BS: What can you see ....

Subject: What can you see ....
From: Morticia
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:05 PM

from your kitchen window? I often try to picture people here and where they live and I do my best musing when I'm washing the pots or vegetables. So what can you see while you're doing the dishes or whatever?

My window looks out on the garden...apple tree, flowers,a lot of weeds.Then a fence, then the backs of houses similar to mine (late Victorian, two up, two down types)then an office building ( local newspaper) and some trees.I'd give anything for a nice pastoral or ocean view, but the middle of a town is it for now.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: X
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:12 PM

Hi Morticia:

Right now over the top of my computer I can see my lemon and orange trees.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:24 PM

From my back window I can see the bird table, and watch them feeding. Right now they're feeding fledglings,[Sparrows,& Greenfinches mostly] and it's great to watch them squawk for food. From here I can see little Loch Shin, with pines on the other side and a hill behind, and beyond that just the horizon. We get both mute and Bewick swans on the loch, and black throated divers,[Loons to our friends in the US],tufted ducks,mallard, golden-eye, litte grebe, and cormorant are some of the other birds I see from this window. No need to wonder why I left leafy expensive Surrey, to come home to Scotland.
Failte.....Giok

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:26 PM

Morty - I see a back garden that hasn't had you in it for some time, when you coming to drink my white wine and eat my chocolate mousse again?? You've not seen my pond with its 6 forms of aquatic life, including Archibald the leech and several million water snails.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:33 PM

Archie Leech??

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 03:03 PM

If Liz has chocolate mousse, I'm on my way!

From the place I have my computer, I can see the top of a very ugly evergreen. I can't bring myself to cut it down. Sometime before I moved here, it's main trunk had been destroyed, and one branch now seems to be trying to take over and is around 10 feet above where the trunk was truncated. The lowest branch practically comes right out of the ground - I think because people built the ground up quite a bit when they put the road (or my house) in. The branches slope upward gently, and are great to sit in if you don't mind pine pitch and poison ivy. The birds love it, though, and there's a pair of cardinals that spend a lot of time in it, singing. My neighbor says it's ugly and I can't argue, but I've never seen a tree like it, so misshapen and feral. It's survived so much bad stuff to look the way it does that I don't think I'll ever feel I have the right to chop it down.

From my kitchen window, I see the houses of neigbors across the street and the street itself. Directly across from me, the woman has lovely, huge gardens and put a pond in last year. At night, I can hear the water running down her little "waterfall" and the frogs. Out in back is a bit of weedy ground, then woods. Sometimes I see the neighbors' cats hunting. A couple of weeks ago, I looked out a window to see a family of turkeys walking around like they owned the place. The nest is out in the woods somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 04:24 PM

The view is very leafy and green from where I sit. There are three cottonwoods outside my window; beyond them are two red cars parked before a bungalow; beyond that is the ocean with an island in the near distance with houses climbing the mountain slopes.

Yesterday was sunny and warm- almost too warm. Had to be 70-75 degrees. At last night's music, the house got humid and uncomfortable- I told them that if we'd only not breathe, we'd be perfectly comfortable, but I ended up opening doors at opposing sides of the house to scour it out.

Today is cool and misty again, as is normal for this area. I don't suppose the temperature will get beyond 62 today. My plants on the sun porch are in full bloom- mostly geraniums, very colorful. I also have a cherry tomato plant thriving there- lots of blossoms so I'm hoping for some fresh tomatoes this summer. I pollinated them the other day (It gave me such pleasure!), and I'll do that from time to time and hope for the best.

Foxglove and astilbe and fireweed and lupine are in full bloom. In this cool climate flower colors are vivid and pure; surprises and awes visitors no end.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Deda
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:05 PM

The window nearest me as I sit at my husband's desk looks due west. Across the two-lane street I can see my neighbor Dan's little mobile home, which is white with brown trim (Dan has just come out and is sitting on a chair in the shade on his deck; a cottonwood tree towers behind him), and beyond that I can see a few more distant cottonwood trees, and past them the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, dirt brown right now because of the drought. From here they just look like low rolling hills dotted with pine trees. There are a few clouds west of the mountains, which look as though they were resting on top of the hills. I wish they held the promise of rain, but it's not too likely. Above the clouds there's the amazing western sky, wide and blue.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Mooh
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:05 PM

The grass I just cut, the trees I trimmed, the garden wild with inattention, the church next door, the neighbour's lane, and the sun shining over my little corner of the world.

