Gardening

The View From The Front Porch

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This summer we’ve been spending a lot of time on the front porch. It’s Forest’s go-to location to hang out and play, mostly because he likes to run around barefoot and we like him to wear shoes in the yard here because of snakes, so the porch is one place he be without shoes. I tend to wear minimal footwear around the yard as well but I’m (generally) more observant than he is when traipsing around the yard.

So, he plays on the porch or if the cars are out of the carport he plays under the carport where he can more easily ride his bikes and trikes. When we bought him a balance bike two years ago for his second birthday I had hoped he’d have graduated to a pedal bike by now. There’s a couple of things with that, one that we haven’t pushed him to ride it as much or really guided him to ride it in the street on a consistent basis, and the other is that riding on our rocky driveway isn’t really easy. The other thing is Chris and I don’t ride bikes. Ours are hanging in the storage shed and probably haven’t been ridden (rode?) in ten years.

One thing Forest and I do enjoy playing on the porch is basketball. And by basketball I mean, we pile up all of the balls that could possibly fit through the hoop and either we take turns shooting or I sit from a comfy chair and try to shoot from there while he fetches the ball. I wonder how many more years I have of him fetching the ball(s) for me??? Other things that get enjoyed with on the front porch are blowing bubbles or its sibling game, spilling the bubbles accidentally-on-purpose, and digging rocks up from either the trench between the porch and the flower bed (where the rain falls off the roof) or from the cactus bed. These rocks get reallocated to the dump truck and spread around on the porch, to Chris’ grumbling dismay, or piled into areas around the beds near the porch.

Aside from some spurts and sprints of gardening time, I have been able to slow down and just sit on the porch. This year in the garden has finally felt less harried than the previous three summers so that when I do have the lull between garden chores I’ve been opting to just sit and watch. The hummingbirds have been back in the garden for over a month now and the peak migration will be starting up here in the next few weeks. Butterfly activity is increasing as is other pollinator and insect populations, taking advantage of late summer blooms before the slump towards fall.

And most of all, I just enjoy watching where the light falls on the garden during different times of day.

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