Welcome To The Asylum

(well, I can't name it "rose cottage" can I?)

Philip doesn't think "The Rose And Thorn Farmhouse" is a good name for a house. So I suggested "The Sanatorium" and he's actually thinking that one over.* Though, truth be told, he's not too keen to name our house at all. He said "Why can't we just call it 'The Farmhouse'?" and I promptly told him it didn't sound enough like a special place that someone might write a book about.

This is a picture of our front porch. It faces the back yard. It's big and will be hung with Chinese lanterns I think. There will be a table and chairs to sit at and drink coffee plus pretty pots of growing things to welcome the weary (us).

I love lilacs. The French name is so much prettier: syringa. I have wanted lilacs in my yard for years. It was the lilac that first made me understand the deep satisfaction in picking a glorious vase of flowers to scent and decorate the house. My mother gave me huge bunches of them from her lilac tree when we all lived in Petaluma together. They grow wonderfully well up here and are all over town.

I had planned on planting one in my current garden but would have had to remove some giant rhododendrons to do it and risk getting reported to the local garden club tribunal for my rhodie crime. At the farmhouse garden there are six of them already planted!! Two are purple, two are white, and two are a mystery as yet to unfold with spring.

This one is a total mystery. The actual size of these leaves and buds are under half an inch. I have no idea what it is.

A pretty camellia. Although I doubt I would ever plant a ton of them, we do love camellias and this one has grown on me quite a bit in the time we've been purchasing the house. Something else I'm very excited about is the Viburnum by the porch: a snowball tree!!!!! Ooh, I've been wanting one of those for so long!! What luck to have one already established. There are also two giant hydrangeas in the garden but I think they're the lace cap kind and I like the classic pom-pom kind.

This is the the landing of the staircase. What pretty light comes in.

The front of the house. As seen from the garden. A ubiquitous Japanese maple is in the foreground trying to lay low because it knows I will dig it up. Don't worry, it will find a good home. They are extremely well loved in this town.

The dining room built ins. Lots and lots of kitchen and dining room cabinets and drawers. Closets are a small sickly affair in this house, but there is no shortage of storage space for kitchen and dining things. The furniture is not ours. The sellers staged the house for selling.

A view I will see a thousand times a year or more. How pretty! Kitchen window; like looking out through the soul of the house.

Well, it's time to bath and get packing again. I got a start yesterday but not a very big start. The new house is only about a mile from our current house so I think we will not pack things in a careful meticulous fashion but in a haphazard quick way. Why hasn't someone developed a teleporter for moving yet? Whoever does it will make their fortune.

*He immediately rejected "The Rose And Thorn Sanatorium". What's he got against roses and thorns and thistles anyway? I'd love to call our house "Thornyfield Sanatorium" but I suppose he wouldn't go for that either. I'm rewatching the 1970's Jane Eyre production with Timothy Dalton in it who I normally dislike but who is the only actor I've so far seen who can play that character. I've read the book many times too. I love it. The reason I thought up sanatorium in the first place is that in the old days sanatoriums were not only places where crazy people were stored, it was where people went for rests to prevent them from completely losing their nuts all over the place and killing relatives. I have, since I was a very young teen, fantasized about going to an asylum to rest. Although, real asylums are not restful peaceful pretty places. I mean, if there were any actual asylums left, which there aren't I think. The modern asylum is the city street.

Hey, how about "Thornyfield Asylum"?!!!! A good mix of hard modern with Gothic romance.