Erelong we found ourselves in Spook's Lane. It is a very short side street, leading out to open country, and far away a blue hill makes a beautiful back-drop for it. On one side there are no houses at all and the land slopes down to the harbour. On the other side there are only three. [...] And the third and last is Windy Willows, right on the corner, with the grass-grown street on the front and a real country road, beautiful with tree shadows, on the other side."I fell in love with it at once. You know there are houses with impress themselves upon you at first sight for some reason you can hardly define. Windy Willows is like that. I may describe it to you as a white frame house... very white... with green shutters... very green... with a 'tower' in the corner and a dormer-window on either side, a low stone wall dividing it from the street, with aspen poplars growing at intervals along it, and a big garden at the back where flowers and vegetables are delightfully jumbled up together... but all this can't convey its charm to you. In short, it is a house with a delightful personality and has something of the flavour of Green Gables about it. [...]The little green side door, which we reached by a darling path of thin, flat sandstones sunk at intervals in the grass, was much more friendly and inviting. The path was edged by very prim, well-ordered beds of ribbon grass and bleeding-heart and tiger-lilies and sweet-William and southernwood and bride's bouquet and red-and-white daisies, and what Mrs Lynde calls 'pinies.' Of course they weren't all in bloom at this season, but you could see they had bloomed at the proper time and done it well. There was a rose plot in a far corner and between Windy Willows and the gloomy house next a brick wall all overgrown with Virginia creeper, with an arched trellis above a faded green door in the middle of it.
