Some who visit our home venture up the low-rise (love it) backyard stairs to our “lookout” behind the bamboo. From there one can see the East Bay and Crockett’s C&H Sugar Factory from our backyard. It’s the closest thing we have to a water view. We recently installed an arbor at the top of the stairs and have been brainstorming how to set up the lookout for a zen area of sorts. We began the journey by making it a real relaxation point today with phase one. This phase was adding an egg/gravity chair that leans back and is like a hammock. It’s suspended and so comfortable without the large footprint of a full hammock. For years we did have a hammock in another part of the yard. We donated it recently after deciding it was not used enough to be worthy of its footprint in most of our spaces, opting for another set of lounge seating. Besides that, the full-size hammock was too unwieldy for us (and our senior dogs) to use very often due to how challenging it was to get in and out of it. Moreover, we had to worry about mold developing on the material when it rained too much. Some years that was not a problem at all. Dismantling it and putting it away during the wet season was a pain and we like to think of our backyard as everything being year-round friendly, despite the rain and wind.

Below are pictures of the arbor and the new egg chair being modeled by Polar and Peaches.