A car pulled off the road in front of our house. The driver got out and came across the driveway holding up her phone to start taking pictures. She hadn’t noticed that our dog, Momo, was being walked in the white pines. Suspicious of people taking pictures of our property that’s under an environmental “order of conditions,” Jim came out of the trees with a dog straining at its leash and an ambiguous “can I help you?”
Turns out she just wanted a picture of what she’d been admiring every day of her summer vacation – our shed. When we put it in, someone teased us about why we had put an outhouse in front of such a nice house. Now a few buoys picked up on winter beaches dressed with some close-out geraniums made someone look afresh at another person’s eyesore.
Beauty is in how we decide to see things.