It rained this afternoon. Twice. There was thunder and big raindrops poured down, and the sky turned that deep, dark shade of cobalt blue. If my house had a porch of any decent size, I would have gone out to sit on it. I would have taken a book to read but would have passed the time watching the rain and looking at the sky. But, my house doesn't have a porch of any decent size. So, I stayed in.
I like my house. I really do. I bought it after a six-week search, and it was, by far, the best house I looked at. It had fewer problems than the others I'd seen. And, it has everything I could want in a house - except a porch. And, a built-in sauna. It doesn't have that, either. But, never mind. The porch is the important thing. All this house has is a little tiny front porch that barely has room for a chair. A metal awning provides some cover but, if it's raining with any force or directionality, you're going to get wet.
One of the houses I looked at had a great porch. As I recall, it was one of those porches that wrapped a good part of the way around the house. It was covered with that bright green outdoor carpeting and would have been perfect for having friends over to sit outside and chat while drinking iced tea. Yes, of course that's what we would be drinking. Iced tea. For sure. Anyway, the porch was absolutely the best feature of the house. The worst feature was the dead bird I found lying on the stairs to the attic. Or, maybe it was the narrow channel on the basement's concrete floor, a channel formed by years of water flowing where it shouldn't have been flowing. Or, maybe it was the out-dated wiring that would have needed replacing through the entire place.
Yes, that house needed a lot of work. But, I seriously considered buying it just for the porch.