Idling

The other day I moved a narrow second hand desk to the dining room and put it by the window . The window faces southwest, and looks out into my dooryard and out across the road to an old field. The huge trees in the photo are sugar maples, which my landlord taps in late winter. God knows how old these trees are.

I thought the desk would be good for writing on the computer and paying bills, and planning garden beds on graph paper. But the view mesmerizes me half of the time I sit. I look out to see the jays eating corn kernels and the squirrels hanging upside down on the squirrel proof tube feeder. Leaves drift down, and I can see the last blossoms on the rose bush. Any minute riders from the Toad Hill Farm might be riding by, and I do not want to miss that. Am I ever tired of seeing nuthatches creep upside down on the Kousa dogwood? A quiet mind is a wonderful thing. I need to do more of nothing, and the months of frost and flakes are the time to do it. Oh the luxury of a 24 inch snowfall when I do not have to drive to Concord to work! I will just sit here and watch the heavy clouds knit their white blanket over this old farm.

Above- the unstoppable Knockout rose.

Not all birds are outside. Here, slightly askew, is a massive ceramic soup tureen I bought at one of Le Anne Paterson’s Nashville estate sales. It came out of a Louisville, Kentucky estate sale that was moved to Nashville because the market in Kentucky was slow because of the Great Recession.

My sister finds this goose embarrassingly rococo , but I love it-