A favourite place

I have a favourite place to lie on our lawn. It's a bit of lawn that runs downhill that somehow feels like an armchair and miraculously has soft, ant-free grass. On one side is a curving wall that Mr Blithe made from stones found on the property and in front of me the view swoops through green hills, to the valley and distant blue mountains. In the afternoons, it is shaded by the shed and increasingly by a teenage mulberry tree that rustles its leaves drily.

I go and lie there around about five o'clock in the evening when I don't like my children any more, my computer isn't doing what I want it to, my job seems distant and impossible, I haven't had time to write or a moment to myself and I'm just hot and tired and grumpy...

I lie down, wiggle my toes in the grass and begin to notice the breeze on my skin, the birds in the long grass, the impossibly blue sky, the sunlight in the top of the gum tree, the bouganvillea bright against the sky, the intense yellow of the leopard tree flowers against the dark green leaves -- that the world is in fact still there.

It's not a miracle cure, but it helps a lot.