(re-post)
Borrowed landscape is a Japanese term used to mean the vista(s) one has from one's own bit of the universe across someone else's, usually applied to gardens but I like to think of it from any viewpoint in the home.
Since this house is set back on the property, the view out many of the windows is borrowed landscape across my neighbours' backyards. I can see wash hanging on clotheslines, orchards, play areas, vegetable and flower gardens, workshops, patios, garages, tool sheds, chickens, cats - and - neighbours.
Pictured is what I see looking west when seated at the computer. For the moment, uninhabited by nature, human or otherwise. A bit later the cat next door was stretched out from the lower roof up and under the eavestrough; I don't know why - he just seemed to be doing it because he could. And too bad I missed a photo of laundry blowing in the wind. Blouses, pants, shirts, towels, underwear. Could it have been purely by chance, this alphabetical order.
This was the view to the south at the end of March from my back deck. It is what I see across the leafless months, the backyards and backs of houses facing on the next street. During this time I can see the source of the rhythmical "slap, slap, slap, slap.......slap, slap......slap, slap, slap...." that occurs daily: it is a young man practicing shots with a basketball at the hoop in his driveway.
Yesterday it looked like this and when the blossoms have gone and the leaves are unfurled, I will not be aware of the houses at all.
Living walls such as these are wonderful for the privacy they give, the habitat for all manner of creatures, the beauty of sight and sound and scent, the vibrancy of the movement that one can feel in the heart and the soul.
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