This Summer I’d Like to Travel to the Ends of — My Back Yard. Sheltering at Home Week 16

July 2, 2020. Sheltering at Home — In My Back Yard. Week 16

Sad. Sad. Sad. No Fourth of July at my favorite Michigan beach. No ambitious jaunts any time soon to places like the Antarctic or Vietnam.

No. It looks like I’m going to be right here in Oakland, California, for months to come. With the recent, worrisome spike in COVID-19 cases, it’s riskier than ever to get on a bike at the gym, let alone get on a plane to visit kids and grandkids.

So — what to do for adventure when the only safe place on earth is the quarter acre your house sits on?

Ours is a slope-y quarter acre. Right now it’s not easy to get around. Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to enjoy our yards, except through a window or from the deck.

The hardscaping at our house was put in long before Jon and I arrived here forty-two years ago. It looks to be the work of do-it-yourselfers, and it’s finally giving way to erosion and gravity.

• In the front yard, the Arizona sandstone patio is stained, sinking and cracking. It’s a tripping hazard.
• At the side of the house, the concrete stairs are uneven and steep. They are not up to code. There are no handrails.
• The sweetly curving walkway in my back yard is not so sweet any more. The mortar is giving way and the bricks are falling down the hill. Again, no handrail.

I used to spend hours and hours in our back yard when Jon and I first moved in here. I dug soil amendments into the clay. I pruned the apple tree and tried to get to the apples before the deer ate them. I admired the violets. I planted a rhododendron or two. At the end of the day, I had dirt under my fingernails and mud on my jeans. My idea of a good look.

But my back yard gardening days have been on hold for years. First came the California droughts, which made watering that big back yard out of the question. The apple tree died. So did the rhododendrons. The violets long ago stopped showing up in the spring.

Then my knees got creaky and unpredictable. With no handrails on our steep garden stairs, I am reduced to taking the steps cautiously, one at a time like a toddler.

I’m not exactly Barack Obama when it comes to descending a staircase; I like to hover one hand over a railing in case a knee gives out. But I’m not Joe Biden either; when it comes to ramps and stairs, I’ve got plenty of zip, and so far I haven’t tripped.

I’d like to scurry up and down the stairs to our back yard like I used to. Investigate the volunteer English daisies growing wild down there. Take a lounge chair to the terrace at the bottom of the yard and read a book.  Let the squirrels drop pine cones on my head. Watch the deer lope by.  Scare the turkeys away.

Four months into the coronavirus shut-down, I’m in need of adventure. Antarctica is out. The gym is out. My back yard beckons.

To get there, all I need are some sturdy stairs and some handrails.

I feel a project coming on.

Note: A year later, the garden stairs — from street to the bottom of out lot — are fixed up and ready for visitors. Take a look at “Yea! Our Garden Remodel Is Done!”

You can visit that Michigan beach at “The Center of the Universe? It’s a Little Beach in Michigan, of Course.”  More about my mother at “A Lost Child in Wartime Detroit — A Headscarf Story.”