Lolling about.

Does it sound like hard work, all this activity in the garden, the digging, weeding, clearing, hacking back and harvesting? Well, it is also a great place for just lolling about and doing nothing.

There are seats positioned in various places around the garden to take advantage of sun or shade at different times of the day,

 a scruffy old seat in a neglected corner 

and  deckchairs to move about at will.

We like to eat outside whenever the weather is kind - this summer almost daily, last summer hardly at all!

The greenhouse is a good place to sit and drink a cup of coffee or try to stay awake while stretched out on the steamer chair.

An old boat from the nearby lake is up-ended and fixed on the ground, but it rocks gently when you are in it and is a good, dry place to be when it's raining.

The arbour and the boat seat are both enclosed, private places. Pipistrelles flit about the boat seat at dusk and from the arbour you can watch the moon come up and hear owls hooting in the woods.

We had a hammock, slung from the branch of a huge blue cedar at our previous house, but unfortunately there is no place for it here. It was a favourite with our daughters, somewhere to loll and dream, just as I had done in my own childhood.

Travels with my Boxer Dog.

In childhood I traveled in a hammock

with the dog and my tartan blanket

which kept our limbs from catching in the strings.

We sailed to countries that no one had heard of

 and that now I have forgotten.

The dog looked fierce,

some thought him ugly.

I warmed my toes in his mouth

and told him secrets.

We traveled south, mostly,

for we both loved sunshine.

Only a cat crossing the garden

would disturb our journeys.

Then he'd abandon ship

to lead his own adventures,

leaving me swinging erratically,

traveling alone,

bailing out water,

far from home.