This got me to thinking that I'm seeing more beautiful things in my life these days. Why is this, I wonder. Maybe just because I'm older, or because I need more beauty now and so I am finding it.

The reason doesn't really matter. Especially in the last year, my life has seemed tremendously full, often chaotic, and yet, I've managed to fit in thousands of visual pleasures.

For example, on tour this week, we pulled up in front of a small wooden house on Addison Street in Berkeley. It is painted white, trim and all, and on the front porch was the agent, Kathryn Hill who had a broom in hand, was sweeping the porch and steps.

Kathryn is tall and slim, and she has long, blunt-cut hair, and she was wearing a soft blue cotton dress. There are four or five wooden steps up the front of this cottage-look house, and on either side at the top, Kathryn had placed pots of red begonias.

Part of my quick pleasure was the red flowers, white house and blue dress together; part was seeing the simple act of a woman sweeping the porch. I didn't think through it all then but now I think it was it was a safe and sweet picture, one that might easily have been a photograph taken 50 years ago.

Another visual treasure on the same morning: in an attic apartment, thin, makeshift pine shelves, open on both sides, next to an ancient, gas hot plate, the manufacturer's name in raised script in the cast iron. On the shelves, stacks of variously sized and colored pottery plates, some with scallops on the edges.

A few weeks ago we held open a beautiful turn-of-the-century house in Rockridge, a house full of old wainscoting, box beams and plate rails, and a fine and shiny new kitchen. People loved this house, the warm, old wood details and the fabulously appointed kitchen. They exclaimed and pointed out their favorite features to one another.

But as I stood there greeting people and looking at the house again, I decided that there was one exceptionally appealing thing in that house, one so good that, although no one specifically commented on it, it sold that house: a bay of kitchen windows.

There are five sets of original, wooden casements in a shallow bay on the back wall of the house. They've been painted many times, they're scarred in some places, don't even meet well in others. The center pair was flung open to a breeze.

Beneath the window is painted bead board, the kind of narrow-ridged wood used often in old kitchens, and outside the windows are twining wisteria vines and window boxes of yellow, pink, blue and orange flowers.

When you walk into this kitchen, your eyes take in the sleek white tile, smooth white cabinets and the large stainless steel stove. Then they skip beyond to a dining table, the windows, the shape of the bay, the air and light coming inside.

You can't help but place yourself in France, or in New England near the sea, or almost anywhere you've been out in the country and remember fondly.

There were seven offers on that house and, of course, there are many reasons so many people wanted it for their own, but I believe that it was those kitchen windows that were at the heart of the sale.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could tell people who are building or remodeling what visual details would bring them the most pleasure as they live with them and later, when they sell, be most appealing to others?

I don't know how to do this but I am greatly interested when I recognize something in a house that succeeds very well. These successes seem usually to be reminiscent of something good, they are often subtle, and frequently they intensify the relationship between the house and the outdoors.

Chris Cohn had a house open about a month ago on California Street in Berkeley, a lovely little cottage, scrubbed spotlessly clean, airy, with a bathroom that was larger than usual, a nice kitchen and a long-view garden.

Plants grow along the sides of the yard making a frame. At the back is a large, beautifully shaped tree - a redwood, I think - and the center of the space has been kept open, green and well watered. This garden beckons, offering enclosure, calm.

All of this would have been plenty and more, but there was one other, very alluring thing about this house. At the rear is a porch sort of a bedroom with a back door and a wall of wooden windows, the walls and ceilings covered with painted horizontal boards. In this room is a double bed - facing out to the windows and the tree - high with soft blankets and pillows.

I'll bet everyone who saw that bed in that room felt as I did that sleeping there would ensure everlasting happiness.

I was torn between hurrying out to see the tree close up and jumping into the bed, pulling the covers up to my nose and lying quietly for a time.

This house also sold very quickly with more than one offer. Just to be sure I was remembering the porch as it really is, I called Chris Cohn and was surprised to find that the walls and ceiling of the bedroom are plaster, not wood at all.
Isn't this interesting? The feeling of the room is so evocative that in the short time I was in it, I must have been transported to screened porches in summer cabins I have slept in, or perhaps to others I have read about. Images I didn't even know I had stored away were tapped and twined by what I saw.

There are many charming and beautiful things in this world that bring us pleasure. Some we actually see, others we imagine that we have. Either way is fine.