Alexandra Stoddard and Bird's Nest Hair

I’m sitting out at the chippy white table at the hidden corner of my front porch, secluded by a huge trumpet vine with a nest of mourning doves. 

Cicadas are loudly calling out summer to each other. Wind chimes sound faintly from time to time.  The dove’s feathers ruffled when I first sat down, but they’ve decided I’m harmless and my hair kind of looks like a nest.  They’ve started cooing again in the distinctive cadence which gives them their name, so soothing compared to the crow I also hear. Crows seem to have much to complain about, a lot like some folks I know.

As I was getting ready this early morning, I thought about a gracious living book I’d read last night by Alexandra Stoddard.  I was surprised that she did NOT advocate waiting until everything was perfect before you enjoy your home.  Each room did not have to be dusted and pristine in order to read a favorite book in a chintz-covered chair. I was shocked to note that she also pads around in her night clothes well into the morning.  This was not my image of her, but I found it completely refreshing.

I was making an egg sandwich and thought of how nice it would be to enjoy it on the porch.  Then I edited myself with all the things I needed to do first like shower and fix my hair.  For a short time I succumbed to those thoughts.  I folded laundry, threw in another load of wash and did other sensible things.

But you know what?   This is the only July 1 this year, which will soon be gone if I get caught up in the tyranny of the mundane.  It would be hard for anyone else out and about to see my bird’s nest hair and night shirt but the birds.  All this is why you’d find me here if you were strolling down Constitution Avenue and looked very closely behind the pink crepe myrtle, up the six stone steps and behind the trumpet vine.