the privilege of looking into greenness, and space.

Yesterday and this morning, I got the strong sense that the yard collectively loves me back. It looks upon my struggles to provide what it needs with tolerant amusement, and perhaps even appreciates being left mostly in peace. My efforts, my way of being with it, are good enough. I'm accepted here. It makes me cry.

There are a lot of squirrels running around, and chickadees and scrub jays calling in the trees, and hummingbirds chittering. Today a tiny round bird with a yellow breast and a yellowy-brown back smacked into the French door and sat on the back porch for a while, recovering. Poor thing! Fortunately it flew off before Basil came around. So there are some of those around too.

The enormous elderly pear tree in the back corner made a lot of pears my first Fall here, but hasn't since. Until this year! I collected a lot of the fallen ones a couple of days ago and put them in the green bin. There are more out there now. Not sure why it's a banner pear year, but I'm glad it's doing well enough to produce. It's way too tall for me to pick them though.

It's good to notice that the oasis of green is doing a lot of critters good, including Basil who pads through or curls up to sleep, and also including me. I feel like I should use it more or differently, share it with more humans, but seems like it's doing fine as it is.