OUR PIAZZA. 
Until two years ago the south door to our summer- 
kitchen opened directly into the chip-yard. 
Each summer, before the year’s generous supply of 
wood and kindlings was snugly piled away in the shed, 
there was scant space reserved for a driveway betwten 
this same door and the wood-piles that were thrown 
in helter-skelter heaps over the great, wide door- 
yard. 
But for the unsightly piles of rubbish and wood scat¬ 
tered about, the yard would have made a beautiful lawn, 
with the white walls of the house for a back-ground, green 
pasture hills to the east, a shaded winding country road 
to the south and west. The blue Kennebec flowing so 
near, many a gnarled log and tough and knotty stick 
encountered in the wood-pile was quietly rolled over 
the bank by lazy hired men who had much rather see 
the logs float down river than expend their strength 
working them into fire-wood. 
There was no gutter on the porch roof ; and every 
shower, drip, drip, splash, splash came the rain off the 
roofs, gulling still deeper the water-worn trench under 
the house eaves, splashing dirty water against the clap¬ 
boards, and spattering windows, door, rock and dodg¬ 
ing pedestrians with mud and water. 
If the wind, during a summer shower, blew from the 
south, I. could not have the outside door open, no matter 
how stifling and warm was the kitchen, for the rain 
beat in from the pouring eaves, deluging the floor, and 
pools of water would form even under my cook- 
stove. ^ 
John came in one rainy day when I had one of our 
little ones tied to the leg of a table ; for the child per¬ 
sisted in standing in the open door where the rain, drip¬ 
ping from the eaves, spattered upon him. Th^ little 
fellow was screaming as loud as he could, protesting 
against such a restraint upon his liberty. 
Perhaps it was the noise, perhaps my frowns at the 
mud he was tracking across a freshly-mopped floor—for 
the space between the door, rock and wood-pile was a 
veritable quagmire—that influenced John to commence 
that very hour a gutter for the porch roof. 
When it was finished he said, “ I think 1 must build 
a piazza by this south door. It will save a deal of mud 
tracking into the house, and I will put this gutter on 
its roof instead of on the porch.” 
That was two years ago, and I hardly know, now, how 
we could get along without our south piazza. It 
reaches to the chamber windows, is five feet wide and 
has a hardwood floor of narrow boards laid nearly as 
high as the kitchen’s door-sill. The east end is filled in 
with lattice-work : the west end is built against a pro¬ 
jection of the main house. Lattice-work also runs 
across the entire length of piazza, extending down from 
the eaves a foot or more. 
When it was completed and neatly painted with 
white alabastine, which is a cheap and durable prepara¬ 
tion, a boot-scraper nailed near the east end of the 
floor, a crisp husk mat laid before the door, the wood- 
pile under cover, the yard raked smooth of chips, John 
came and stood by my side one day, when I was look¬ 
ing at the transformation, and said, “Looks neat, little 
wife, doesn’t it? Who’d ’a thought a piazza would 
make, such a difference in the looks of this old farm¬ 
house ! ” 
It was too late, then, in the season to transplant roots 
of climbers or sow seeds of Morning Glory vines, but 
early the following spring I dug from the river bank 
roots of Clematis or wild Hops, as old farmers persist in 
calling the beautiful feathery-flowered vine and roots 
of Virginia Creeper. 
These roots I transplanted into the black, mellow soil 
about the piazza, and lasc summer the lattice work was 
covered by the rank, free growth of these, our native 
climbers. They ran along the eaves on the network of 
unplaned laths that formed a narrow lattice, up, up, 
over the roof, peeping into the chamber windows and 
making a bower of beauty about that old, red-painted 
kitchen door, with its rotted sill and sagging- 
frame. 
Sometimes I think we do not appreciate these native 
climbers. What can be more beautiful than thrifty, 
rank Clematis, as we daily see them growing free and 
wild up and down our river banks, with their green, 
tossing branches, that out-grow and out-climb every 
other green thing along the river, covered with white, 
wooly balls that are beautiful to cut for winter trim¬ 
mings and beautiful to let stay on their parent vines 
throughout the winter months. 
If these rapid-growing climbers were not so common 
with us I fancy we should prefer them to any other 
vine for screening from view unsightly places about 
our buildings. 
Our roughly-built little piazza will soon be an arbor 
of greenness”. 
This year I have planned to have its west wall also 
covered with vines. 
I found on an island in our river a big “gipsy 
kettle” with round bottom and sides, standing high on 
its three sprawling long legs. No less than an iron 
bean kettle that the river drivers had discarded as no 
longer fit for use, a big hole being chipped out of its 
bulging dimensions, which was bad for beans but ex¬ 
cellent for plant drainage. 
I had the kettle filled with rich earth and placed it in 
the west corner of our piazza, and sowed it thickly with 
seeds of Morning Glory, and now the vigorous little 
climbers are putting up toward the piazza’s roof on a 
multitude of strings put up for that purpose. 
Another good thing has resulted from our piazza. It 
encroached so far into the driveway it was found nec¬ 
essary to set the wood-pile back from the house, and 
when they were about it they gave it a good wide berth 
from our kitchen door. 
When we have summer rains, now, I do not have to 
tie my little ones to keep them from being spattered by 
pouring eaves but they stand in the open door-way 
watching.the bright drops as they come down, washing 
the dusty leaves and grassy yard, with no chance for 
pattering rain-drops to strike their eager, uplifted little 
faces. Clarissa Potter. 
