30 March 2020

The front door

We had our front door, with its small porch at ground level, glassed in back in 2004. It's hard to believe it was that long ago. It's a good place for potted plants. Often, even when it's cold outside, we leave the sliding door open wide enough so that Tasha and Bertie can come and go as they please. For the good of the dog, the yard is fenced in. Cats, of course, move unimpeded by such barriers.


I'm sure the fact that the U.S. stay-at-home order is being extended to April 30 will lead the French authorities to gradually do the same. Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid. Ou est-ce une cage ? I'm sorry we had to cancel our April getaway. La Baie de Somme is a place I really would like to see one of these days.

14 comments:

  1. This looks so beautiful, especially when the sun is shining. I had not heard about the stay at home order being extended to April 30th. I think it is mostly state by state. However since my daughter's birthday is April 30th, it would be a nice birthday gift...But somehow, I think it may last longer than that.

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    1. Potted plants stay in the "sun porch" all winter, but they of course don't look as healthy and happy right now as they will during the summer. Because our main living areas are one and two floors above ground level, we can leave the front open. Cold air stays down in the entryway, utility room, and garage. Upstairs stays warm. I hope you are wrong about the length of the confinement we are living with, but you are probably right, unfortunately.

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  2. I'm going with une cage. I like your doors/glassed in room and I think I see nice healthy rubber plant, elephant plant, donkey tail (all the common names).

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    1. Yes, those are the plants you see. The elephant plant was grown from cuttings that CHM brought me from Salton City. The donkey tail was grown from cuttings I brought back from North Carolina. And the rubber tree was a local acquisition.

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  3. The perfect place for your plants to over winter. Your wooden front door is very nice, I especially like the knocker.

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    1. See below. We found a way to keep that door rather than changing it for something more modern.

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  4. It was a good idea to glass in that area for your plants. You managed to bring lots of plants here from CA I think. I hope you plan another trip to the Somme. I hope the travel industry comes back quickly when the virus (3 year old gd calls it "the bad cold") goes away.

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    1. We weren't able to bring plants from the U.S. to France in 2003 because we didn't have room for them in our luggage, and we couldn't put them in the container that our furniture and other belongings were packed into. Plants wouldn't have survived. But in 2004, both CHM and MA, when they came to visit, brought me cuttings of some plants that had sentimental value and that I had left with them in America. Anyway, the little porch is a great place for keeping potted plants. It gets morning sun.

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  5. Dreaming of travel when the time is right.

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  6. Evelyn always seems to put into words just what I was thinking... so, ditto what she said :)

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    1. Evelyn is like that. It's one of the things I like so much about her.

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  7. I might be tempted to "camp-out" in that sunshine and read! That must have been a real "light-bulb" moment when one of you came up with the idea of glassing it in! It must have been a real life-saver for the wood on your front door. Did you find that impressive knocker or did it come with the house? Very nice, either way!

    Mary in Oregon

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    1. The door and its knocker came with the house. Two realities made us decide to glass-in the little porch. One was that the old door itself fit the frame badly, and it let a lot of cold air in at a time when I was using the downstairs entry hall as my computer room (we hadn't yet had the loft space converted into living space), and it was cold down there in winter. We didn't want to sacrifice the nice old door, and it was better to put the sliding glass doors in to keep the draft out. Second reason: that little porch was full of dead leaves for many months out of the year. The wind blew them in there when the maple trees out front dropped them in autumn. The sliding doors were an instance of two birds, one stone...

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