While setting up our barbecue Monday for our yearly backyard Memorial Day barbecue, I gave some thought to our garden shed from which all good things come (see Photo). It’s a non-rectangular base with non-parallel sides! It sits right next to our kitchen window up against the house and I did NOT want to obstruct our backyard view. So its western wall angles AWAY from being perpendicular to the house! Likewise to make that wall obstruct even less of the view, I foreshortened it. So its front wall does NOT run parallel to the house either. AND since the roof is a down-sloping Outhouse style, this makes that wall joint an experimental height of three intersecting planes, Oh Joy!

(Photo courtesy of Peter Bray)

The frame is 2×2 rough redwood and the sides are 4×8 exterior wall siding I used originally in daughter Cathy’s rental backyard in Hayward. It was to provide temporary fencing so her pet dog “Lady” would not be annoyed at the neighbors and their see-through wire fence. Cathy was then a student at Chabot College in Hayward, getting her 3 Certificates in working with the Developmentally Disabled. Son Chris was running cross-country at NAU in Flagstaff, Ariz., and Michelle was busy with Michel in Oakland, and Jan and I were still corporate types somewhere…
Over the years I added Uncle Paul’s gift Skipping Rock Collection, to the front door when he passed away and we inherited it, his 209 Peralta Ave. San Leandro house address light when I replaced it, and Dad & Mom’s 21 Birch Drive Walnut Creek front post light when I also replaced it. On the shed side is a Yard Thermometer with its own shade-providing shake roof which can be viewed from the back kitchen window. Above the door trim is what “Alpha” our local Blue Jay pal thought he could chip away to enter the shed to acquire his share of stored birdseed. Such is our partial memorial shed on Memorial Day 2018.

Peter Bray lives, works and writes in Benicia and has written this column since 2008.

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