Walking The Blog Neighborhood

I took a walk in the rain this morning with my wooden-handled umbrella--it's harder to be whisked back in time with a plastic-handled one. I raised the umbrella a bit so I could see the houses in my favorite quiet neighborhoods, the ones where I gain so much creative inspiration. I saw the Blue Door House--the one which inspired me to paint my own back door blue. I also walked past the three houses which inspired me to use wicker furniture on my front porch because it looked much more friendly than our wrought-iron stuff.

There are five houses which stand high and alone upon one short street. There are no homes across from them, just a green field and the back of an ancient three-story brick school. Just five old houses all alone, quiet on this little half-block. There must be some sort of time warp wall at the corner there--always I feel transported to the 1930's when I step upon the sidewalk in front of those silent houses.

I take a lot of inspiration and dreams and wishes from all the early-1900's houses I pass on my walks. I often go home and dive into my old homemaking books and magazines to continue my feeling of backward time travel just a few moments longer. Usually, it works. It kind of reminds me of what Christopher Reed did in Somewhere in Time, and maybe that's why I'm always flinging away my new stuff and replacing it with old.

It's funny that all the people who live in those big old, sturdy homes have no idea how they inspire me and turn my normal days into something remarkable. Most will never know how much I carry away in my thoughts from their houses and yards or how, on winter days of blizzards when I'm caught inside, I still walk past their houses, only in my mind, instead.

And while out on my walk this morning I thought about this blog and how it, too, was in a sort of neighborhood. One in which people walk its sidewalks all day long, taking whatever inspiration they may need and using it in a myriad of different ways when they arrive back home. Some people stop by and knock and tell me what they are carrying away, and that always blesses me, of course. But even when they do, still I will never see the exact results from their using what I gave them.

That's not what is important. What matters is that my house, my blog, stands here, ready, to give away something of value for anyone passing by on rainy days or ones of full sun.

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"From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin..." ... Pearl S. Buck