Old Home Places

One of my favorite past times is to drive by old home places.  I don't know what it is that makes them call out to me.  Do you ever just go for Sunday drives and look for old home places.  Sometimes all that is left are the remains of a chimney or old house flowers.  You know what old house flowers are, right?  They are flowers that were planted at one time by the home owner and remain behind to bloom even when the house may be torn down.  The old chimneys are just sitting there, no house, just the old bricks waiting for you stop so that they can whisper the house secrets to you.  Well, wouldn't that be something if they could tell you what happened, why they remained and the house and family didn't.

A while back while on Dawn's blog, she introduced this site to us and this is where I found these images. 

While this house may seem a little creepy to some, it just really spoke to me.  You can tell it was a huge house.  I can imagine the family that lived here probably had lots of children and the husband had to have been someone important in the town, a doctor, lawyer, who knows.  I could see the mother sitting on the front porch, baby in tow, while she watched the little ones play in the massive yard.  See the tree, can you picture children playing hide and seek while the one pretented to count and cover their eyes, all the while watching where the children were hiding.  I know I have a vivid imagination.

Now this house, while it may be boarded up, you can tell was once grand in it's day.  Just look at the peely paint color still on the house.  I love the porch on it but I loved the little glass room at the top of it the most.  I would have spent many hours here if it would have been mine.  You would have found me reading, looking out to the city below, and drinking tea.

This house is dark and mysterious, but it still is appealing to me.  Why would families leave them behind?  Do you ever notice that once families leave it seem that even the house becomes sad and goes into disrepair. 

I can imagine this house would have been in a grand city on a main street.  It would have been owned by a prominent family, someone important, just look at the detail.  Again, another wonderful porch to sit on.

What a cute cottage?  Can you image it full of rose bushes peeking through the fence by a great gardener.  Maybe it was the lady in the picture with her dog.  It seemed it would have been a happy house.

This last picture, I can see still in the middle of a town with all new construction all around.  Maybe the family won't sell and the new stores are building all around it.  I can only imagine the yard would have been just beautiful.  I would loved to have been sitting on this porch, watching the town grow while I continued to enjoy the house.

This weekend, I got out and enjoyed our city park.  There's a new log cabin that was moved to the park around November and they are slowly constructing the original cabin back.  The Sam Houston's Memorial Park, where Sam Houston's old houses have been moved for us to enjoy, is the location of where the new cabin was moved.  The cabin dates back to the 1840's and Sam Houston would go hunting near the cabin's original location.  What I liked most about the cabin were the front and back porches.  I'll be showing this cabin in a future post.

I'm also linking up with Jill for her new series that she's starting, The Porch Club.  I hope you'll also stop over and see who all is participating for her first post.