Untroubled waters

A buddy of mine came out to my house last night, just to catch up and have a couple of beers since we hadn’t seen each other in too long. It was his first visit to the new house since we moved in, and I gave him the grand tour, which also included an outdoor tour of the deck (in itself a first for me, since all previous new-home tours had been conducted mid-winter with much unmelted snow on that northerly facing side of the property; I don’t want to jinx things but it looks like spring might be right around the corner). Of course this segment of the tour was conducted in near-total darkness because either the deck is not equipped with sufficient electrical light fixtures or I just haven’t identified where the on switches for them are yet. (I really do think it’s the former. Add another item to the home improvement list.)

So at one point, my buddy – unable to answer the question himself with visual observation due to the blanket of shadows behind the house – asked me, “Do you have … a water feature?” And I laughed a bit (on the inside, since it would have been rude to laugh in his face) and explained that there’s an actual creek on the edge of our property and that was in fact the source of the sound of running water. It’s not that it was an unreasonable question – lots of houses in the greater Northern Virginia universe have artificial ponds with zen waterfalls hooked up to hoses and pumps and whatnot, and the deck was the last stop on a tour chock full of what-were-the-previous-owners-thinking features, like the roller-sponge atrocity on the spare bedroom walls just for one random example. I just think artificial water features are inherently, beyond-garden-gnomes funny.


Still, a little later, we were standing on the back deck so that my buddy could smoke a cigarette, and during a lull in conversation the babbling brook sounds came floating up to us again, and I had to admit, it was really nice. I still think artificial water features are a bit of an odd extravagance (not to mention a waste of electricity and/or water) but I can understand the appeal of manufacturing that kind of white noise. I started to get a bit better idea of what it’s going to be like living in the new house year round, ranging farther and farther away from the wood-burning stove as the weather improves, and I liked what I saw. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but today I’m pretty happy about it.