......9 and 10

I'm sitting in front of a roaring fire - the best place for an avid gardener to be today. Hopefully this is the final weekend of winter like weather this year, but hey, it's a doozey.

So to seat with a view #9.....

#9 is an old park bench which has been on a journey around the garden. It now passes its days on the sunny side of the pine garden. This area has been reasonablly well ignored up until the last year or so. It's one of the sunniest spots in the garden and deserves a bench but we rarely sit there. Pre Maru, it didn't have much of a view. Post Maru, ....well Maru is a much nicer place to sit!

Maru

#10.....and we come to Maru. Ruprecht has designed and built Maru pretty much by himself. Maru is the name of his childhood lakeside holiday shack in NSW. He has strong, fond memories of family life there and we decided to have a Maru next to our pond.

It is fair to say I was barely there in body, let alone in spirit when we started the pond. Unwell for too long, then depressed about being unwell, I was absolutely no help. We had a big hole dug in the garden and then I just about left Ruprecht to it. He had a little help building the pond - his daughter helped spread the liner; son-in-law and grandson moved rocks and granddaughter #2 fell into the newly filled pond.

So what does a massive pond need? Well a shack of course! Welcome Maru! To say this is a place to sit is a massive understatement. We sit. We eat. We drink. We sit at the 50's formica table, on the daybed, in a bean bag, in a hammock. We eat wood fired pizza,Tasmanian platters, morning tea, afternoon snacks. We drink, boy do we drink, tea, coffee,cider, white wine, red wine, red wine, red wine.

Maru is built out of our old deck. If you look up rustic in the dictionary, there's a picture of Maru. Ruprecht had some help to build Maru from son #2, so Amy Pond and Maru are a bit of a family affair.

The view of Maru is lovely. The view from Maru is wonderful. Considering my lack of enthusiasm and interest in the whole project when it first began, it humbles me that this is now my very favourite place to hang out in the garden. I practise my mindfulness there, write there, bird watch there and take time out to waste time there. I sit on the rocks (there's a lovely flat one) and watch the pond life; I lie in the hammock and stare up into the trees, and I stretch out on the day bed and admire our garden - a 270° view.

But I'm not doing any of that today. It's a cold and windy day and the garden looks very lovely from the comfort of the cozy club chair in front of the fire. No bird songs today. Just the wind rushing through the trees and the sound of outside furniture being blown along the deck.

In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "tomorrow is another day."