Think I'll go back outside...

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Emma B
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:34 PM

The rabbits are eating my rocket, the phesants are eating the seeds,the snails are munching the new raddichio seedlings, the squirrel is burying nuts in my herb pots and the LBJ's are showing their numerous youngsters all the remaining garden goodies - like my morello cherries! Apart from that (over the hedge) fields full of spuds, the occasional mating badger (very noisy) and assorted herons, jays, woodpeckers and an albino blackbird.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:42 PM

Yes, Archibald Leech. Cary to his friends.

The chocolate mousse is still in its vestigal stages but can be knocked up as soon as I know who is coming and when.

The view from the window here has been greatly enhanced by night falling, and I can now only see the silhouette of my neighbours' house, the houses across the street and my other neighbours' gazebo tent which takes up the entire garden. I can no longer see the knackered slide, the tarpaulin where the lawn once was, the pile of dead bracken where the paving was and the pile of old twigs, earth and concrete lumps where the patio should be.

I can still hear my neighbours though, and the firework display happening in some park about 2 miles away. And then there's the ghostly white flowers of the buddlea, the rose over the arch and the jasmine, all scenting the night air, but still failing to cover the whiskey fumes and fag smoke from the said neighbours who seem to live in the nasty gazebo tent thing most of the summer.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Jeanie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 05:43 PM

Right now (because it's 10.30 p.m.) I can see my dark green curtains ! But in daytime at the computer I look out onto my front garden: a conifer tree and a eucalyptus that is threatening to disconnect my telephone wires if it isn't cut soon. Quite a few passers-by - usually the many little old ladies who live around here, but the other week I was treated to the playgroup trooping past, twice, dressed as assorted beetles, bugs and butterflies on a sponsored fancy dress walk. From my kitchen window: grass, rose bushes, numerous visiting cats, my garden shed with just a glimpse of a replica of the Ark of the Covenant glinting inside it. (It's a long story - but I am home to many theatrical props and costumes). I wait in vain for Indiana Jones to come calling in search of it ... If you see him, tell him where it is, will you ?

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 06:45 PM

Not much out my kitchen window except the neighbor's pumpkin colored house and a chain link fence.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: bflat
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 07:36 PM

Will the following make this a musical thread not that it isn't fine as is: "I can see clearer now....."

Now who was responsible for those lyrics? One of Mudcats' brightest will know.

Ellen

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 08:45 PM

I have a parade of groundhogs. Momma is finally letting the babies out on their own. They have no fear of the neighborhood cats and refuse to run when chased. Very frustrating to my Alice. Baby Fred was having a romp up trees and down phone poles when he accidentally ran over one. It was totally indignant, chattered loudly, and chased Fred back up the tree.
Out front, Ed sits under a juniper bush and watches the world go by.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: IvanB
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 04:47 PM

Unfortunately, our Kitchen sink window sounds a lot like Sorcha's, except the neighbors have no chainlink fence. For the short time each year that peonies are in bloom, it's quite pleasant because our longest row of them is along the back garage wall, which is also viewed out the sink window. However, we have a picture window looking out over the back yard and our kitchen table (where we always eat unless we have company) is in front of that window. So, for most of the year, we can look at whatever's in bloom in the garden or what's going on in the neighborhood. The downside is that Gaile has an excellent vantage point from which to comment on my gardening shortcomings.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: DonD
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 05:17 PM

As I wait for my computer to do stuff, I look out the window of a top floor apartment in the NY suburbs over the Bronx River -- actually the foliage of the trees along it -- and across to the matching buildings on the other side of the valley.

