A New Window on the World
I'm staring out into the backyard from the new picture window we had installed just yesterday. The previous window was a 1980s construct made of 4 pieces of glass bounded by large slabs of wood, shaped into a clunky but serviceable bay window. The window cranks on the old bay no longer worked and the screens were rusted. The glass was thin and let in a huge amount of cold air in the winter; we countered this by covering the old window with thermal drapes.
The new window is double-paned glass filled with argon gas. This insulates the glass so well that the new window is more energy-efficient, and will keep out the cold better than the thermal drapes ever could. This means the new window doesn’t need drapes at all.
I tell you this not because the particulars of low-E glass are so interesting, but because it’s astounding how different the world looks now. Many lovely things happen in the backyard: every year, a doe brings her new fawns to eat at the corn crib we put out under the silver maple tree; wild turkeys arrive in the spring and the big tom spreads his tail feathers and shows off for his little harem of hens; squirrels and rabbits play all summer in the undergrowth, digging nests and burying acorns in the grass.
Many beautiful pictures have been taken from the old bay window, but one always had to be mindful of the heavy wooden braces that…
