99999 Majestic Trace #25, Hendersonville, NC 28739

It's been a year since we settled in and my back deck has slowly become my favorite room in the house. My three-bedroom home is nothing showy around 1400 sq.ft., but the walk out basement is full of light, and we love to spend the cool evenings on the back porch. Most mornings I'm out on the upstairs porch off the main living room, coffee growing cold, just watching the stream catch the light. The stream’s constant murmur sold me on this lot before we’d graded the house seat. At 2,400 feet, the hardwoods hold onto a coolness the valley below doesn't get, and I trimmed the rhododendron along the bank so I could see our many visitors. I've learned the creek's morning rhythm. Most mornings I’ll see a doe and her fawn pick their way along the far bank. Wild turkeys work the leaf litter past the tree line. Chipmunks scold me from the rock pile, while the songbirds and Carolina wrens fill the air with song. The occasional pileated woodpecker hammering somewhere up the ridge never really...