Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Pleasures Of A Porch

One of my very favorite attributes of our mid century bungalow in Richmond's Westover Hills is this wonderful front porch. To enter our home you first walk through a lush English cottage garden (I can take no credit whatsoever for this - that's Marc's domain!) and up onto our porch to reach the front door.

The intimate space isn't huge, but it serves as another outdoor "room" which we enjoy all year long. My favorite time of the year to enjoy a porch has to be the summer. During this time the porch is dressed in all of its summery finest with both vintage and new wicker chairs, a wicker fern stand with a huge Boston fern, and a wonderful wicker porch swing hung from the tongue and groove ceiling painted glossy white. Sitting on the swing at night and hearing the "creak, creak" of the chains on the hooks as you swing and listen to the croakers around the creek across the road cannot be beat!

Last spring we painted the grey concrete floor a cheery butter yellow to match the front door and window shutters. Yellow always makes me happy!

Marc and I are not the only ones that enjoy our front porch. Miss Nadine (in the picture to the right) and Snowball find the porch a great shady refuge on a hot summer afternoon and spend hours napping on the furniture. Nadine in particular enjoys swinging on the porch swing - I know...you don't believe it but she does!

Porches for the most thing are a thing of the past, I guess they fell out of vogue at some point. Growing up we never had anything more than a concrete stoop and a few steps up to the house. The Victorians especially loved their porches (see my Cape May post earlier) and their homes almost always featured a huge front or wrap around porch. Some of the Victorian revival homes of today as well as other styles have thankfully brought the tradition of the porch back again.

It seems that a porch - whether front or back - seems to beckon one to sit a spell, slow down, relax, and sip on a tall glass of lemonade or sweet tea. Okay - as sappy as that all may sound - I bet you would like to swing on that wicker front porch swing right now with a kitty in your lap? Maybe slowing down and taking a few stolen moments to sniff the roses is what we all could use a little of these days. Sounds good, huh?

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