Arrrgh!!!

As a quilter and a gardener, light has always had an effect on the canvas of my creations. It wasn't until recently that I realized it affects me when I am at the computer as well.

We have a home office, and a second computer has been set up in the living room. Both rooms have interesting light. The office has a window that looks out over lawn, mature trees, a star magnolia, fosythia and a border of daylilies. The shades of green in pools of sunlight or deepest shade draw your eye, and invite you to daydream. Even in winter, when only the bones of the landscaping exist, the light will draw your eye, exaggerating the contrast of glistening snow and tree trunks wet from melting ice. The angle of the sun in summer keeps it from entering the room. There's an invisible barrier between that glorious view and the shaded room that reminds you this is supposed to be a place of work.

The computer in the living room sits on an antique trestle table. I've clustered treasures on that table to create a nest. There's a coffee grinder from my grandparent's home on a farm in Iowa in the 1930s, a frame with one of the few pictures I have of my husband, his arm draped around a fabric moose as tall as he is, a silver wire Christmas ornament from one of my nieces, and the computer. A lamp leaves a pool of light in the center of the table at night, but the light that draws me during the summer afternoons is much more lovely.

The west end of that room has twelve windows that fill it from the peak to about two feet off the floor. There are no curtains. Outside the window is the remains of an old nursery. Some of the trees are in rows and others have been sprinkled through out the regimented lines by an unseen hand. Through out the day and into the night we see a steady passage of deer, racoons, blue jays, cardinals, squirrels and chipmunks. It's not possible to be bored, here.

When I take my seat at that computer in late afternoon, the sun shines through the upper structure of the trees and dapples the surface of the table. The light is gentle and warming, and I want to use the word "bower" to describe that corner of the room. It's my personal retreat, a feminine reaction to the masculinity of the rest of the house. The windows let nature in, in the softest of ways. It's a place where I find peace.

I'll always carry the image of that summer light and the sense of comfort and beauty it brings to me.