A walk around the lake (wide place in the river) this afternoon featured the ususal growing flock of permananently resident Canada geese, but also a visit from a blue heron which shows up every year at about this time to perch motionless for hours it seems amid the plunging waters of the small waterfall at the foot of the lake. I sat on a bench and watched it for fifteen minutes at least and couldn't detect a tremor.

We have rabbits, too, but they're very shy. Not so the circling bikers, rollerbladers, joggers, strollers and more geese.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 06:24 PM

From my kitchen sink, all I can actually see is the wall... luckily /I#m now ipiussesd, so I cna see a lot mpre haan justh sthe wall..... the pixies are really goiungfor it tonitnght... must be mating season.

LTSsh

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Gareth
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 06:32 PM

3 closed railway lines, 2 colliery tips, a disused viaduct, a closed colliery, a derelict factory, oh and a school.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Oaklet
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 06:50 PM

Is it OK to describe a UK view? The Yorkshire Wolds skyline from left to right, most pronounced in the centre, where it is nearer to me. in the midground is nothing except a mile-wide stretch of tranquil Humber, more than adequately reflecting the effect that sunsets have on Linconlshire skies. A field in the foreground, an unfortunate road and a field. A bit dull in the telling, but my God, it does it for me every time I see it.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,Skipjack
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 06:54 PM

Only a stone's throw, if the stone posseses the throw, from my fellow Purple Helmet, but like you, Betty, a wall. Leave the pissed up spelling to John, he of bears, bananas and stolen chips. He is peerless!

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 07:28 PM

From the kitchen window?...... Usually a pile of dirty dishes which, thanks to the efforts of yours truly, gets lower (well, it's only fair.. she cooks it, I eat it!) to reveal a covered verandah looking out on to a not all that badly kept lawn with scattered shrubs just getting under way, and a straggly peach tree now in bloom which squats under a jackfruit tree that's going to have to go very soon. Beyond them, a chain-link fence, a big double shed containing the neighbour's boat, and the back of another house.....

From the computer (either one)... a wall............

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 07:47 PM

From the kitchen window usually my neighbour's cat on my window sill demanding attention. When she gets out the way the rowan and the two quinces that I planted.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 07:47 PM

a large front yard with trees and houses beyond..also a busy street that is our main road here..a sunset if I look up ..out the back window is a sort of meadow..have had deer there..the moon shines right over my head at night.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Jul 02 - 09:15 PM

See whatever you want, From my kitchen window I can see a 25 yard long garden with a pre-fab shed. However, my wife painted a shoreline scene on the end of the shed, and is painting one bird on the scene for each year we've been in this house (9 so far). I can also see the backs of the houses in the next street.

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,(Not Guest) Mickey191
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 03:43 AM

When I'm doing my dishes, I see in the foreground, the birdbath with finches, cardinals & sparrows. The bird feeder is usually filled with those bully bluejays, and on the ground are mourning doves. I confess I sometimes wrap on the window to make the jays fly off, so the little guys get a chance. This year there are no chickadees. Don't know why. In the background is my fuschia colored fence.The paint can said Fire engine red. On the fence are my wood crafts-garden angels,wooden pots filled with wooden flowers,rows of little houses,birds of all colors who apear to take flight whenthe wind blows and the man in the moon. Above it all-this sign - VIVE BENE SPESSO L'AMORE DI RISATA MOLTO. Live Well.Love Often.Laugh Much.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: alison
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 04:08 AM

my swimming pool(if it wasn't winter it would have the kids in it!!), my multigym, the BBQ, and a little cubby house (shed) in the shape of a log cabin with a verandah....... and lots of trees...... and usually my dog (half border collie half tank) lying happily on a reclining deck chair......

well thats what I can see from the computer anyway....... kitchen doesn't have a window it looks onto a sunroom with the same view as the computer....


slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 04:21 AM

Trees,that's it really, from where I'm sitting now. But wiv a ladder and some glasses you could see to Hackney Marshes if it wasn't for the houses in between.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 04:50 AM

