Simple Joys

Yesterday I scrubbed the picnic table. Tonight we ate dinner on it for the first time this year. Every summer since we moved into this house, we've eaten at the picnic table whenever the weather and the yellow jackets permit. For the first four years we ate at an ever more rickety KMart table. I looked and looked for a new table without success.

The spring of 2004 my parents came to visit. My Mom is a genealogist, so she headed straight for the LDS Family History Center and we didn't see her except for breakfast and after the center closed for the day. I had to attend a Master Gardener function on Saturday. I decided that it was time for Dad and the Engineer to do some father-in-law/son-in-law bonding, so I looked up plans for a picnic table on the Internet and printed them out.

The men spent Saturday in Guy Heaven. They went to Home Depot and bought lumber and bolts, then came home and played with power tools. By the end of the day they relaxed at the new redwood table with a couple of beers, totally please with the table, themselves and each other. It was good.

The picnic table is wonderful. After we eat dinner, I like to sit at the table and watch the cats chasing each other like maniacs or the hummingbirds sipping at the feeder. Cool evening breeze blows down the canyon and the songbirds chirp in the trees surrounding the yard as shadows shift and deepen over the mountain. It's a golden moment to simply inhabit.