Picture this

I’m in the back living room, sitting at my desk, on my computer. (here, for reference) I’m facing the window, back to the rest of the room and the front door. Out the window, I can see my back lawn and my behind neighbour on their ride-on yellow mower. Beyond that, the lake. It’s bright and shiny because it’s sunny with a light cloud cover, and 19.7 C in the shade. Loads of trees, too – maple, birch and spruce mostly, some crabapple.

If I lean left, I can look up at the ceiling of the back porch and check on the robin sitting on its nest in the corner. On hot days, and we’ve had a few, the robin stands up with its beak open, almost panting. The window is open and a breeze comes in every so often.

If I turn right, I can look out the wavy glass window, in the wood frame with steel screens, and see a field, the post office, the church, and the curve of the road Ron takes to come home. I can also see overhanging branches from the trees along that side, and on the slope between our yard and the other neighbour’s field, a bunch of ground cover and lilac suckers coming up from stumps, plus a few other forgotten flowers we’ll move later.

Sarah’s already done her daily chores and mopped two floors. There’s so many we had to form a daily plan of attack. I had to get to the kitchen just now by going up one staircase and down the other, instead of through a couple rooms with wet floors. Meaghan is wandering around still wearing her hand-stitched dress she’s been working on for a couple weeks. It’s white with tiny green dots in an empire waist style, butterfly cap sleeves and a knee-length circle for the skirt, tied at the waist with a green ribbon. Emma’s alternating between the kitchen, tv room and the sunporch which is now a playroom and pretty warm most days. She wavesout the windows to our across-the-street neighbours when they are on their front porch.

Yep, almost every day is this idyllic.