Tom and I went on vacation yesterday!

Well, sorta.

Sitting in the sun upon our front porch, we both looked over my newly-arrived Mary Jane's Outpost (bought with my birthday-gifted amazon card) and exclaimed over the gorgeous photography. To all fans of Mary's Jane's--you'll adore her new book.

After some minutes Tom said, "Wow. You can hear the frogs out here much louder than inside the house."


I told him, "Oh, I know. Hey! How about if we go out back and sit on the patio? You can really hear the frogs out there."

So Tom put on his shoes, grabbed his cane and I took our straw hats from their pegs and found Tom's sunglasses. We stepped across the wet back lawn to the patio where the sun glared off the cement and our bistro table and all else, then we sat and stared out across the expanse of our lawn to our winter lake and the marsh it borders, complete with tall reeds standing in shining, glinting waters. With each breeze blowing across the lake, more frogs, three different kinds, joined in with the chorus of, "Ba-roke, ba-roke, wa-wreeeek, wa-wreeeeek!" And a haunting, "cluck-cluck-clickity-click-cluck-cluck-clickety-cluck," almost echoing during the occasional silences.

We gazed across the lawn to the bare silver trees of our woods and tall grasses of the back meadows while the frogs sang and occasional birds, too, and we felt like such tourists! 

As though we'd traveled far to this natural outdoor vista, this place where a hush overhung everything, too, the quiet of Nature. As though we should have color photo pamphlets in our hands while doing this touristy thing, sitting, then standing, taking in all the sights and animal sounds with the rest of the crowd, and yet there was no crowd. Only Tom and myself, the woods, meadow, our lake and some birds and the frogs, some with the sun gleaming off their backs.

All in our own backyard on a gift of a sunny March day, all while Tom recuperates from his surgery.

All a blessing on a Wednesday afternoon at our country home while I realize again that one need not travel far to find ones true self or adventure or joy.



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