Time to put away the yard stuff, which if I'm being honest is OK by me

An empty yard...my favorite kind

This is about the time of year when Terry, Jack and I gather up the summer stuff around our yard and put it into storage in (and above) our garage.

While this isn't the most fun of chores, it's also one that doesn't faze me unduly. I can take or leave all of the outdoorsy activities that many of my fellow North Coasters immediately dive into once things warm up in May or June.

It's not that I don't like being outside. It's just that, when it's 80- or 90-some degrees around here, I would rather be in my air-conditioned living room than sitting on my deck.

Speaking of that deck, I mentioned here a couple of months ago that we got a new one. It's pretty nice. When we had Chloe's PhD celebration party at our house in September, several people made a point of complimenting us on it.

Yet you very likely won't catch me sitting on the deck other than for occasional outdoor dinners and the even more occasional family movie night where we project a movie onto my father-in-law's old slide screen.

I very willingly worked to help pay for it, but the deck is more a Terry and Jack thing than it is for me.

Same for our backyard fire pit. If my housemates want to go out and have a fire in the summer, I'll do it. But I almost never initiate the idea.

You could also put a hammock in our backyard and I would seldom use it, if ever.

As a Gen Xer, I spent a lot more time outside when I was growing up than my kids did. But that experience has not translated into adulthood. I just...well, I'm not an outdoorsman in any real sense of the word.

I don't even run outside anymore. I do all of my exercising at the gym.

My kids are uniformly bitter that, when they were little, I would never consent to getting a trampoline or a pool. The truth was, I didn't want to mow around the trampoline, and I didn't want to have to take care of the pool. 

Those aren't the best reasons, admittedly, but I'm just being honest with you.

My daughter Melanie will tell you that I "hate luxury and joy." She said those words to me a couple of months ago, and she was only half-kidding.

Maybe one quarter kidding.

I would counter that I very much embrace luxury when it's offered to me. And I'm as joyful as the next guy.

It's just that I prefer the kind of luxury and joy that comes with a roof over my head and a functioning HVAC system.

Ask yourself, is that so wrong?

(I'll be in the living room if you want to come and explain your answer.)

Around the fire pit

 

My sister-in-law Chris managed to take this photo in the dark with a flash on an iPhone camera. I really like the look of it. That's me on the far right talking to my son Jack.

I don't have the numbers to back this up, but it seems to me the popularity of the fire pit as a suburban backyard accessory has risen exponentially in the last, say, 15 to 20 years.

People sometimes build them right into their patios or, as in our case, just dig a hole and ring it with bricks. Either way, it becomes the focal point of almost any warm-weather gathering.

Terry and my niece Shelby built our pit, and while at first I complained about it as yet another thing in the yard I have to mow around, I must admit it has been a welcome addition.

We probably have something like 10 or 12 fires each spring and summer. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less, I don't know. I don't keep an exact count.

But I know that whenever there's a fire and our kids and significant others are available to join us, it's a guaranteed good time.

We sit and talk, most of us with our beverage of choice in hand. And that's all there is to it. You just relax.

I can get a fire started, but not as well as Terry, who is a superior fire starter AND fire feeder. Elissa's boyfriend Mark was an Eagle scout, and while he claims he was terrible at fires during his scouting days, he builds what can only be deemed a top-notch fire, at least by our standards.

My brother-in-law Dave built what is probably the biggest fire ever in our pit simply by piling on more logs.

We still have a sizeable wood pile, thanks to the elimination of 14 or so trees from our backyard a few summers ago. There are still many fires to go before we have to restock it.

I'm not always a "simple pleasures" kind of guy, but the fire pit has made me one in at least one regard.

Though, seriously, I hate having my straight-line momentum interrupted by obstacles when I'm cutting the grass.