veranda livin’

veranda…verandah…porch…front stoop: no matter what you want to call it, the veranda is a public face on a house. must be the weather that’s making me notice them this week—verandas, by definition, have a roof against the rain.

I like walking past verandas in action—people sitting & watching the world go by, catching up with neighbours, spying on passers-by. on Palmerston, there are people sitting on their front stoop, waving to people they know, fidgeting with their laptops, talking loudly on their cellphones (probably complaining about new text charges), keeping an eye on their kids, playing with their dogs, fighting with their new giant recycling bins, going through their mail, and having friends over for a drink…

it’s all so much more public & sociable than the back deck, whether it’s the serious high-end High South veranda of Savannah Georgia or the generally more casual Palmerston veranda, like this one just up the street.

Miami’s Habitat for Humanity has simple but fabulous verandas on their public housing designs. and I wish there were a way to incorporate the concept into condo buildings & apartment towers. kind of the way some Art Deco Miami hotel/apartments have a veranda where you can eat breakfast or read the papers, and actually talk to our neighbours instead of staring straight ahead in the elevator as we come up from the garage.

seems like our condo balconies are more like pods, a module take on the backyard deck—here I am in my own private universe & I cannot see you.

verandas don’t stand for that kind of nonsense. they say “we’re all in this together.”

a friend is moving to Toronto this month & she’s asked people to make tiles to put around her front door, to bring blessings to her veranda—copying the Portuguese neighbours’ shrines & religious tiles. she’s not exactly a Virgin Mary type, so I’m looking forward to dropping by & hanging out on the veranda…