Today In the Yard

Today’s the day.

The day I start working my way through God in the Yard.

For the rest of me.

I know L.L. will ask me to spend time outside.

Daily.

It all starts with the sight of a nibbled mozzarella medallion.

Fascinated with the morning clouds, gray tide moving east to west, I take my camera with me. I’m still in nightie and robe and slippers, and it’s 45 degrees out. I know this because I take my phone to time myself (I’ll spend at least 10 minutes out there), and I check the temperature on it. I know if I go in to dress, I’ll get sidetracked.

I dizzy myself as I spin and snap sky pictures, and I laugh at the blue jay who scolds me from from the top of a tree.

Then I go inside for a cup of hot coffee (next time it will be tea) and come back out. I decide to sit on the porch steps. Except there on the porch are the once vibrant multicolored mums I bought last month, tucked now in a corner for protection from a strong wind weeks ago, and forgotten. I’ve killed them. I hope the end was quick and painless. The remaining blooms in the back are silk. I turn my back on my failure.

The endless rush of traffic to the north of the field irritates me, so I close my eyes and pretend it’s the sound of ocean waves. I try to sit quietly and focus my thoughts and try to center and listen for God, but instead I hear the twin engines of a plane, and my eyes snap open, and I run out to the drive to see it cruising just below the clouds. And the red of sumac leaves catches my eyes, and so I go back to the porch for my camera and then walk across wet, fresh mowed grass to the side of the road and into the ditch to, you guessed it, snap some pictures.

And when I come back to the steps, I look down and see that my white slippers, the ones that escaped the hot spaghetti sauce bath a few days ago, are green fringed, and my feet are even colder.

It’s hard to sit still. So many things I want to see up close, and I go to them instead of waiting for the world to come to me.

A shark cloud is about to eat the rest of the cheese, and I remember bills to pay and laundry to do and groceries to get and stuff I want to write, and so I check my phone for the time. I’ve been outside for 30 minutes.

Could I sit outside every day? For an hour? Every day? Even in the snow like L.L.?

The moon is swallowed up. All gone.

But I find a treasure clinging to our Rose Dog bush, and so I gather some stones and make a centerpiece.