Settin' a Spell

I spent awhile today sitting on the front porch with a lovely woman I'd never met before this afternoon.

She's got a home with a mountain view that many people would kill for.  Her property is open farmland; quiet and peaceful.

"I came out to the porch the other day to have a cup of tea," she told me, "and ended up spending two hours.  There were hummingbirds and robins, chipmunks, squirrels, and the air was just full of the sound of birds singing. I just couldn't go back inside."

She's leaving her house behind. Her family's grown and gone and she wants to move south - most of them are there.

But she's put a lot of herself in her home, and her porch and gardens, in particular, are a reflection of her own personality.  She told me her hanging baskets require a gallon of water a day.

"I tried doing less and one of 'em just didn't make it," she said. "Once the soil pulls away from the side of the container, it just doesn't soak in the water like it should."

Scarlet hollyhocks, pink petunias and a riot of other colors seemed to climb right out of the garden and onto the porch.

"One fellow came to look at the place and I swear if he could have he never would have left the porch," she laughed.

I had a porch like that once.  It was a simple old farmhouse porch, but wild roses climbed up one side, honeysuckle climbed up the other and sweet-scented nicotiana smelled like heaven every evening.  We lived out there from spring 'til fall.

Sitting on that porch in the Catskills today felt like a trip back in time - to that porch of mine, to the farmland where my mother grew up, to a simpler place where there is all the time in the world.

Whoever buys that house, and gets that porch, is going to be very, very fortunate.