Stone Cottage

     

     Someday I will live in a stone cottage. It is a small house, easy to keep, leaving me time for baking cakes, writing stories and dreaming in the garden. The windows are deep enough to hold a pot of violets or set a pie to cool on the sill. I will always take time for tea. You are always invited to join me provided you leave your muddy boots on the threshold. My cottage is invariably tidy except for the books strewn about, the dozen pair of eyeglasses I keep close to hand in order to look at your photos, and the crumbs under the kitchen table from the cookies I give to the children who visit. The violets on the sill I have dug from the birchwood up the hill, and the berries for the pie were gleaned from the hedgerows. The sheets on the bed have been dried in the wind and there is lavender from the garden under the pillows. If you happen to spend the night, you will be wakened in the morning by the songs of robins or of wrens in the tree outside your window, the rich, sharp smell of coffee, and muffins baking in the oven. You may eat as many muffins as you like; there is time enough to make more. 

     I walk out every day, in the woods, down the lane, or along the bridlepath beside the brook. I go even if it rains because I like my flowered umbrella and wellies and don't mind showing them off. I splash through puddles instead of going around them, stop often to watch the day unfold, and nurse a fond regret that I am no longer spry enough to climb the trees in the wood. If you see me coming down the lane, you will abandon your good intentions for the hour and join me because we are two of a kind. Of course, it is always good to come home again to the quiet welcome of my cottage where my larder and cupboards are crammed with the simple goodness of life.