Our neighborhood is so unusual in this day and age of mini-mansions and planned communities and HOAs. It’s not that it wasn’t a planned community, because it is- it’s just nearly a hundred years old. I have to tell you, I think we lost something in translation between then and now, ’cause I’ll take my neighborhood any day of the week. Within our streets off the main road, children ride their bikes freely from their houses all the way to the school park and back. There are always people walking their pets. Adults on bicycles. Older adults working in their garden or sitting on their porches. And there are trees. Every street is tree-lined with mature oaks and walnuts and crepe mrytles and all sorts of things. Why do modern neighborhoods have no trees?Why does it all have to be clear cut and razed before building? The temperature literally drops about ten degrees when you turn in to the neighborhood in the summer between the trees and the fresh air blowing in off the river. If you can imagine the background pictures of the houses in Sound of Music- that’s the style of houses we have here. It is so, so lovely. I still pinch myself that we get to live here in a veritable Mayberry in the midst of what is a rather hard scrabble urban town.
And gardeners! Boy howdy, do we have some talented people in this neighborhood. Just about every house has something lovely growing at every season- a veritable feast of beauty. We try to get out and walk almost every morning, and lately I’ve been snapping a few pictures each day. Our neighbor at the corner has an especially lovely garden and things are always changing. It always feels a bit like peeking into the secret garden each day as we lean over the fence to examine the newest flowering thing. All of the children and I have learned more about plants and trees in the three years living here than we have since they were born!