Golden Yarrow is rooted in place--your happiest spots where you feel the promise of more times to come. For many, that place is home. And we're suckers for the fictional homes that have housed some of our favorite characters. It was hard but we chose four homes that we'd love to spend time in.

Orchard House in "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

Orchard House was, in fact, both a real home as well as the setting for her most famous characters. As Louisa May Alcott said herself, "The power of finding beauty in the humblest of things makes home happy and life lovely."

Here's a cozy description that makes us wish we were invited in to perform a play in the attic.

"It was a comfortable room, though the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain, for a good picture or two hung on the walls, books filled the recesses, chrysanthemums and Christmas roses bloomed in the windows, and a pleasant atmosphere of home peace pervaded it."

Gatsby's Mansion in "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The grandness of this estate was eclipsed only by the sadness of the characters. That said, can you imagine showing up on a hot summer night to a roaring bacchanal around the marble swimming pool with mint juleps and gin rickeys flowing?

This description alone from narrator Nick Carraway makes us wish we could sneak inside during the party to investigate: "We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms with sunken baths–intruding into one chamber where a dishevelled man was doing liver exercises on the floor… Finally we came to Gatsby’s own apartment, a bedroom and bath and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a glass of Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall."

Green Gables in "Anne of Green Gables" by L.M. Montgomery

The magic descriptions of the Lake Of Shining Waters, the Haunted Wood and Lover's Lane make us just *know* we'd be kindred spirits with imaginative Anne. If we visited Green Gables, we'd want to sample the raspberry cordial.

Green Gables, with its neat white facade and bright trim, always evokes a tidy image as shown in this except:

"With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt."

^{The Berenstain Bears' Treehouse}

^{What if we'd just rather live in a treehouse? Life down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country seems an idyllic place to be, especially under Mama and Papa's care. Check out how their treehouse evolved on the Berenstain Bears' blog.}