One Photograph, One Story
An Afternoon on the Front Porch
Lying on the front porch floor with my beagle, Charlie, a blue sky and absolutely nothing at House 173 that needed doing.
There are worse places to spend an afternoon.
This photograph was taken from the floor of the front porch at House 173, where I was lying beside Charlie on what may have been one of the nicest afternoons ever.
And this was our view.
Look at that sky.
Blue, the sort of deep September blue that makes you wonder why anybody would voluntarily go inside. One big white cloud was drifting past, and the leaves outside the porch windows were almost impossibly green in the sunlight.
Charlie and I had nowhere particularly important to be.
So there we stayed.
The funny thing is, I don't think I had ever really looked at the porch windows from this angle before. When you're standing, they're windows. When you're lying on the floor beside a beagle, they become skylights.
The old porch suddenly opens right into the sky.
You can see the windows pushed outward, catching whatever little breeze happened along. Above them are the shades, rolled up and waiting for an afternoon when the sun becomes less welcome than it was on this one.
And through everything; the glass, the screens, the open windows... there's the apple tree.
We've spent a lot of time working on this porch over the years. Painting it. Repairing it. Changing things. Putting things back. Wondering why something was built the way it was in the first place.
But every once in a while, House 173 doesn't need anything from me.
Nothing needs sanding.
Nothing needs painting.
Nothing needs fixing.
On this particular afternoon, apparently my only responsibility was to lie on the floor with Charlie and look out the window.
Charlie, being a beagle, undoubtedly considered this a perfectly sensible use of the day.
And maybe he was right.
After nearly three decades here, I sometimes think the best moments at House 173 aren't the projects at all. They're the little pauses between them, the moments when you stop working on the house long enough to actually live in it.
A blue sky.
A white cloud.
A warm porch floor.
A dog beside you.
Nothing accomplished.
A pretty darn good afternoon.
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
Keywords:
House 173, One Photograph One Story, front porch, Charlie the beagle, old house porch, porch windows, perfect afternoon, life in an old house, blue sky, old house memories, simple moments