Well, that was a resounding success, don’t you think? The conversation is still going on as I write this new post and I couldn’t be happier! I have thoroughly enjoyed reading about where you are from, about your individual journeys. And I have loved seeing the dialogue that has taken over the comment page. I figured I would just sit back and enjoy.
Connection. We all need to connect.
Thank you, Judy, for the idea, and thank you all for taking part. Much love to all of you.
And now to the mundane.
I worked like the dickens yesterday, if I do say so myself!
I cleaned the porch railing and the individual spindles and everything. Since our outside hose connection is not working at the moment, this involved hauling buckets of water from the kitchen to the porch. Over and over. But it looks so much better!
This is a chore that is not on my favorites list, which is why I ignored it for a few years.
Then I started to clean up the porch – still in progress as I write this – sorting through the accumulation of crap that built up over the autumn and winter. I drove the now 17 year old CR-V to the storage facility, retrieved the adirondack chairs and a few other things. Then I cleaned the glider and the chairs. I stopped for the day around 4 pm, so I haven’t added the cushions to the furniture. That will happen today.
It just felt good to start making the porch into our extra room for the spring and summer and fall. No potted plants yet – too early – but that will come. Today it will be sunny and reach 60 degrees, so I’ll be out there again working on the porch and the garden beds.
It’s slowly getting there. Slowly.
Don informed me that he wants to come home for his day off. He’s homesick. So I won’t go in, obviously. I’m just as happy to have him here. And it will be sunny – no rain! I’ll go in next week as we have tickets to listen to one the guys in the cast perform at a club on Sunday evening. By the way, Don signed up for access to a community garden around the block from the apartment. It looks lovely. There are benches to sit on, flowers blooming, birds singing, plants thriving. I’ll be sure to take photos when I see it next weekend.
Happy Saturday.
Your porch already looks inviting!
Glad Don is going to come home, even for a short visit!
That was a wonderful idea Judy had. There was a lady who lived in 2 places that I did! What a small world!
Hope you have a sunny day!
It IS a small world and I see that every day! Have a great day, Debbie!
The porch is such a special place, I’m glad it’s finally getting warm enough to work out there. I enjoyed reading where everyone has lived yesterday. It will be good to have Don home for sure and I bet he does get homesick. Hugs.
It was a great conversation! So many people have lived all over the world! The mind boggles.
So enjoyed reading about everyone yesterday. Looking forward to pictures of Don’s city garden.
I can’t wait to see it, Dottie!
Great conversation yesterday! It was as if we were all sitting on your front porch. You were noticeably quiet, probably because you couldn’t get a word in edgewise, the way the conversation was flowing! lol!
Karen, I agree with you. I, too, felt like we were all together sharing our stories.
xo
I was working hard yesterday so I decided to sit back and let you all chat. It’s nice to have a day off from answering comments!
I so enjoyed yesterday…so many people from all over…remarkable! Your porch looks ready for action. Hard task, but, so worth it I’m sure. Seems like Don will be able to do a bit of gardening …looking forward to the pics.
I’m anxious to get into the yard and start cleaning up…but we have friends coming to visit today and tomorrow, so no outdoor work til Monday. Enjoy your Saturday! ;)
I don’t think he’ll garden, rather he’ll take advantage of it as a quiet and beautiful place in the city.
What fun, Claudia! Having a nice garden in which to sit and reflect in the big city as well as at home. The one at home will be work, but it is such satisfying work!!
Your post yesterday was such fun! And interesting to hear from people who read your blog but don’t comment very often. I read through them 2x. What a nice community of people you have blooming in this special garden you have sown. So interesting!! ♡
Very interesting and I am so happy that everyone is chatting away with each other (it’s still going on today!)
I’ll have to go back and read the comments from your previous post – I have not done that yet.
Your porch already looks so inviting. I was hoping to start on our little front porch and patio today, but unfortunately, the weather isn’t as pleasant as it was yesterday. It is overcast and gloomy here again, and only 51 degrees. I was hoping for another sunny day. Oh well, we have so much to do indoors here today, that it’s just as well. I did have my coffee on the front porch yesterday morning – simply sitting on the front stoop for awhile – and it was heavenly. The small pleasures of life!
