We’re moving outside for this week’s prompt, the last one for the month dealing with writing from the senses. My challenge today is for you to use all five senses to describe your yard. I stood outside on our four acres and wrote down my impressions.
- Taste: Nothing
- Smell: Nothing much. Maybe a little damp.
- Touch: Cold wind blowing my hair, brushing my cheeks.
- Sound: All kinds of birds singing (wish I knew bird calls better). Sound of traffic on state route.
- Sight: Green and brown grass, gray sky, bare trees, white-limbed sycamore, colorful hives, bright yellow, shed, muted-colored barn.
Here’s how those impressions inspire me:
I wiggled my toes as the moisture in the wet grass sneaked into my leaky boots, pulling my collar up around my cheeks as the wind did its best to slice them. Did I really like Dave enough to go birding when the wind chill indicated the morning should best be spent wrapped in an afghan and around a cup of tea? The birds were out in force, all kinds of trilling, chirping, and singing ricocheting from tree to tree. I had no idea what made which sound, but they all sounded deliriously happy in the biting wind and damp air.
The gray sky had turned from pearl to charcoal as the morning had grown old. I wiggled my toes again and hugged my old rain coat closer to me.
Dave darted out of the woods on the other side of the weedy clearing and motioned to me. I squished my way to him, my toes growing numb.
“You’ve got to see this,” he whispered to me. “I never expected–“
A shot made us jump.
Dave glanced back in the woods. “This is a state park. Nobody can hunt in here.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a gun. Maybe something snapped off, like a limb of a tree.”
Several more cracks, one right after the other, reached us.
Dave’s eyes widened as big as my own.
For more prompts for the senses, click here.
How you use all five senses to describe your yard and inspire and a story?