Editor, Gazette-Journal:

My porch is where I count my blessings. When I sit on it of a morn, I can watch the sun slowly waken the western pines and then, in the evening’s dim, I watch it glorify the day one last time. 

It’s where I first held the wonder of my baby boys the day they were given to me. One’s eyelashes actually waved on the fresh breeze of that late October day! From my porch, Dash’s tail looks like a shredded mizzen-mast as he bounds through the high grass of the surrounding fields and the osprey’s cry heralds spring on a blustery March day. 

Many a summer night finds my tired body in the hammock after the household settles, cicadas singing a lullaby just for me. My porch is where the garden’s beans get snapped and its corn is shucked; it’s where cedar, holly and bayberry greens are splayed out for winter wreath-making. My loves gather ’round on the porch to pick crabs and play music, where slowly turning fans a...