How much longer will Don be away?
As long as the show runs, Melanie. It could be another month, it could be a year…we have no idea.
Oh boy, does that porch look appealing! I’m a porch kid from way back, and I think it’s my Mom’s fault. I was born in July, and evidently it was a very warm Summer, because Mom often told me how she’d put me in my baby carriage out on the screened porch, with our dog Duchess parked underneath. Mom said she always knew if anyone came up the sidewalk – the milkman, the Fuller Brush man [remember that?] because Duchess would always bark – and it wasn’t her normal friendly “let’s play” bark. ANYWAY – I’ve loved porch living forever. Reading, eating, doing homework, doing projects, your name it. And maybe best of all – the occasional porch nap. Nothing better. I even have a couple of books about porches. I know you & Don thoroughly enjoy your porch too – so y’all are Porch People too. Must feel great to have yours all cleaned up & ready for the season [if it ever gets here, that is]. Have a great weekend. Peace.
#Resist
#ProtectMueller
I remember the Fuller Brush man very well!
Yes, we love porches. I was raised in a smallish bungalow, but it had a nice sized porch and in my community, people sat on their porches a lot. I really loved it.
Porches sound heavenly. Especially screened-in front porches where you have a bit of buffer between house and street. I don’t know what that is, to have something like these types of porches. My porch is tiny and open, just meant to keep rain off your head (if we ever get rain) as you’re trying to unlock the front door. At my last home, we didn’t even have that; instead, just a ‘naked’ door with nothing hanging over it. In 1928, the first homeowner DID add on two porches off the very secluded rear of that home. But, no, no such thing as a nice, wide, covered and/or screened front porch. I’ve never used a front porch, ever. I’ve never really had any space for even a chair by the door in any place I’ve ever lived, so I’m missing out!
I had read that in California where I live, because of the relatively good weather, houses started getting built post-war, in the 1950s, with families in mind who wanted to take advantage of roomier rear-yard space with swimming pools, swingsets, playhouses, a picnic table, etc. (baby boom, and the land of sunshine), so large concrete or brick patios off the house in the backyard became a standard thing with new and affordable tract homes for year’round backyard living. That’s where the emphasis was…
Families retreated to their rear yard with all their fun gear, replacing life on a front porch & front lawn and instead to the back of the house, walled off by privacy fencing which made neighbors more isolated from one another, no longer waving at passersby on the sidewalk out front. It ended a way of life here.
I hardly ever see people in my good-sized neighborhood (not rural but definitely suburbia) unless they’re doing some yard work like mowing the grass (if they have a lawn which some people don’t have anymore since our severe drought of former years and which we’re, in a lesser degree, still in even as of today). We’ve got a lot of kids but where are they? Not out skating or biking or even playing ball. It must be that they’re engaged in activities at sports fields or something at school; I hope they’re not all on their phones indoors. (What am I saying, they’re probably in their back yards! But why can’t I hear them??) Most people don’t even wash cars in their driveways or at the front curb anymore due to water conservation; you take the car to a carwash where they recycle the water in the way a homeowner can’t.
The homeowner just drives right into the attached garage using the ‘remote’ to their automatic garage door opener, shuts the door and the outside world behind them and that’s that (because any attached garage usually has a door into the house, often right into the kitchen which is great when you’re carrying in grocery sacks from the car). I think the only person who walks up to the front porch is the letter carrier, to put mail in the door or box. I did have a very unusual situation next door to me (for eight long years) with a troublesome neighbor who WAS always in the open garage and walking around out front (he said the rear yard was too buggy) because he was an incurable chain smoker who was forbidden to smoke inside the house, but that was so unusual because you can drive by the fifty houses here and no one ever leaves their garage door up; it’s all closed-shut doors. And I have neighbors whose faces I’ve never seen nor do I know their names. Rather sad.
