What Do You See?

Immediately, what words pop into your mind when you look at this picture? 

Dilapidated farmhouse that should be bulldozed to make way for neat, cookie cutter McMansions in a suburban sub-division?

Money pit?

Lonely? Cold? 

I wonder why this old house was abandoned in the first place. Was it foreclosed during the Great Depression? Did the father/husband run off, leaving a young wife with two young children and a third on the way without any possibility of keeping the house let alone running the surrounding farm? 

Or maybe the younger generation does not want to be farmers, preferring the bustle of city life and desk jobs, so they just quietly slip away, refusing to be yoked to the land, the house. 

These are all typical scenarios that flutter through my mind, which don't require a lot of imagination, when I look at that photograph. 

But what do I really see? 

Possibility. 

A swing on a restored back porch. Warm lights glowing in the new windows. A small vegetable garden. Freshly baked bread cooling on the kitchen counter. Picnics in the shade on a Sunday afternoon. The backdoor slamming for the thousandth time as the boys race off to a pond to hunt for bullfrogs.

Photo from my Pinterest Board:Winged Thoughts

And the cast of this motley crew. Possibilities, indeed. Comment below about the words that immediately spring to your mind when you see either picture.