The heat has come to VA!! Even though it is way too early for me, it still has a certain "feeling". Memories of long summer days swimming and Peaches on the screened porch!! In GA, where I hail from, screened porches were almost part of every house! We lived out there in the summer, since we had no air conditioning, it was a place to visit with friends and spend a rainy afternoon reading! I loved to sit out on the porch in the rain! Our horse Lady Blaze even tried her best to get on the porch too:)
If we ever build a house I would like for it to have a sleeping porch. Many old farmhouses had sleeping porches.
Our own un-farmhouses can easily have screened porches, in fact here in VA most houses have them! Wicker Furniture and white ironstone seem to always be on our porch so you can imagine my Total Despair when I say that THIS Thurs, I will LOSE my screened porch!!!!! My husband needs an office since he works from home a lot. SOOOOO we are going to enclose the screened porch for his office!! We will try to find a place for another porch but so far it is not going that well!! I don't want it to be in an awkward area so we are going to have to figure this out cause a Southern Girl without a place to sit and listen to the birds and have a glass of iced tea gets really GROUCHY !!:) I sit on the porch almost everyday, maybe only for a few minutes, I like to have lunch there and I used to paint out there too. In fact I did most of my "creative" things out there:) I have to go out and finish cleaning it off. I had so many flower pots, bags of sand dirt and rocks! I am going to try to find a place for a potting area so I don't have to do it on the porch! I don't know what to do with the furniture and ohhhh those adorable primitive mirrors!! I am sure I will work it all out!
By the way I will pass on a recipe I love for "Sweet Tea"
1 1/2 Cup Loose Tea
7 Cups boiling water
5 Cups Sugar
Steep the tea in boiling water for 7 minutes. Strain and add sugar. Use 1 1/2 Cups of the concentrate to make on gallon of tea. Syrup may be frozen. To make unsweetened tea use the same process and omit the sugar.
I usually separate out 1 1/2 cup portions and put it into a zip lock bag, lay it flat in the freezer to save space, then just take it out and place it into the gallon pitcher add water (that also helps it to thaw) a bunch of mint, and we are ready to go:)
I will keep the "saga" of Vicky's screened porch going. I will really try to age this porch and pass it on. If you have any advice please post it and let us know!
I hope you all have a Happy Day!!!
2 comments:
No country home is complete without a front porch. My grandparents lived in rural Georgia in a very old farmhouse. It was a working dairy farm. The porch was, in summer, what the kitchen fireplace was in the winter. A gathering place.
Georgia summers could be brutally hot, so the porch provided a shady spot away from rain and allowed breezes to cool us. During summer downpours we would all gather on the porch for the event. If we were lucky, there would be thunder and lightening. My uncle Lovie, the family hisorian, would tell tales of family members long gone or events of his childhood. Alex Haley once commented that, if it weren't for the front porch, he might never have heard of Kunta Kentay.
The porch was also where we took turns cranking the ice cream churn or slicing watermelon from my grandfather's garden.
The South lost alot when front porches became optional. The front porch was a perch from which you could participate in town life without leaving home. You could greet your neighbors as they came and went, exchange news, recipes and remedies. Then came air conditioning and television. Sometimes I wonder if we lost more than we gained.
Thanks for the recipe for the tea. I love seeing your dogs. Still miss mine very much!
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