Staycationing
Last Thursday and Friday I asked off from work so I could have a long weekend. But I didn’t plan to go to the beach or Disney World or St. Augustine or anywhere at all. No, I planned to stay home (with my cats and my flowers) the entire time.
Some of my coworkers were skeptical.
“Oh, but you don’t understand,” I said, laughing. “This is my dream vacation!”
And it didn’t disappoint me, not a bit.
On Wednesday evening, I sat on the front porch and watched the sun set over my beds of woodland sunflowers. I waved to my neighbor Doretha, who was sitting on her front porch, and, as we often do, we had a shouted conversation across the surprisingly busy street that runs between our two big front yards like a river. As usual, neither of us could quite hear what the other was saying, but it didn’t matter. Shouting back and forth across the street in a friendly fashion is always a pleasant ritual.
Doretha’s front walk is lined on both sides by wide, sun-drenched boxwood hedges, which she often uses for clothes-drying. The hedges are cut into long rectangles, so the clothes can lie on top nice and flat. Doretha’s house is so pretty, with a deep, shady porch and trim painted sky-blue. I love that her house, surrounded by woods, is part of the view from my own porch.
Oh, I had lots of fun on my days off. And it was wonderfully slow, unexciting fun—my favorite kind.
Everything I did, I did as inefficiently as possible. For example, when I carried out the trash, I took the scenic route to the garbage can. I walked around the whole house just so I could enjoy the ferns, banana spiders, trumpetflowers, and lemony pools of sunlight along the way.
There’s a line from Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town that I’d been thinking about in the days leading up to my staycation: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it … every, every minute?”
What I wanted to do over my long weekend was try to realize life, to slow down and appreciate it. So I watched birds in the backyard and fed watermelon to the box turtles that roam in our old vegetable garden. I played with my cat Carl as he rolled and curled (so cutely!) on the rug in the bedroom and made bunny paws. I picked pears, sun-warmed and snowy white inside, and I tried not to fret about the future or the past but to focus on now, sweet now.
Glorious sun on the south side of the yard |
My bunny shrine on the breezeway |
This bench is one of my favorite things. I bought it when I was young, and it took me a long time to save up for it. |
I always end up feeling sorry for my garden statues and bringing them inside. |