Houses are built to live in and not to look on:
therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
--Sir Francis Bacon
I once read a book written in the late 1700s by a single woman
who decided to move to the Massachusetts countryside and
start her own chicken farm.
With a bit of humor and the wisdom
that comes from viewing one's life in retrospect,
she recounts the frustrations of being taken seriously
by her neighbors, the merchants, and workmen of the time.
At one point, she decides she is going to fix up the outside of her house
with bright paint and colorful flowers to show the country folk
how to bring a little beauty to their plain, unpainted houses.
So she succeeds in making her little home a colorful jewel
there along the main road--but to her chagrin,
travelers keep mistaking it for a bordello.
Fortunately, nowadays we are free to decorate and embellish our houses
with any paint color or flower that strikes our fancy.
And window boxes have to be one of the ultimate expressions
of fanciful house decor.
I tried a winter window box once with a miniature spruce
and Irish moss. The spruce got too big and the moss died, of course.
But it was pretty for a while.
I love this casual window "box":
Sir Francis Bacon didn't know what he was missing.
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