Inside Out, Outside In

» Some don’t see the porch as just an entryway. It’s a piece of artwork.

BY JENELLE WATSON

A slice of cake, a glass of iced tea and a comfy place to relax on the porch. That’s the way summer days play out at Piney Hill Bed and Breakfast in Luray, where innkeepers Wiley Gregory and Hank Overton make certain their guests feel welcome from the moment they drive onto the property.

Their porch is a big part of that welcome and one of the reasons they bought the circa 1820 home in 1998.
“You’d be surprised how many times people go outside and sit on the front porch instead of sitting in the living room,” Overton said. “The way we’ve designed it, the porch adds a couple of rooms to the house, and those rooms get tremendous use.”

They’ve achieved that effect by creating a series of defined seating areas apart from the entrance. Given the sheer size of the inn’s wrap-around front porch, that wasn’t hard to do.  Front porch art  can also be accomplished on the smallest of porches—or even a front stoop. According to Overton and other front-porch enthusiasts, creating front porch magic is all about accessorizing.

“No matter its size, the front porch is another room of the house,” Overton said as he mapped out the geranium-and-ivy inspired décor scheme for the inn’s summer porch. “The porch should never be thought of as just a cement slab or a wooden addition on the front of the house. It’s a room and should be treated—and decorated—like one.”

In other words, welcoming guests on a porch that hasn’t been properly dressed would be like serving iced tea without the ice, or cake without icing, while wearing a bath robe. That’s not exactly the welcome any Southern host or hostess wants to present.

Ready to give your plain Jane front porch, or even your front stoop, a Southern belle makeover? Here are some tips from Overton, a floral designer turned innkeeper, and Sally Ann Holsinger, a decor enthusiast who owns Back in Thyme, a design boutique in downtown Staunton:

Keep it clean. Before she stages her porch and patio each spring, Holsinger sweeps and scrubs the floor. Don’t forget to do the same for any walls. Windows should be sparkling clean, as should the front door. If the door needs a fresh coat of paint, take care of that before you clean the floor. Don’t forget to dust shutters and give any outdoor furniture a good scrubbing.

Set the stage. “You want an entrance area and a sitting area,” said Overton. If space is tight, consider placing a bistro chair or other small seating element in one corner. Overton also recommends including a table for a drink or magazine, if space permits. Holsinger keeps an outdoor lamp on her porch. “It’s much nicer in the evening than having a bright outdoor light shining in your eyes,” she said.

Add some filler. Due to the size of the Inn’s front porch, Overton and Gregory are able to mingle accent tables and other pieces of furniture, like potting benches, among seating areas. Try the same on your porch. You may be amazed at what you find indoors that you can incorporate outdoors, particularly if your porch is covered, Holsinger said.

Soften the edges. Thanks to the variety of outdoor textiles available, you can have your cake—on the porch, no less—and eat it too. Area rugs are an excellent way to make a porch or patio feel like home, as are strategically placed curtains or simple sheers.

Accessorize it. When dressing her porch and patio, Holsinger takes the indoors out. From plopping comfy cushions in chairs and tossing a cozy quilt across a bench to creating a planter in a chair with a rotted seat, Holsinger says she tries to decorate every inch as if it were any other part of her home. Even walls are adorned with wreaths and architectural elements, such as old doors and shutters.

One of Overton’s favorite porch accessories is an antique goat cart he and Gregory found in West Virginia. Whether filled with potted geraniums in summer or evergreen boughs during the holidays, the cart brings a bit of whimsy to the porch.

“That’s important,” Overton said. “You want people to stop and take a second look. You want them to feel welcome, like they can come up and sit for a while. That’s what front porches are for.”

Beyond the Belfry

Bats are common in the Shenandoah region, although you have probably never seen one.

BY JEREMIAH KNUPP
PHOTOS BY HOLLY MARCUS

It’s a common animal in Virginia, but most of the state’s homo sapien inhabitants have never seen one. It plays a vital role in the ecosystem, with many benefits to humans, but is misunderstood and even feared, shrouded in a fog of myth, misconception and late-night horror exploitation. The animal we’re talking about is the bat.

There are 13 distinctive species of bats in Virginia, seven of which can be found in the Shenandoah Valley. The most common is the Little Brown bat, a diminutive creature that has a wing span of 10 inches and weighs less than half an ounce and feeds around pasture fields and lakes. Bats make their homes in everything from man-made structures to trees to the caves so common to the mountains of western Virginia.

Popular Programs

Douthat State Park, a nearly 5,000-acre facility near Clifton Forge, has a special relationship with the small winged animals. In 2001, local Boy Scout Christopher Bartley built bat houses for an Eagle Scout project, and the tall narrow “rocket” shaped structures were placed around the park. The bats were quickly incorporated into many of the park’s educational programs. Each summer, there are daily interpretive nature programs, including a “Bat Kapers” event, where children get the facts on the creatures. The program is also provided as an educational outreach that has been popular with local schools.

“The bat program is one of our most requested programs in our educational outreach,” said Beth Hawse, Chief Ranger Interpreter at Douthat.

Bat Myths

Hawse described a few of the bat myths she commonly encounters as she spreads the facts about bats to the public.

• Bats aren’t blind. Despite the pop-culture idiom, all bats have varying degrees of vision in daylight. Some even use their eyes to navigate in flight. Others use echolocation, a form of biological sonar shared with whales and dolphins, where animals generate a sound and then listen for its echo to judge the distance and type of objects ahead.
• Bats aren’t birds. They are mammals, just like you and me, and the only mammals capable of flight (flying squirrels “glide,” if you’re wondering). Their motion in flight is much different than birds; instead of flapping their wings, they grasp and release them like a hand (bat’s scientific name, Chiroptera, comes from the Greek words for “hand wing”). And despite being mammals, bats are not “flying mice.” If you see a bat crawling around the ground, Hawse noted, don’t assume it’s injured and needs your help. Bats can’t just flap their wings and take off like birds. They have to drop into flight from their upside-down hanging positions. The bat will probably find its way to a tree that it can climb to drop into flight.
• All bats aren’t vampire bats. These carnivorous animals are found only in Central and South America. Some bats feed on fruit. All of the bats that are native to Virginia have a diet composed exclusively of insects.
• “We encounter lots of kids that have what we call the ‘Animal Planet’ or ‘Discovery Channel’ syndrome,” Hawse said. “They know about animals from all over the world, but they’re not familiar with what’s in their own backyard.”
• Bats do not carry rabies more often than any other mammal. Hawse noted that less than half of 1 percent of bats carry rabies.
• Bats won’t get stuck in your hair or attack you. If you encounter a bat at dusk, it may swoop toward you, but only because it is eating the insects that are hovering around you.
• “Many children have ‘nature-deficit disorder,’” Hawse said, using the phrase made popular in the book, “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. “These kids don’t get out in nature enough, so they have unnatural fears like ‘will a bear eat me while we’re hiking?’”

Bat Benefits

Bats provide many benefits to humans, destroying mosquitoes and flies and preying on beetles and caterpillars that damage plants and crops.

“They’re ‘nature’s bug zapper,’” Hawse said, noting that some bats can eat half of their weight, or 600 to 1,000 insects, in a single evening.

Homeowners who are interested in having the creatures around can build their own bat houses. Douthat has a “Roost in Peace” program, where children and adults construct a bat abode using a kit of two-by-four pieces and plywood. Bat houses not only attract the insect eaters to your neighborhood, they can also provide bats an alternative to nesting in other man-made structures, like your attic or chimney. So invite some bats to your backyard. You might have the chance to teach someone else a thing or two about Virginia’s most misunderstood mammal.