Darling Hubby and I arrived at our house in the country before noon today. It was ten degrees cooler than in Houston and breezy.

For a long while, we haven't been coming up here regularly. We decided to put it up for sale.

That meant we have been here more lately, polishing it up so it will sell quickly.

As we drove up here, with 4 Adirondack chairs in back (simulated picture of chairs on our porch), we started talking about how much we love it up here.

The air smells clean, the stars at night really are big and bright, and the sky is just bigger here. If you're not accustomed to being in the wide open spaces, you may not know what I mean by "the sky is bigger."





In cities where tall buildings or hundreds of houses proliferate, all of that can block miles of sky. You never get that upside down bowl-shape view of the sky.





That type of view is what we see when we're sitting on our back porch here. We can look out and feel as if we're looking from one side of the horizon to the other.





Country Chores





When we arrived, DH changed clothes, jumped on his riding lawn mower, and started mowing the 2 acres around the house.





I cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and drawers, did my bit of weekly housecleaning, and went outside to arrange the new chairs on the porch and do some gardening.





After we'd each finished our "chores," we sat on the porch in the new chairs. (It was too dark to take a picture by the time I decided to write this blog.)





Mexican Cokes because they come in glass bottles and are made with sugar, not HFCS. We get ours from Costco or our local Randalls. You can also get them from Amazon, but they're rather pricy. We shared a Coca-Cola. We buy thebecause they come in glass bottles and are made with sugar, not HFCS. We get ours from Costco or our local Randalls. You can also get them from Amazon, but they're rather pricy.





The windows in the living room were open, Pandora was playing on the TV, and we listened to my Italian Dinner Music station.





The afternoon was sublime. Good music. Good company. Doing nothing but talking a bit and watching the mockingbirds in the pistach tree, the doves on the highlines, and the bluebirds and cardinals in the fruit trees.





We watched a storm roll in, huge billowy white clouds changing to smoky gray and midnight blue. Thunder rumbled, and then huge raindrops poured down. We saw the horses in the pasture just east of our house start running, as if they relished the sudden rain and raced for the sheer pleasure of it.





The storm raged for about five minutes then moved westward.





A few minutes later the sky cleared, the white clouds were just as white and puffy as before, then the sun came out.





The grass, the fields, the trees—every growing thing looked greener, as if cleaned and refreshed.





Tonight, the big sky is populated by millions of bright stars. We returned to the porch. Crickets are chirping, night birds are calling. In the distance, a dog barks. Later, we'll probably hear a coyote or two. The evening is perfect. We really love it here—especially the porch lifestyle.





Takeaway Truth





We decided NOT to sell our little piece of heaven in the country.





P. S. Photo is what twilight looks like as we look from our back porch with a lone live oak tree across the way. Next time, I'll take a picture with my digital camera which does a better job than a cell phone at night.

In the country, where you see mostly woods, rolling hills, and sky, there are no buildings obstructing your view of the horizon so you really do see more of the sky.