(re-post)
A natural habitat home and garden has the minimum of separation between indoors and outdoors. Seamless, one lady has called it. In Utopia we would live outside. In our country, climate and culture dictate our lives spent mostly in structures.
To show the worthiness of inviting the outdoors in, simply stand on a threshold and put on awareness mode. Feel how it is to be indoors. Now take the two or three steps and stand outdoors and absorb again. Something beckons… Perhaps it’s as simple as the light, the air, spaciousness. I suspect there’s also some innate sense of freedom. Whatever the reason it is possible to bring it indoors. And, to take the indoors – the comfort and security and personality we feel in our sheltered spaces – outdoors.
Focusing attention on this adventure is a first and major step. Windows, skylights, doors afford us the vision and they are often needlessly and heavily draped or blocked or shuttered. The first thing we did at the Cottage in Toronto was strip all the lined drapes from all the windows. When the former owner returned for a visit she was puzzled at the very noticeable change and then, when she realized what had been done, said, a bit regretfully, “Oh, I could have done that.” Since then I’ve tried to be on the lookout for “oh, I could have done that” ‘s when they are still, “oh, I could do…”
Once the vision is cleared, then next is to direct our attention outaway. (That’s thataway outwardly.) Face seating outdoors, toward the windows. Not the normal practice, is it? Mostly we turn our backs on that glorious sky with an idea of forming a conversation circle. Nature makes quite a welcome companion into any group if we invite her in.
Having turned our eyes outdoors we need to provide a vista. I once did a detailed study of why on earth we landscape our houses to give us an uninterrupted view of the street while making it attractive for a passerby to gaze up at our house. Seems the practice goes back to feudal England when a person rich enough to not have to til his land for food proclaimed his wealth with sweeping lawns and foundation plantings. I doubt many of us are under the illusion that people passing by gaze with envy at our carefully manicured lawns except perhaps with a wish to toss a white golf ball award – mostly it’s merely habit or not being motivated to an alternative.
Plan the garden for the house occupants. What a difference. And – THEN you get passersby expressing an interest, stopping to chat over the changes, fostering the sense of community that we want and need.
THEN it makes sense to face chairs looking outdoors. Birds are endlessly fascinating. Trees soothe the eye and the heart. And when you begin to get something back from that land whether it is visual or practical like fruit or berries there is enormous satisfaction. I know quite a number of people who have given up their yearning for “if we only had a cottage in the country” – and twice even that actual cottage – with the awareness that they had the potential in their own urban front and backyards.
It’s a fascinating adventure. Once embraced the idea spreads and all manner of ways of letting the indoors and outdoors flow into each other will present..
The entranceway can have a scented plant or two or three both indoors (scented geraniums, basil) and outdoors (southernwood, chocolate mint) to invite a conscious, fragrant exit or entering. A pause of renewal before going out into the world. A pause of gratitude when returning. On the – seamless – doorstep.
We more than double our space when we shift the attitude to include the outdoors in our living. There are only so many square feet in a man-made structure but a limitless horizon beyond that brink.
In this climate we are so very fortunate in being able to leave a door or window open almost year round. And (oh I do hope some scientist somewhere is studying this interesting phenomenon) what few bugs do venture in past our mostly screenless windows and doors seem to have an acquired intelligence of not being trapped by such screens so find their way outdoors again. They also do very much respond to being pointed the way out – but I don’t know if science is ready for this fact yet.