What is outside your window right now? Describe your view.

A big empty parking lot, with a metal sphere that has bungee ropes tied to it. Houses and mountains in the distance.

Trees, sun, the neighbor’s big old house, bird singing, a yard that needs to be mowed, squirrels running around the trees.

Procrastination. Hedges in need of a good trim are outlining the view from my living room. I’m looking out through six large windows that need a good scrubbing and onto a golf course I haven’t played in a couple of months. I’ve meant to, but somehow spring has hijacked me with her pollens and not allowed me to go out as often as I’d like.

The big live oak has dirtied my yard and reminds me that I’d better pick up after her winter tantrum before I plant my new ground cover that is sitting in her shade-still in the nursery pots-just like when I bought them a week ago. My birdbath needs to be filled and my tomato plants need to be harvested. I see the rope that holds our American flag needs to be tightened and a golfer is ready to chip one onto the green. That could be me, if I wasn’t sitting here looking out through dirty windows at spring passing me by.

Some small trees, some large sky scrapers and some smaller, older office buildings. On the ground are streets and parking lots. I am at work in a city in New York.

At work, I don’t have a window. So what I imagine is a rising series of rolling hills, with snow-capped mountains at the far horizon, and clouds breaking up as they attempt to move over the mountains. Rain is on the way. The sun is still shining through the high cirrus, and the breeze is picking up and waving the limbs of the newly-greeing trees and the pines and evergreens in the field across the street. It was a bright, sunny morning which is now giving way to lowering cloud cover and a threat promise of rain later in the afternoon or early evening.

Oh, and there’s a beautiful young woman moving gracefully and rhythmically as she listens to the music playing from her iPod and external speakers. How lovely.

The hills and mountains don’t exist from where I sit (they wouldn’t be visible even if I went outside), and I doubt that the young woman (blond, very fit, and with a most extraordinary light in her eyes) is there, either. But what do I know? I’m apparently a psychopath.

Spring! For the first time this year spring is outside my window. I see the houses in my neighborhood with green grass, buds beginning on the trees, a mail carrier walking around in shorts!

In a few days I will see this when I sit on the toilet in my upstairs bathroom. (Note that I don’t need curtains or blinds.)

(If I have to be literal, all I can see from my desk here, looking out of one corner of the sliding glass door, is an old Rubbermaid cooler with a rake parked in it, half of the smoker and half of our bedroom window!)

Just a bunch of trees flailing in the wind and an old chair being engulfed by vines in a fern patch.

Darkness.

I am looking out my back window. I see the lilies starting to bud, the lawn, with all sorts of trash from the weekend project, and then I see the garden, with a big pile of horse manure, waiting for me to go out and spread and till. (ugh!)

There’s a rickety, wooden dock with some seagulls and an osprey, beyond that a sunlit white village. Beyond that are deep green mountains with dark bluish-grey thunderclouds rolling over them heading my way.

My fourth floor window has a grid of fine wires embedded in it (a relic of the time this room was a dormitory of a children’s psychiatric hospital), so I see the world as a fish would through a net. The foreground is dominated by a very busy intersection, frequently interrupted by ambulances serving the many hospitals around here.

Beyond the intersection lies a bare green expanse. This used to contain a high-rise housing project, but that got torn down eight years ago. That land now just looks confused, having lost its sense of purpose and not knowing how to move on. The same could be said of the mostly empty storefronts that rim the expanse. As in most poor Chicago neighborhoods, I can see multiple churches without even swiveling my neck.

After the project was torn down, a supermarket chain made a bet that the area would swing toward gentrification, so their parking lot fills my western view. A couple of weeks ago, I heard a few rounds of gunfire coming from there. No one appeared particularly concerned, though I heard that there were some casualties.

Further on, and stretching as far as I can see, is Chicago’s largest Hispanic neighborhood (ironically known as Pilsen). Out among the low red brick buildings looms an old coal-fired power plant that was shut down a few years back because it was too dirty, and not worth upgrading.

I’m at work. What window? :(

Lots of different views.