Used to be the side of a shed - but that's just been knocked down & got rid of - so in order of increasing distance...
coal hole, dog pound, frog-pond, lawn, wild bit with canoe that I ought to put somewhere sensible, nettles, garage, sky. Also neighbours' shrubberies & trees. All inhabited by elderly dog + assorted cats.
Hammerite has a similar view from her bedroom, but with the added pleasure that from that steeper angle & with the aid of a telescope she can see into someone's frontroom. When she grows up she wants to be a spy....(actually the fascination didn't last long, because unfortunately no one ever seems to take their clothes off in that frontroom. Bah!)

KRis

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Trevor
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 05:56 AM

Across the valley up to The Stiperstones, a ridge topped with craggy outcrops, in one direction.

Through the other, across the top of a plantation down the Onny Valley, with the Long Mynd in the background.

And, this morning, a woodpecker investigating the fence posts. It was so glorious this morning that I was out at 6.00am barefoot in the dew (like a blinkin' Cadbury's Flake advert!) and there was a cloud inversion above the Onny. Fabby wabby or what?

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Gervase
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 06:30 AM

I see a garden looking absolutely bloomin' marvellous at the moment (unemployment can have its advantages). The cornwlowers, sweet peas and poppies have burst into bloom in the past week, the hostas are looking magnificent, the patio is peppered with terracotta pots of geraniums, and down the bottom of the garden the vegetable patch is already provings its worth, with the peas and broad beans cropping well, the carrots and parsnips getting fatter by the day, the rocket and lollo rosso going mad and the last of the strawberries ripening.
Still to come are the tomatoes, shallots and spring onions, while the herbs are threating to take over the shelf on the front of the potting shed (and I've become addicted to fresh green coriander seeds).
And right at the back are some tall plants with delicated, five-pointed leaves that will hopefully prove their worth in late September (if I can root out all the male plants before they flower).
Behind those are the elder bushes with the berries beginning to fill out (some of the blossom has already been picked and is now maturing as elderflower champagne under the stairs), and behind that is the wood, full of beech trees, head-high nettles and brambles, where the local vixen spends the night barking most errily and where the blody squirrels that steal the strawberries have their lodgings.
There's one downside about the summer fesitval season - there's so much to do in the garden that a week away at somewhere like Sidmouth means negotiating all sorts of plant-sitters and volunteer waterers to carry on the tender work while one's away.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: GUEST,mmm1a
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 06:42 AM

Well I am jealous . I look out ny kitchen window and I see my neighbors house and the soybean plant and silo's . It takes up over a block on the north side of my street. Out the window where my computer is, is a little better veiw, I can see my kids swingset and fort, an old fanning mill my husband will someday get around to restoring and the rest of soya . the part on my side is the moisture testing area. The grain trucks pull in and are tested then pull across to empty their load. In the fall there can be15 to 20 trucks waiting in line. Gets to be very noisy.

mmm

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: RangerSteve
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:09 AM

from one kitchen window I can see a vast expanse of lawn that needs to be mowed, then some arbor vitae that block the view. From the other kitchen window there's my former vegetable garden that I ceded over to the groundhogs and rabbits, and is now a mess of russian thistles and pokeberries that are treatening to take over the yard like triffids. Beyond that there's the buffalo farm, the only one in New Jersey, then some wooded hills. From the computer window, there's open fields to the horizon, usually corn or wheat, but this year, just weeds and occasional trees, and, right against my property, another attempt to grow pumpkins, but since this particular farmer is the only farmer in NJ who can't grow pumpkins, it will eventually become weeds. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the power lines with those great big ugly metal towers, because in New Jersey, there seems to be a law that no good view should go unspoiled.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Hrothgar
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:34 AM

Kitchen window: A lillipilli (native evergreen), a frangipani (no leaves in winter), a hedge (high, evergreen), the neighbours' houses down the slope and up the far hill (tempered by lots of trees, thank goodness).

