How sweet is this or what?

Okay. I wouldn't want to live next door to or across from Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor, let alone live there. Frankly, it's an eyesore.

My house color palette is more subdued. I spent my early years in my grandmother's chocolate brown with yellowy-cream trim decker, and the rest of my childhood in a house that was charcoal gray with a yellow, and later red front door. My adult life has been spent in red brick buildings and, for the last 3+ decades, granite with (at present) a battle ship gray door.

I can't imagine living in a house painted a crazy (IMHO) color. 

I like a lot of stuff inside the house, but outside? I'm a keep it simple, keep it flora, kind of gal. The houses I've lived in all had grass, trees, bushes, and flowers. At Nanny's, we had a birdbath in the back yard; when we moved to our own house, we had a swingset, sandbox, and clothesline out back.

There was nothing in either frontyard other than grass, trees, bushes, and flowers.

My small condo building has a tiny "frontyard," with a Chinese dogwood, a bunch of plants, and a small bird bath/fountain. There's no backyard to speak of, but what's there, on the concrete slab, are plants, an outdoor settee and chairs, and a large bird bath/fountain.

I've never lived with statuary, objets - stuff - in the yard.

Of course, as a child, I wanted statuary, objets - stuff - in the yard. 

My favorite yard in the world was a couple of blocks away from the house of my Chicago grandmother's house. On our bi-ennial trips to Chicago, the first item on the agendance once we got settled in at Grandma's was to get my father to take us to the "Elf House." Its yard was full of elves/gnomes: sitting on swings in the trees, playing card games on toadstool tables, standing there smiling at us. Now this was a yard to die for!

But once I hit the age of aesthetic reason, my preference turned to nothing much in the frontyard, and what's there can be a riot of color if it's flowers, and subdued palette for anything else.

Which is not to say I'm not plenty enamored with Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor.

First off, there's the color scheme, which looks like it should be located next door to or across the street from Barbie's Dreamhouse. Then there's all that glorious junk: "buoys, lobster traps, and nautical curios."

If this had been anywhere near me when I was a kid, I would have been perpetually pestering my father to walk or drive by so I could ogle it. 

But beyond the eye-popping color, beyond the frontyard riot, Smith & Agli's Potbelly Manor is "a nonprofit pig rescue dedicated to improving the lives of pigs and other farm animals in Rhode Island."

Owners Audrey Agli and Liz Smith put it plainly: They simply love pot-bellied pigs.

“They’re the smartest, most lovable animals,” Smith said.

“They really aim to please you,” Agli added. (Source:  Boston Globe)

While they're only housing a couple of them at the moment, over the years, Agli and Smith have cared for hundreds of potbellied pigs. Turns out that these porcine cuties "are the most throwaway animals."

One problem is their size. People buy them thinking that they're little cuties, - hypoallergenic! affectionate! litte guys! And then those potbelly pigs grow to somewhere between 50 o 150 pounds. 

Keeping the resident two potbelly pigs company are a couple of steers, a few goats, a llama, a bunch of pigeons, a dozen rabbits, ducks, and chickens, and eight cats. (No dogs? What are they thinking? I don't care how cute and affectionate those potbelly pigs are, they're not doggos! Sure, one of Smith and Agli's piggos is a therapy animal, but, let's face it, most dogs are therapy animals.)

But doggo quibble aside, how sweet is this story, how sweet is this house?

Agli and Smith are a couple of women of a certain age (my age or thereabouts, I suspect) who've spent the past 40 years together, and who are spending their golden, retirement years giving shelter to unwanted animals. (One of their steers was found wandering around Providence.)

Running Potbelly Manor isn't easy. It's pretty much a 24/7 operation that stays afloat with the help of donors and volunteers. You can virtually tour the place, meet the animals, and make a tax deductible donation here. 

What a sweet little story, what a sweet little purple house. When I was a kid, this would have been a house and yard to die for - especially if they'd added in a couple of card-playing gnomes.