I know folks love three day weekends.  After three days of graduation parties, farmer’s market, barbeques, and a bad tummy ache, I am happy to be home today.

There is magic in an old farmhouse.  My cousin came over the other day to drop off a wedding invitation.  She was friends with one of the original owners of this house.  They were here many years, she said.  The kitchen is exactly the same.  There is a lot more clutter here now.  The original Mrs. of the house kept a sparse, clean home.

“They didn’t have much”, Janet recalled, “but it was always pristine.”

A couch.  A large rug.  Everything in its place.  Makes me want to run through and get rid of some more stuff.  The original Mrs. wouldn’t be too happy with me.

The light filters in the large south window in the kitchen illuminating everything as I make coffee early.  Other friends came over to visit yesterday and pointed out the cabinet handles.  Something I never noticed.

“They are like sterling silver,” Trish ahhed.

The house speaks to me.  It is filled with promise and hope.  The old well is covered up in the back yard.  Bits of the coal chute and furnace are here and there.  Original steps to the cellar to heat the house with the coal stove.  The old kitchen and its beautiful white farmhouse sink, now showing its use and age.  Glimmers of wall paper show through the paint.  The original chimney, now not attached to anything, falls in with fatigue.

But the house has promise, even a renter can see that.  We are happy to be working around the large yard, in the gardens that would have made the original owners proud and provided sustenance in the cold winters.  Walking around history and making new history is a mesmerizing task.  This week I will paint the porch, perhaps robin’s egg blue, and tend to the vast beds of vegetables and herbs.  I will make cheese from our goat’s milk, and get the ducks a swimming pool.  I will hang clothes on the line and swat at the Miller moths.  I will stay home and be a farm wife just as the great women before me did.  We will watch our granddaughter discover her surroundings and we will make new memories, new history, in this old rental house.

Home sweet home.