Front porch

[pegkerr]

Things have been not so nice lately, but I'm not going to go into that, dum de dum. Instead, I'll tell you about one of my favorite coping mechanisms: hanging around on my front porch.

I live in a big ol' South Minneapolis home (built in 1916? 1918?) with a front porch, and lord, I love it. There were screens, a number of years ago, but they blew out in a windstorm and we've never gotten them replaced. I don't miss them too much. There's a huge overgrown evergreen bush-type thing, which stands at the southwestern corner of the house, and it provides a most satisfactory screening of shade until the very late afternoon. I clean off the furniture in April, right after we finish our taxes, and that, for me, is the marker of the real beginning of spring. All summer long, I eat my breakfast out on the porch most mornings and read the paper there, at the glass-topped table. We live in the sort of neighborhood that has sidewalks, unlike the suburbs, and so I can keep an eye out for kids playing in the yard and neighbors walking by. There's an overhead light so I can read out there at night if I like. I love summer night thunderstorms out on the front porch: I turn the light out for those and just sit, listening to the hiss of drops on the porch roof overhead, and the gurgle of rainwater pouring down the gutters. When people come over, it's the place I like best to have them sit when we visit.

What's your favorite sanctuary in your home?

Comments

[debellatrix.livejournal.com]

I miss front porches; they seem to have gone out of style, as people prefer backyard decks these days.
Which where in fact, we are in the process of re-landscaping, to create a little sanctuary of our own.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I live alone, so my whole apartment is pretty safe, but the thing I like best about this place is my office, which I prefer to call my morning room. I used to have my bedroom in here, but it's such a nice place to work in the morning that I moved things around. These windows both face more or less southeast.



The worst thing about this place is not having a balcony or even a small yard, but I live one block from a lovely wooded park along the river. That more than compensates.

I know I would love your porch. I enjoy thunderstorms, too.

I loaned The Wild Swans to my buddy Jon this evening. Like me, he married and didn't experience AIDS the way many men our age did.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Ooo, how lovely! I love the color, too.

Hope your friend enjoys the book. Tell him to feel free to drop me a line if he has any question/reaction. I'm always greedy to hear reactions.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Peg, I passed your addy along. Jon has retained his Christian identity, so I'm interested to see how he responds to the book, although I doubt he could possibly like it any more than I did. :-)

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

gahhhh... I'm jealous. What a great work space.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

BTW your profile is right on. I'm just having trouble motivating myself to do something that will pay the bills, but I want to operate under that same philosophy.

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

just having trouble motivating myself to do something that will pay the bills

Heh. Same here. I need to find a second part-time job to fill the income gaps, but I didn't have much luck earlier this year, and frankly, in my heart of hearts, I don't really WANT another "just for the paycheck" job. I want to keep the time for ME to work on MY work (e.g., the novel-in-progress) instead of someone else's. Grrrr...

[aome.livejournal.com]

I want your porch. It sounds *wonderful*.

I'm not sure I really have a sanctuary in this house. I spend most of my time in the living room, and some time in the bedrooms and kitchen, but no place that's really a true refuge except ... hmmm ... my bed. But that's true no matter where we live. I love my bed - this mattress, this frame, our bedding. I love it even more when I'm curled up with Will in it. Best place in the whole world.

I've had places in the past, though. My mom made a cloth "house" that exactly fit over our kitchen table when I was very young. All the way down to the floor, with a door and windowshade and everything. It was fun to play in when I was little, but then it also served as a great place for me to study for exams for my first two years of high school (then I got too tall to sit under the table). It was just my own little place. I had her send it to me - my nieces love it too, and hopefully my daughter will as well.

I hope the hard things in your life get better.

[moony]

There's no peace to be had at this house, but my other home is a huge house in Fall River, MA. It's up in the historical section of town, 108 years old, overlooks the Taunton River, and my favorite place in it is my own room. It's small and faces out toward the park, with big heavy doors and all the right sorts of creaks and mumbles that an old house should have. At sunset the whole room burns orange and it's just so calm, warm and peaceful. Nowhere else like that.

And I will be there in two and a half weeks. :-D

[siriologist.livejournal.com]

:::sigh::: I love sitting out on a porch to eat. Must make the effort to fix my porch up. I have plans for a corner of my living room to be *my place* I want a reading chair with a good light and a table to put snacks and books on and a book case filled with my favorite books. But I have to get rid of the large sofa and get the necessary furnishings. That's not in the budget for a few years, so meanwhile I escape to the office and dabble on the computer. :::would rather be on a porch listening to a thunderstorm::::

[ionas.livejournal.com]

I do love long, pleasant twilights out in the patio-garden in back, listening to the fountain, and my office is quite pleasant, but I have to admit my haven is my reading chair. (Especially when I am alone, and thus can eat and read.)

[minervacat.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend and I have sleep on a queen sized futon mattress on the floor, and it's my favorite place in the apartment now that I have a laptop. I drag the laptop and the charger into the bedroom and lie on the futon in our pile of blankets and write and read and dream. The bedroom has a ceiling fan and almost always stays cool, despite the hottest parts of a Chicago summer.

My favorite sanctuary ever, though, was the same futon mattress in my summer stock house the summer after I finished at Carleton. I crammed the mattress into the corner of my room, hid it behind a bedside table and the frame for the single bed that came with the room, and spent most of the summer there, with a pile of at least 14 books on the other half of the bed for weight (and reading) while my boyfriend galivanted around Africa. There were two windows on each wall over the the bed, and I called it my womb. Perfect security.

I miss having a real porch.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

The uses you have for your porch are the kinds of things I'd like to add to an outdoor area of my own. I'd even go so far as to add some kind of heater to make eating outdoors possible in the cooler months (even mild winter days).

