HOME SWEET HOME

I found this picture recently and thought you might like to see where I live! This was taken the first fall in our new home, 25 years ago. That's my mother-in-law (no longer alive) on the left, me on the right (no longer slim) and my daughter (no longer an infant!)

It amuses me to think how much the house and yard have changed in the past 25 years. The dark gray trim eventually started to peel away and Dan undertook the massive job of scraping it. I had carefully matched the new paint with the existing color and was excited when Dan told me it was the day to start painting. Puttering around indoors, I didn't go out to look at what he'd done until he was almost through with the garage door. I was stunned to go out and find a bright blue door! Obviously the paint did not match the chip, but I had not checked.

Dan was adamant about not re-painting, so ever since we've had a bright blue front door, garage door and trim. I'll never forget what a neighbor said about the new color: (Barely disguised loathing) "Don't worry, dear, it will fade in time." No it hasn't, but that's okay. It looks like the cheerful trim on houses in the Mediterranean.

The evergreen on the left has grown almost as tall as the chimney and I have been thinking for several years that it must go, though I have not broken the news to Dan yet. The beautiful weeping birch on the right is gone, a victim of the tiny bronze birch borer. I have ripped out all the evergreens on either side of the steps and replaced them with flower beds.

We now have a picket fence around the front yard, with an arbor over the sidewalk leading to the house. I grow hardy shrub roses inside the fence on the driveway side. I let the purple lady bell wildflowers grow where they like. They are considered to be a weed by many, but I think they are beautiful intermingled with the roses. I also grow roses and other perennials inside the fence bordering the front sidewalk.

My plans are to make the entire front lawn into a flower garden. The patch on the right will someday be Daisy's garden.

My home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I had always thought that the National Register was for grand or famous homes, but that is not the case. A lovely lady in our neighborhood almost single-handedly and successfully ran a campaign to have a group of homes in this area placed on the Register as prime examples of the stucco bungalow style of architecture from the 1920s-1930s.

Our house is not technically a bungalow, because that definition would have to include a front porch. So my home is actually a 1929 stucco cottage. Or, as Kristen called it when she was young, "our cozy little house."