This is what I see from my window. It is the bushes that surround the courtyard that is just outside my front window.

I am in my office on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. It’s a gorgeous warm spring day. One can see the opposite sidewalk well from my second storey window. We in the office call those walking by “The Parade”.

The next door building. It’s red.

Outside the double glass doors to my right there is a creek at the bottom of a small rise, surrounded by woods. The trees are all barren – and they are mainly birch trees so there are a lot of white and gray tree trunks to contrast against the blue sky.
The creek dries out into marshy-grassland later (in the summer) but at the moment its filled with frogs and tadpoles and sometimes geese and deer and every night I fall asleep to the chorus of croaks.
The grass on the gently slope heading to the creek in the woods is finally free of snow and is just coming back to life and turning to green.

Here you go.

Total darkness save for street lights & traffic.

It should be illegal to have to work in an office with no windows.

If we get to the point where we have to pass laws mandating things that would be “nice to have” like a window, which I admittedly would like, then I will know beyond doubt that it is time for the revolution to begin.

It is not just merely “nice to have”, a room without windows is a death trap in case of fire.
On the ground level you could just leave through the window. If you are trapped inside a room without windows, you will suffocate to death in no time flat.
On the upper floors, while you should not jump out of them, windows are a great access point for firemen to save your arse, or at the very least you can open them so you can breathe.

Darkness, a few lit windows and a single streetlight.

Small strip of well kept lawn, then the dense woods. The woods are filled with an assortment of pines, oaks, maples, and white birches. There is an ancient cherry tree (not the flowering type) on the edge. Ah, be-e-u-ti-ful New Hampshire.

A couple of roads, one of which has regular traffic while the other is more infrequent; a bunch of trees that haven’t budded yet; a great lake; a tiny part of Canada and a bridge to Canada. It’s not too nice to look at right now, but it gets better if it’s not as dreary a day as it is currently and once the trees start budding.

A strip of woods and a path. Then the house across the way. I see birds regularly. Last night my husband saw a deer.

Overcast and windy some snow. A street full of houses and a small rarely used park.

Blackness. Except for the will-o-the-wisp street light behind the tree that comes and goes with the wind.

Th roof of another building and a bit of cloudy sky.

Thanks for asking. I took this on Saturday; the balcony extends from the master bedroom and overlooks the living room. (More views available on the thumbnails, starring spring and Milo, the photo opp hog. I sometimes think he hires his own paparazzi.)

Are there places on that balcony for chairs and sofas @gailcalled?

No, too narrow. One plant stand and some clear green glass from my grandmother on a window sill. You could fit a small, straight-backed chair and a music stand if you wanted to play your recorder or flute, I suppose.

It is really for standing around. We had a small wedding in the living room years ago, and all the younger, thinner guests stood on the balcony, which was draped with swags of greenery and pink autumn mums.

I would so want to widen one area and put a comfy couch facing the window as a reading spot! Also, add a fireplace up there.

Can’t see out of my windows. The drapes are closed, keeping out the sun and hot air.

@gailcalled Can I move in? And would my little painting easel fit beside my small stool?

@Dutchess: In order to widen, I would have to rebuilt the entire house. There is a structural issue (probably several of them.

Fireplace would be an invitation to one fire, one house fire, not to mention the location of the chimney.

@Seek_Kolinahr: You, stool and easel would fit but you would hate the sweep of SE, S, SW direct sunlight.

I should point out that in the living room itself, just below balcony, there is comfortable seating including a rocking chair, and a fireplace attached to its chimney

Here fireplace to
left.

Piano used for wedding music. Rocking chair and small table, to right, just out of the frame.

So, rebuild it! :)

I like to paint early in the mornings. It sounds lovely compared to my poorly-lit kitchen table.

You can’t hide money. ~

What?

Thanks to everyone.
I would l;ike to leave this open for others who may come across it , so that they can describe their views as well. I will check periodically.

You can’t “close” it @Inspired_2write, unless you ask a mod to do it for you.