Our Feng Shui

Phew, what a week it's been! A good week, please understand, and a full one, full even to the point of overflowing. So here it is Friday morning and I'm just getting started on the weekly blog, reminiscent of the old days of writing sermons on Saturday night. However, I really do want to hold myself, law school studies and busy week notwithstanding, to the discipline of this weekly journal. (Partly, of course, because I'm obsessive compulsive about these things, and partly because I really do believe that on some level, the discipline is good for my soul.)

As I reread last week's comments about our back yard garden I realized that in describing it I'd left out one of its more important attributes, which is why we enjoy that space so much. So like a Hollywood movie, this will be Son of Back Yard .

I'm talking here about the feng shui of our back yard. If news of feng shui has not reached your desert island, I should explain that it is the ancient Chinese practice (literally "wind and water") describing the placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment, but has now become part of the New Age hocus pocus that supposedly has an effect on our health, wealth, and probably our sex life as well. It's the Ouiji board of household planning. The eastern version of The Secret which has something to do with the steam over uncooked rice. Seriously. You can look it up. But I digress, so let's return to the back yard.

Why do we enjoy it? For one thing there's the slow but inexorable changes in the colorful flowers as they bud, bloom, and then fade away. Fortunately they don't all do that at the same time, so we have a continual spring and summer display. A major part of that is the serendipitous display of the sunflowers that spring up untouched by us, growing from the seeds dropped from the feeders by the birds.

Another source of daily enjoyment for us is the continual gurgling of the small water fountain which we picked up at a street fair a couple of years ago. The sound brings back memories of our RV travels, for we always tried to find a camping spot as close as possible to creeks and streams, so Ann (a.k.a. "Creek Freak") could dip her toes in the cold water. Those 35 years traveling in the motorhomes represents a significant part of our lives, and it's good to have that memory refreshed.

Then there are the birds. Watching their passive-aggressive behavior around the feeding spots is always good for a laugh or three. The toughest ones, of course, are the tiny ones, the nuthatches and finches, who look so fragile and docile until a jay or a woodpecker tries to squeeze into their turf, and then those cute little things become serious bad-asses, real tough guys.

Most of all, however, it's just the wonderful peace and quiet that we seem to derive from the back yard. Sometimes it's interrupted by the "beep-beep-beep" of a construction truck backing up or the steady roar of a Delta jet arriving from Atlanta, but the calm always returns and bathes us with its serenity.

Dare I say it's the feng shui of the back yard garden?