Jaci Dawn

“What do you see out your window?”

I see a boring view of a suburban street canting downhill at an angle. There’s a dead lodgepole pine in the center of the view, with an empty bird feeder hanging from a limb and three empty suet feeders hanging from nails in the trunk. I didn’t put the nails there: they came with the tree, which came with the house. The tree wasn’t dead when it came with the house, but died in increments of some mysterious fungal disease or bug infestation. There’s a large hydrangea planted under the tree, I planced it there so the roots would be in acidic soil and the flowers on the hydrangea would be a deep teal blue-green.

Beyond the tree, beyond the short retaining wall, there is the street and mailboxes. In mid-summer, just in front of the retaining wall, the bright orange day lilies bloom for weeks. In the winter, the street looks like a creek as water from the rains wash down it and swirl out onto the cross street and down.

Suburban ranch style homes built in the 1950’s line the south side of the street, with their little rectangle front lawns and requisite azalea and rhododendron bushes. A row of Douglas fir trees line the north side, their branches trimmed up so that I can see the traffic coming and going. These are not my trees, but belong to the neighbor in the green house directly opposite us. A bright orange fire hydrant marks the sharp corner to our street, and the corner of the neighbor’s yard.

I have hummingbird feeders hanging from the eave of the small porch roof. I can watch the Anna’s hummingbird all year, and the rufous-sided hummingbird in the summer. Red breasted nuthatches and black-capped chickadees drink from the ant moat (an inverted bowl of water hanging above the hummer feeders, designed to keep sugar ants out of the feeders). Chestnut-sided chickadees, bushtits, and white-breasted nuthatches utilize the dead lodgepole. I bird watch through this window.

It’s a boring view, an ordinary view, a view that is most often wet and dreary throughout the long rainy season. It is a perfect view of changing seasons, migrating birds, and the various nattering squirrels who come to depend on the bird feeder being filled all through the winter. It is my view.