So there above you have it: since I have been self-isolating, about 4 pm most afternoons, you will find me walking the rectangular deck in the photo.
I don’t walk every day, but today I started at a couple of minutes after four in the afternoon with 1,100 steps on my pedometer. I walked for 25 minutes and 1,900 steps, giving me a total of 4,000.
Can I say I walked around our deck? I don’t think so, as it is rectangular, so I rectangularised our deck? How about, I walked rectangularily? Although I usually walk using my Nordic poles on a trail or along our road, being a bit of the lazy type, if I walk on the deck, I don’t have to lace on walking shoes, I can walk in my slippers. Oh, my Chiropractor won’t like that – but they do have hard soles, Andrew.
And while walking rectangularily, what do I think of? First in my mind is the Nordic pole instruction to hold your head up. Do not look at the ground ahead of you. On our trails that can lead to stepping on horse dung, but it’s nowhere near as sticky or messy as dog poop. You can even pick the balls up and throw them like snowballs at targets in the hedge so the next poler won’t step on them. Anyway, no horses on our deck. Although some might think there is an ass rectangularising.
Next, looking straight ahead, I see the trees separating us from our neighbour to the north. And I can hear the tchk, tchk of the black-capped Chichadees, giving me a good telling off for preventing them from coming to the feeders. So, I turn right and see some azaleas and our rhododendrons. Oh, they are not in bloom yet, but I have looked at the buds and know it will be a brilliant display – like these pictures of azaleas and rhodies from last year.
Some time in late November or early December, after hurricane season and I can be sure of no more wind damage, I wander around, yes, around, the rhododendron bushes – almost trees after forty years of growth, adding one or two little plants each year – and I check how many buds are on them. In the Spring, there is nothing more beautiful than witnessing all those buds bursting out of their winter hiatus.
Then I make another turn right and see the ocean and islands as shown in the featured pic at the top of this post. Pretty bleak, isn’t it? Not even a fishing boat out there. Who can blame the fishers? Fishers? Oh, yes, in this day of me too, you never know who will be on that boat you can see. In days of yore, it would always be men or boys on board, but today it could as easily be women and girls. Or it could be a mix of genders.
And that’s what I could be thinking as I continue my walk. Or, it could be making up drivel like this,
I wonder as I wander my rectangled deck
how birds at the feeders go peck after peck
and empty my feeders and bank account too
yet I love them and ne’er want to bid them adieu.
My, how low have you sunk, I think to myself, for dreaming up such stuff as I complete my 50th rectangle. (Could I sneak a word like circuit in instead of rectangle? Likely not or some smart Alec – and I know who he is and his name is not Alec – will come back to me saying circuit is a circular route that starts and finishes at the same place.) I reverse direction every 25 rectangles and I was surprised the first time I did that everything looks different. I don’t get to see the water as well; I see parts of my neighbour’s house through a thick barrier of trees; I get to see my reflection in the door to the sun room. What a sight, that is! The wind has been blowing my extra long hair and I look like a creature out of Harry Potter.
My mind also does a turn-around as I find myself saying, 50 in 16 minutes, that’s lets’ see…. Oh, I don’t want that, I want to know how many paces in one rectangle. So, it’s the number of paces divided by the number of rectangular walks. Or is it how many minutes in an hour? See how my mind shifts? No, it’s nineteen hundred divided by fifty…….hmm, there are two fifties in a hundred and I have nineteen hundred, so double nineteen. Hmm, after a moment or two, thirty-eight.
Having solved that immense problem in my brain – wow, I still have one – what do I do with the answer. Answer: absolutely nothing. The answer is useless information which may just exacerbate the fact that my brain is retaining less and less because the storage room is diminishing.
Fifty-one, I say, as I pass go and do not collect a parking ticket; fifty-two I say; and a few seconds later, fifty-three. I see the crow waiting for me to go inside. I know he hates me. Even when I have been somewhere in the car and return to the parking lot, he sits on top of one of the tallest conifers and squawks at me. He thinks I hate him. He’s known me now for nigh on twenty years. Perhaps he’s right: I don’t hate him. Perhaps I just dislike the way he tugs on the large feeder and shakes it to make the seeds fall on the ground. And I don’t mind that too much, for the pheasants get to feed. But, he goes on and on until I chase him off.
I did 75 rectangulations today. It’s not a lot, nowhere near as far as when I am on the trail or road, but it is half an hour and it is almost two thousand steps. It kept me interested and discovering sights and sounds in my immediate vicinity. And I didn’t have to be aware of animal poop.
Adieu until next From time to time,,,,
From time to time... 