The View We'll Be Losing

When we moved in, the blinds were rarely opened. We were surrounded by other homes, bushes covered many windows, we had to step outside to see the lake. There was still plenty of light, and plenty of privacy for our messy stacks of boxes and scattered furniture, as well as ourselves.

Then one day there was a lot of noise next door, the downhill side, towards the lake. Two days later that lot was empty.The house sat on steel beams over a wheeled platform down the street. A Bobcat was grading and smoothing the lot. Within a week the now mobile home was gone. I happened to see it go from out on the county road, paused before making my turn in by Wide Load guide vehicles stopping traffic both ways until it cleared overhead wires and made the turn between both sides of the street without any apparent damage to anything. Some jockeying was necessary, and the crew in the guide vehicles were out signalling stop, go, turn more, or whatever it took to accomplish the task. It was gone.

A week later a huge backhoe and large dump truck were in place, chopping up the concrete patio slab into small-ish  chunks, each landing inside the dump truck with echoing booms. A few days later the bobcat returned to grade the lot smooth, remove plantings, and leave, an indication to us that a larger home will be moving in, needing a bigger footprint. The grading was repeated three more times so far, possibly because with all the rains the ground needed repeat packing down to support the new home coming in. We hear we'll have a new neighbor in August.

We find that both good news and bad news. The old home obscured our view of the lake, the street, and mostly, the mail shed. It was nice to have the blinds open in the mornings and until the sun poured in for the afternoon, no worries about privacy, seeing geese on the shore and boats going past. But the most useful part was seeing when the mail truck showed up. Some days it was in the morning, some in the afternoon. No explanation for the variability, and some of our neighbors just never bother to go collect their mail till afternoon. Not even the ones who who weren't gone in the day because they're retired.

 For my eye, and my camera, the best part of the view, the one I'll miss, is seeing when the rain comes down. If you're looking between blinds slats and through a screen, it can simply be cloudy or it can be wet. Unless, of course, it's a thunderstorm outside. But the best part of it raining is that the street turns reflective. The blinds/screen combo can produce an optical illusion of raindrops falling past the window. A glance at the street proves if there's rain or not.  If the rain ends it dries quickly. 

The Monday weather forecast said rain for the morning, no more for a week at least. So I kept checking. Knowing we'll be loosing that particular view any day, I wanted to be sure to catch a few shots of what we're going to miss. I picked out one wide angle, one zoom. I'll miss them both.