As I said in my journal, I'm looking into hiring a landscape architect to help me plan my outdoor renovations and one thing I'd like to include is a Zen garden/tea house kind of area for this kind of purpose.

[slightlights.livejournal.com]

First: that porch of yours sounds positively idyllic.

Second: my first and best sanctuary is nestling in my husband's arms, my head on his shoulder, alone and quiet and together. However, looking at non-movable places :) it'd have to be... actually, it has more to do with the quality of light and airiness than anything else, I think. When it's tidy—which relates to airiness—there's my 'room of all work', but right now it's terribly cluttered with various stored stuff to the point I don't particularly want to go in there; once we have the lightproof blinds installed, however, that should be able to be cleared up, so once again I'll have the space and the things just so and, when I choose, the sun pouring in. Our bedroom is my alternate choice, the door ajar so that Thing One and Two can pass as they like, the windows open to let in the breeze, the blinds tilted just shy of horizontal so I feel like I'm in a treehouse as the leaves rustle just beyond... and where I can see the passersby, without being seen.

(LastBNL: hope your surrounding issues resolve positively, and soon.)

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

At home, as in the house I grew up in, I think my favorite part is the kitchen, because I remember helping my mom redo it when I was younger. However, I think my favorite familial sort of hang out is at my grandparents. When everyone is in town we all can be in the kitchen with sandwich fixings and cheerily make each other sandwiches and have lunch together, then later we all have 'happy hour' on the porch, overlooking the bayou and backyard. I think that's where I feel really comfortable in Pensacola.

-Morgan

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

In this current apartment, which is extremely small, there really isn't space for a sanctuary. I guess the bed. The cat has plenty of sanctuary spaces--under the bed in a cavelike space, his blue thing, the windowsill--but really isn't that sort of a hangout spot for humans.

I probably spend more time at the computer than anyplace else though.

Someday I'll have a porch, maybe with a porch swing or a rocker. I would love to have a window seat--ever since reading Jane Eyre I've wanted a window seat where I could curl up and read in peace. That would be a sanctuary!

[yasmina.livejournal.com]

Up a really big tree, where I've sat a few planks to make a bench/seat thing. It's great, except I have this fear of heights, so I have to hang on all the time.

[tigergladys.livejournal.com]

I don't have a sanctuary in a house, for the most part because I don't have a house I can call my own, or even a permanent place of residence, I live with various people at different times. The only constant thing is the computer - I've carved a niche for myself online.
But as for physical places - right now, where I am has two huge trees in the front yard, they must be at least 200 years old, judging by their width. One has a branch that's perfectly wide enough for sitting, and it is a fantastic place to spend a sunny afternoon reading. The shade is enough so that you don't have to be covered in sunblock even on the brightest of days, and dense enough that you stay dry during light rainstorms.
For me a sanctuary is a place I can be alone, where no one else will bother me, because while being with other people is nice if they're the right ones, it's still not the same as being with myself, something I get to do far less often than I like.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

We live in the sort of neighborhood that has sidewalks, unlike the suburbs

I boggled at that for a moment. Where I live, suburbs have sidewalks. I remember going to Indiana, and being utterly gobsmacked that people didn't have sidewalks, and that they parked cars on the grassy verge.

[rachet.livejournal.com]

One of the "musts" when I buy/build my first home is a huge porch with a swing. I love huge porches.

My favorite room right now is our basement den. Lori (lorax523) has done a great job on it. She has all our Harry Potter stuff on the walls or on these bookshelves. My hobbit posters are up, my street sign stating "Camp Molly Lauman Next Right" I was...er...given when working at the girl scout camp is at the base of the stairs, the computer is in the corner of the room on it's new desk, movies are on a huge bookcase tucked away in the back corner, TV nestled against the far wall....it's just a very cozy room. We're surrounded by Harry, hobbits and movies and can flop down on a comfy couch with pillows and quilts.....ah, heaven.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

We don't have a front porch. No one really has a front porch in San Diego. Some of the older houses, maybe, but it's not a big thing here. We don't use our backyard often, but that is very relaxing. We have something called the Maui Waui or something like that. It's basically a single person hammock suspended to one of the beams in the overhang we have.

My favorite place though is in my room. My bed is in a corner where there are two windows on both sides. I love it. It rained yesterday, and I just sat down on my bed and looked out at it all. The only con of doing this is that I get zero privacy, as we just mjaorly trimmed the tree outside that used to block one of the windows.

[haniaw.livejournal.com]

I love the description of your porch. It sounds ideal. When I'm at my mom's house, her porch is my favourite place to hang out.

I live in an apartment so the nearest thing to a sanctuary that I have is my balcony. It is very large and I have filled it with 14 36" windowboxes full of fragrant and colourful flowers -- both on the railing and on the floor. I also have several 3' high pedestal planters and 4 hanging baskets. I have a very comfortable chair, a small table and a lamp out there too. I've basically made it into my own personal garden space. The balcony looks out over a large open field with large trees, so it reinforces the feeling of garden. It's great to come home, go out there with a tall ice tea and sit in my chair and do needlework. Just heavenly!

...Hania

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I have considered moving to South Minneapolis after my son graduates from high school, just so I can live someplace with a front porch. I doubt I'd be in a position to buy, but there are rentables. I have this dream of a big writers-and-artists-hippie-commune kind of thing, in which we all chip in on rent and have some kind of community, but also each have our own rooms to which we retreat as needed.

More likely, I'll end up getting a cheap studio or 1BR someplace on the bus line.

In my present reality, my sanctuary is my living room, late at night, with New Age/Space/Ambient music in the background. Nobody is around, or else they're asleep. Quiet late-night solitude, in a cozy space, with my books and my writing and my music and my Muses... oh, yeah.