Front door: A Brisbane silver wattle, still in bloom about two weeks later than it should be. The sun comes over the house and is usually shining through the wattle blossoms when I leave for work in the mornings. Hedge around the front lawn, footpath trees....

Could do a lot worse.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:58 AM

My kitchen window looks out to the neighbours' kitchen windows & bathroom windows & some over the years haven't see any reason for blinds or shower curtains!! but this is Kings Cross - inner Sydney & the ???entertainment centre of Sydney.

All my windows are crowded with plants & if I wasn't on line at 10.45pm I would be looking at lovely greenery. However I am looking at my apricot curtain & the assorted embroideries hanging there & listening to Irish music. If my curtain was open I could look down onto my neighbour's wonderful garden, celebrated in a book on Inner City Gardens & never seen by him from this angle as his apartment is on the other side of the building.

Down the road & round the corner is Sydney harbour which is a very pleasant thing to look at on my way to work tomorrow.

Sandra

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: SharonA
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 09:29 AM

I live on the second floor of a small apartment building in the shape of a flattened "U" (I'm in one "leg" of the U), so from my kitchen window I see the parking lot behind the building and the side-street beyond. On the other side of that street is the parsonage that's behind the church on the corner opposite the apartment building. In winter the parsonage is festooned with Christmas lights; in spring it comes alive with tulips and other flowers; but in high summer it's obscured by the magnificent tree in the yard of the house across the fence from the apartment parking lot. I can also see a bit of that yard over the fence, as well as the back of that house, and I can hear the wind chimes on the rear porch of the house. I can also hear the electronic carillon of the church, when it plays.

Of course, I see the comings and goings of my apartment neighbors – to and from the parking lot, and in and out of the other doors in the back of the building – as well as the pedestrians on the street and the stray black cat that's been hanging around recently. And I have the occasional chat with Tristan, the vocal orange tabby who sometimes appears in the corner window of the next apartment.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Morticia
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 12:24 PM

I'm really glad I asked.....this is great.

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 12:30 PM

Anyone who doesn't read greg's comment as a quote, it comes from Here

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Banjo-Flower
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 06:27 PM

One of the best views of one of the U.K's biggest steelworks(yuk)

Gerry

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Mudlark
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 06:53 PM

My kitchen window and office windows are on the same wall, so view about the same. Looks out on an expansive bit of my 5 acres, big old elm up close, bird feeder covered in cheerful sparrows and house finches, with occasional downy woodpeckers working the bark. Next, an ancient mequite tree, large expanse of wild grass, cut short and now turned golden, surrounded by 20 yr old hedges, apricot and eucalyptus trees, a couple of poincianna bushes (I think of the melody every time I look at them and their wild, outlandishly tropical flowers in this desert setting), some towering tamarisks, and the edge of the pottery studio.

There is a nice breeze coming up (maybe the heat wave is on the way out!), making great shadow play on the walls as these windows face west and the sun is beginning to shine in thru the trees.

What a restful thread! Thanks, Morticia, for starting it and all who have contributed...

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Kaleea
Date: 16 Jul 02 - 02:22 AM

I actually have one now! Since I am rather short of stature, I often do not see as much through a kitchen window as others do, and tonight I can see the dark. During the daylight, I can see the grass in my backyard which is not very green due to lack of rain, although it does need mowing by the weekend--not an easy feat with my neck & back injuries & carpal tunnel syndrome! wah! wah!

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Jul 02 - 02:30 AM

Not much at the moment actually, as the kitchen window needs cleaning.....
but usually the fence between us and the 3 noisy little kids next door!
Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: What can you see ....
From: Chip2447
Date: 16 Jul 02 - 02:46 AM

Right now the sun is setting on Olympus Mons, the fiery glow of the Martian sunset is spectacular. one and all are invited for the first annual Mudcat Mars gathering. Plenty of room and no neighbors to complain. (he dares to dream.)
In reality, I see a crappy deck, and an overgrown sorry excuse for a yard. But once in a while over the din of the interstate you can actually hear a bird singing.
Chip2447 (anxiously awaiting his return to the country lifestyle)