Blog #10: Front Porches

 I Go On Walks, And I Look at People's Houses. Is That Invasive?

It's not something that I think is horrible, but I'm not sure. For me, it's normal to walk through neighborhoods and assess the architecture I walk by. It cannot mean anything more than just watching House Hunters, but who knows? In this post, I'm highlighting some of my favorite front porches I've walked, or ran, past this semester. 

The courtyard displayed in the photo above is one of my favorites to walk past. Adjacent to this leaf-covered sidewalk, there's a gorgeous white-bricked home with a courtyard and front porch facing the sidewalk. It's a clear divide from nature outside the courtyard. Even the manicured shrubbery could hardly be considered wild nature. 

While not a front porch per se, this beautiful garden at the front of a house is a meditative area. The walls frame a tasteful fountain that leads into a backyard that is likely equally as beautiful. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the backyard. 

This porch was ablaze with fiery autumn leaves amidst morning glory. I love the way that the tree is nearly covering the whole front of the house. I can only wonder what the diffused light within the house coming from the tree-covered window would look like.

This one may be one of the more humorous front porches I've beheld. All decorated for Halloween, these skeletons are like a theatre of life on this humble front porch. I saw this porch on a run and could not help but laugh when I saw it.

Naturally, I could not help but include a front porch celebrating some Horned Frog football. The rhyme scheme works pretty well too.

If this class has taught me anything, it has taught me to ponder the relationship between human toil and the natural world. Houses are built for our livelihood, to protect us from the environmental conditions that rage around us, in Texas especially. I am grateful for neighborhoods and houses for how they are welcome places of rest and respite. Yet production also rages against the natural order of things. Ecosystems must be tamed and destroyed in order for our communities to thrive. I wish it was not so. Although our natural world is tamed through suburbia's expansion, I only wonder how nature could thrive in the neighborhood. What if our communities were built around nature instead of vice versa? 

Sadly, I do not believe our economic system nor the powers that be would be willing to give up the profits of large established neighborhoods for the preservation of nature herself. The United States is a vast landmass, so we do not bother with preservation (outside of National Parks or monuments) because so much land still exists beyond our city limits. What do you think, reader? Do you see a way for our world to be built around nature, even as Capitalism thrives on the profit from nature's destruction?