Old home's end

In addition to my travels on foot, I also do a fair amount of bicycle riding, and on my 10-mile training ride, I pass by an unoccupied house. A guy who was something of a hermit used to live there, but after he passed away more than a decade ago, the house sat empty. I don't know why no one bought it and moved in—it was old and small, but charming—and after a while, the weather started to take its toll. During the biking season, I ride by at least a couple of times a week, and over the years, I started to notice that the chimney was losing an increasing number of bricks, the roof line was sagging, and the weeds were overrunning what used to be a garden. When the entire south wall fell in sometime in 2013, the decay accelerated. The last straw came during a major rainstorm recently, after which the rotted and water-softened rafters could no longer hold the roof upright. In the twisted wreckage, even the sparrows and swallows could no longer call the old place home.