Adventures in rural porch life
August 2024
by Margo Oxendine, Contributing Columnist
I generally spend most of the summer in my favorite room: the screened-in porch.
There’s a table out there where I rest my book and eat my “blinner” (breakfast, lunch and dinner, rolled into one), and gaze out at the birds and greenery.
The porch is usually where I can be found whenever I get up from my computer and stop writing. It’s a laptop, but I never cart it out to the porch. I guess the porch is “sacred” that way. Other than maybe answering a phone call, no real work ever gets done on the porch.
If you are lucky enough to have a porch — especially a screened-in one — you know exactly what I’m talking about. Many people living in neighborhoods with porches often sit on them and exchange pleasantries with passing friends and acquaintances. At the very least, they share waves and smiles.
When the summer heat gets to me, I get a Lindy’s Homemade Ice out of the freezer. My favorites are strawberries & cream and peaches & cream. These delectable, frozen treats have just 160 calories. Now that I’ve kicked my addiction to higher-calorie Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Lindy’s are my go-to for icy sweetness. One of them cools me down immediately and then I go inside and sprawl out in my comfy chair in the study. No studying takes place there, but that’s where the TV is.
I never watch TV during the day, though. I continue reading in the study until it cools down enough to return to the porch. I have a small but powerful fan and a lamp, so I remain out there until at least 8 p.m. every night.
I am not the only denizen of my porch. I am sure a mouse family lives out there, too. They leave evidence that I have to sweep or clean every day.
One afternoon, I discovered a very unwelcome visitor. A huge, black snake was coiled up and sleeping in the window. I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was at first. When I did recognize it, I was frozen with fear and indecision. I didn’t want to share my blessed porch with a big snake!
A kindly neighbor was happy to come over with a long tool and a bucket and relocate the snake to a wooded area. Give a man a manly task on a sultry, lazy afternoon, and you might make his day! He sure made mine.
As a kid in my family’s Victorian house on what is today the Omni Homestead golf course, we had a wraparound porch, and it received just as much love and use as mine does now. If a thunderstorm with lightning suddenly appeared, Daddy would call out to the golfers and invite them to ride out the danger under our porch. One such evening, our house was “in play” for the Homestead course. We were sitting on the porch when an errant golf ball suddenly came screaming through the air, hit Mom’s wicker rocker, and knocked her over! She was fine, but Daddy had the porch screened in shortly after that to prevent further mishaps.
If you are lucky enough to have a porch to relax on this sweltering summer, I sure hope you’re reading this out there. Watch out for golf balls … and snakes!
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