Garden office afternoon

It’s Summer #GardenOfficeWeek

Not only that, it’s also Thursday Treat Time.

Charlie Dalton of Smart Garden Offices

switches off his phone, kicks back,

and in this sponsored post

contemplates the finer points of garden office life.

Enjoy…

you can almost hear the birds singing…

Here I sit, on a magnificent sunny afternoon, in my garden office with doors thrown wide and shafts of louvered light filtering through my blinds.

It’s not too cold, not too warm and I’m comfortable just padding around in my shorts and tee shirt.

My ever demanding to-do list has been pacified and my phone and emails are stifled onto mute. Consequently, my soundtrack is that of squabbling blackbirds, chirruping buntings and the occasional hushed whisper of a distant Ryanair jet bound for Stansted.

George, my old chocolate Labrador, sits at my feet and wheezes and harrumphs as he tries to get comfortable. The deck outside is too hard for an old boy like him, but he knows that inside he’s missing an opportunity to antagonise the cat, who is banned from my office. So every ten minutes he’ll slowly make the three yard journey from shade to sun, and then back again.

I kick back in my chair and take a long hard stare down the garden. The grass is manageable today and the hedges could almost be called neat, so even my subliminal horticultural nag has been suppressed.

The wildlife chatters away, oblivious to the fact they co-exist in my garden with my international HQ, my powerbase, my hive of enterprise all based here in my personal domain. But today it’s not about entrepreneurialism, it’s not about KPIs or targets. It about remembering the important things in life.

It’s about sitting back in quiet contemplation. It’s about recalling past problems, now conquered, and reflecting on past successes, subtly smiling to yourself because no one else is around to judge you. It’s about looking at the everyday routines in a new light, and with new insight. It’s about understanding that today is today and, it is, actually OK. Tomorrow may return to deadlines and client meetings but today is, well, about another cup of tea and coasting.

Later this afternoon the families will return from their endeavours. From school and college, from clinics and offices. They’ll be tired from grinding travels, corporate politics and conveyor-belt life. I will of course empathise – as well as I can. There will be background noise and hubbub from our house and from neighbours as the world changes gear, and I will look on serenely and maybe a little aloof.

I look up from my desk and see small clouds gliding from one side of my garden to another, symbolic that whilst I’m contentedly sitting here the world continues to revolve without me.

But’s there’s nothing special about today, it’s not a special occasion, it’s just a day. I’ve not allotted myself this specific time to meditate or to pontificate, it’s just a day.

Tomorrow I shall return my garden office from Zen space to work space. My phones will ring and my PC will return to bonging reassuringly at me and then the world will be allowed to re-enter my garden office. My livelihood will be restored, my economic progress restarted.

But in the meantime, I offer you the single most important reason to own a garden office: because my workspace, my desk, filing cabinets, shredder and other mundane elements of everyday office life have become, for today at least, my retreat and my refuge, my personal space, my man cave and my mind zone.

And there’s no better treat than that.

Now you’re feeling thoroughly relaxed, why not click over to read Penny Golightly’s interview with foodie blogger Grace Hall, who makes amazing treats for her small son’s lunchbox.

Would a garden office be your biggest treat? Tell us what your ultimate treat would be if you had all the time and money in the world!