Independence Day

It's July 3, and I hear fireworks going off all around me, but all I smell is honeysuckle.

Which begs the question, how on earth has our honeysuckle lasted so long this year? It's July. Shouldn't it be long dead from the heat?

Also, moving into a new neighborhood always presents an opportunity to observe new people in a new environment. What we've found is that this new environment is absolutely fantastic. We really couldn't have found a better neighborhood.

Here are some of the things we've seen so far:


1--The elderly woman, and by elderly maybe 70-years-old, at the end of the street throws birdseed out in her driveway to attract birds, squirrels, chipmunks, every morning only to sweep it up every evening. I guess she puts out the same birdseed every morning?


2--J., our next door neighbor, is apparently a retired nurse, but when she invites all her "old nursing friends" over, she comes to our house to invite us to join them for "cocktail hour," which lasts until 1 a.m.


3--Jack, the next door neighbor to the other side of our house from J., is an avid gardener. He rang the doorbell three days ago to drop off okra and squash from his garden simply because we're his neighbors.


4--The tree at the edge of our property and the edge of Jack's property is really an apple tree. Really. An apple tree. I've never seen one in real life. And it actually produces eatable apples.


5--The neighborhood kids, and by "neighborhood" I mean the kids on our street and the street perpendicular to ours, spend hours each day riding bicycles in circles around the cul de sac that ends at our driveway. They also play with balls, rackets, and toy trucks that often end up staying the night in our front yard. They're lovely kids, and they wave, and wave, and wave when you drive past.


I just love our neighborhood. It's like a little piece of my hometown, Foreman, in the middle of a city. I see kids on bicycles converge at the end of the road, take off their helmets and goof off with no parental unit in sight.

It's just that safe. It's a place where everyone looks after everyone else, and we're all in this crazy world together.


We couldn't have found a better place, a neighborhood, a better community to live.

I guess we just lucked out.


Here's our house in the major March snowfall. I really have to go take some new pictures.


L.