Also, if you live in an area that’s not entirely crime-free, it’s more of an urge to want to hurry inside or to your gated-off (locked gates) rear yard rather than be too exposed on the streetside although it’s a shame to have to feel THAT insecure and unprotected/vulnerable. The world has changed, though, and what I see with especially new neighbors is that they’re reticent/wary/cautious (or indifferent) a lot of the time; also busy. I’ve watched this trend over the years. It’s not too important to them to want to know you too much. I don’t take this personally; a few other neighbors I actually DO know have noticed the same thing.
In older areas of my town, we have lovely old homes, some of which are Victorians or Craftsman-era houses, which have the big porches out front and it seems like a gracious, relaxing and almost elegant way to live. I’ve noticed a wrap-around porch is sometimes screened on the side of a house, often in the shade of trees, and someone told me that this was designed as a sleeping porch for hot summer nights. Very appealing!
Homeowners here who care have let those types of front porches ‘be’ as intended although other homeowners in other years enclosed the porch space to capture more indoor space…but you can tell because the alterations to those houses just don’t look right. My own family did that in L.A. with the home my grandfather built in around 1915 (it’s still there; really small house; he literally built it with his own two hands); Mom wasn’t a toddler anymore and needed her own room separate from her brother and parents. To add on to the house (room addition) was a financial impossibility, so they just walled in/closed up the porch and relocated the front entrance door.
I understand people did this in The Great Depression, too; anything creative to make space and derive income from a boarder/tenant when nobody had any money and there was a need, too, for people who’d lost their homes in the crash of 1929 who had no choice but to rent a room. Enclosing the porch was a cheaper proposition than building a ‘back house’ for this purpose but it’s very, very common for me to see older houses in my town where they in fact did do that in so many cases and, still today, those second small houses at the rear of another house bring in some hefty rental income for the homeowner who’s got the two on his/her property. I do know one homeowner, though, who has c. 1930s apartments built over a back, detached garage, which were converted to mother-in-law quarters (his Mom is there now, although she’s having difficulty navigating the steps to the second story unit). It’s akin to what some people today are doing, by installing those ‘tiny houses’ (the Tiny House movement) on a property for either guest lodging or crafting space, she-cave/man-cave, etc.
Oh, I so agree with you! People who design houses have a lot to answer for. We do not design our houses for our climate or for the love of community. I remember all the things you talk about and also all the moms getting together and walking their kids to school the first days and then getting together and talking. We didn’t have the front porches but we had the cul de sac. Now we have cars speeding down the street and no children outside. They are always in a car going someplace. I lived in France in the 3rd and 4th grade and rode a bicycle all over the place to see friends. We played in the street until dark and no mother ever came looking for me. Sleeping porches should be in the history class of school, no one knows what to do when it is hot. We all went downstairs and slept on the floor with the door open to cooling breezes. Ah the fun part of life has been replaced with video games!
Vicki, I love reading your stories about old days and new…thanks for sharing them with all of us!
Also…my Mom and I used to sleep on porches when I was younger…She never had the luxury of air conditioning and I never had it until I was out on my own for years until the portable Ac’s became cheaper!
Growing up in the fifties and sixties in my suburban neighborhood, porches were very much a part of our every day life. We called out to neighbors from our perches there, walked down to the sidewalk to have a conversation with someone walking by, sat out there at night when it was too hot to be inside. The world has changed a great deal – too much time spent on computers and phones and video games. Too many distractions. We used to sit there and chat and read our library books. Even now, my porch is lovely, but we’re on a busy road, so it’s not as if people stop by as they walk down the street. Rarely!
We lived in a Craftsman in San Diego that had a bedroom that had, at one time, been a sleeping porch. And our family cottage in Michigan had a sleeping porch and there were many times one or more of us could be found sleeping there when it was just too hot in the bedrooms.
