My Front Terrace.

It is a strange Saturday in every way. A far cry weather-wise from last weekend, when the air was warm, no wind to speak of and the sky was clear.
I am always amazed how wrong the meteorologists seem to be at all times – almost. When I woke up this morning and checked the weather forecast, they promised full sun. However, now it is mostly cloudy with a threat of rain. Not my kind of weather at all.

Yesterday was a bad day for me; expecting a quiet day at work, I found myself instead dealing with a serious problem with one of the instruments, while I was all alone in the lab and the boss being currently out of town. This incident ruined not just my day, but also my night, which was sleepless and restless. Even today I can get a “creepy” feeling from time to time. I know I did the best I could, but I cannot help but wonder in retrospect whether I did all that I could anyway.

But, it is all in the past and if I have learned anything at all from previous experiences, it would be to try not to worry about something that is done and over with.

Even though it is cloudy now, this morning was sunny and I got to enjoy a moment of brief sunshine sitting on my front terrace, while having my morning coffee. As much as I love my back terrace, I have in recent years started to enjoy quiet mornings at my front terrace as well.

My house is a one out of five chain houses, all attached to each other forming an L shaped enclosed yard, which we all share. Each house however owns a small piece of land both in front and in the back of the houses. Although they all look the same from the outside, the houses are very different from each other both in size and layout. The size of land owned varies as well. I guess mine is the biggest front terrace. For many years I did not get to use it to its full extend as it was way to open and not very secluded. Five years ago however I realized that the two small decorative trees lining the terrace were attacked by some sort of a disease and were dying. Upon a visit of my parents and their advice and help, I decided to cut down the sick trees and plant four Cherry laurel bushes, which are sturdy and beautiful evergreens that bloom with white fragrant flowers in May. Well, actually I planted two in the autumn of 2004 and two in the spring of 2005. As January through March 2005 was a very cold period with huge amount of snow, I was really worried that my two newly planted (and expensive!) laurels were not going to survive. They were lying down for almost a month under the heavy snow and in the spring they lost all the leaves. But to my astonishment, in May that year they grew all the leaves back and today they line my terrace, creating a wonderful serene spot. The front garden is facing southeast, meaning it receives sun mostly in the earlier part of the day. Considering that the wind here almost always comes from the west, it is a wonderful, shielded spot and visitors that pass the bushes in bloom often stop to look at them with awe and admiration.

While spending those few precious moments of sunshine there this morning, my mind was slowly put to ease.