I’ve seen photos of those community gardens in NYC; you will love the ‘oasis’ feel of it. A special place ‘to go to’ once out of the confines of the apartment indoors. I’ve heard that NYC is so lovely in Spring as it is as well in Fall. Glad you’ll see each other soon. He’ll enjoy seeing the porch progress which must sort of make you feel like coming alive out of a deep, dormant sleep; it’s so nice to have an outdoor ‘room’. I don’t have anything like that right now in my yard and it’s a drawing on paper which I’m determined to get translated to the real thing by next year; nothing elaborate by any means, but just a place in the rear of the property to get out of the sun yet be able to breathe in the air and take advantage of the outdoors.
I just came in from morning chores outside (is now 11am) and it’s getting darn hot out there (expected to be mid-80s today and is humid). We’re going to try again to get the vintage car out for a spin today and will go to the beach if she starts up; was a bit startling to be all ready at the offsite storage garage last week only to have her not turn over but we just haven’t driven her enough over the past four months; hard on the old girl to just be sitting, sitting, sitting (like me!).
Have fun with your car, Vicki!
Yes, Don is so used to seeing our gardens that he thought it would be a neat idea to have a place to go, sit down, read, talk to people that has flowers and birds and bees. I think it will be a nice getaway for him.
It’s so positive, too, how you encourage him on things and you’re both such advocates/supporters of & for each other, and I feel like he’s finding his ways to bridge both his Broadway/city world and that of the cottage’s but that he’s also so bright and inventive too, to be doing the music lessons, thinking of making urban life in NY a BIT less temporary with the garden idea, etc. You two have ‘got it together’, how you’re both using your noggins and out there doing things, new things; active lives in ‘the senior years’. You continue to amaze me with your energy, Claudia. You just go out there and get things DONE. Undaunted by anything!
Thank you, Vicki!
Your porch is a welcome sight to all. Enjoy! Glad that Don will be coming home on his day off.
Marilyn
Me too! Especially since the weather will be sunny and warmer!
he will be so happy with the little cottage all ship shape and Bristol fashion!
it’s so clean and lovely! even without your touches of color and cushions.
can’t wait to see it all ready for the season!
i love a porch.
it’s too bad that they were phased out in all the new developments.
it’s like vicki said in her comment… people wanted their privacy and no longer cared for the shared sense of the neighborhood that a porch brought. a loss i think. but each age brings its own priorities!
Yes, most definitely a loss. But a lot of newer houses are now being built with porches. I think, like so many things, the pendulum has swung back to the way it used to be.
i think you’re right Claudia. we seem to be hungering now for the old values . . .
coziness. home. camaraderie. those things never go out of style long.
it’s a basic human need. and a porch to me always had a cozy feel to it!
i also loved the traditional light blue ceilings of them!
I’ve often thought of painting the porch ceiling blue.
yes! just the lightest sky blue! it’s so amazing. and so traditional for such a beautiful little traditional cottage! makes me happy just thinking of it!!! even it wintertime it’s pretty.
reminder of spring and summer! xo
I’ll put it on my long, long list. First, I have to finish painting the kitchen (one wall to go.)
you make me tired. LOLOL!!! xo
xo
I love your stone porch Claudia…no wonder you fell in love with your cottage…I would have too…I got a bit of cleanup done outside today also and took some plants out for a little fresh air…It was in the 60’s here and my plants and I were loving it!…Sorry I missed your post yesterday…I am going to read it now leave my info…
Hi Claudia, All your hard work will be worth it when you and Don sit out together enjoying the peace and sunshine on your pretty porch. I love reading your blog and look in most days to read about what you have been doing…..you’re always so busy and very hardworking! I’m looking forward, also, to seeing pics of the community garden when you next visit Don.
I was too late to post the other day, but I was born and lived on Adelaide, South Australia for 33 years, then one year in Melbourne, Victoria, then over to Perth, Western Australia for 2 years and then back to Melbourne, Victoria where we have lived for the past 28 years. We are currently experiencing a warm and very beautiful autumn in southern Australia but some rain would definitely be very welcome.
Beverley
Lovely to hear that you’re from Australia! I’ve always wanted to visit that beautiful country, Beverley. So glad you visit this little blog. Thank you!