My Novels

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Let's go for a walk!

The past two days have been gloriously warm, sunny, a preview of spring and how much I'll enjoy living here again during that season. Not only am I looking forward to the wonderful weather, I'm already planning where I'll have my small veggie garden in this yard. I'll post a photo at the end of this with that area -- in a corner of my fenced backyard.

Yesterday I carried the camera with me as I walked the dogs through the neighborhood. Come along and see what we experience on our walks....

Half block from my front door, heading east down the street toward the creek

Street that borders the creek. You can't actually see the creek for the woods, but I can hear it after a heavy rain


At the end of the creek street, looking out across a field and an old house. Not sure anyone lives there now, but the original owner's adult kids own all this open land (sitting on a fortune there for developers!)

Now walking west, the street facing the empty land and other side with houses

Turned left at the corner of that street, still bordering the vacant field, heading south


Looking across field which runs downhill to the same creek behind the other house I will sell; those houses in the distance are on the streets where I walked my dogs in the neighborhood. Only a few blocks and the fields/creek between the two houses.

Turning corner to street that borders the nearby park where I sometimes walk dogs, and used to ride my bike every day (plan to start again when weather is better)

And then we ran into this dog -- who followed me home the other day and seemed to want to live here. However, the young lady at that house came out, said she was having a hard time keeping him without a fence. Said her hubby just got back from Iraq, and they'd found the dog starving at a nearby truck stop, rescued it. Oscar & Rambo had to do their usual "meet & greet" sniffing specific body parts, posturing, etc. The dog was very submissive, probably realized that Rambo is the ALPHA dog. LOL

This the last street, heading back to our house. My niece and her children live just before the end of that street; the kids were out playing, so we stopped and they petted the dogs, etc.

And last, this is the corner where I plan to have my veggie garden next spring/summer. I will have a small fence built to keep the dogs out. It should be an excellent spot, enough sun but some shade for lettuce, fragile greens. The straw from the pines is a bonus, already there to use once raked up in the spring!



I don't always walk those streets; sometimes I head up my street, which is only a block from the historic district. The next time I go, I'll take my camera along and get some photos of the beautiful historic homes. The best part is the sidewalks, which go all the way into town. If only we still had a grocery store I could just walk there to buy stuff. However, now there's only specialty shops, nothing similar to how it was when I was growing up with "mom & pop" grocery stores, department stores, ice cream parlor, the Ritz movie theater, etc. Shame we have to drive to either the north or south end of town to buy from Wally World or big chain crap stores. We lost most of the charm of a small southern town when that happened, starting in the mid-80s and still continues today.

Blustery, rainy day now, and I have several rental movies to watch over the next couple days. A great memoir I'm about halfway through "Perfection" by Julie Metz. It details her husband's unexpected, untimely death and then the horrible discovery he'd been cheating on her for YEARS! Fascinating read.

I'm also looking forward to watching, "My Sister's Keeper" which everyone says is good. Yet I've heard the film departs from the novel's ending -- and I'm curious. If it's very drastic, I can't imagine the author could have been happy about that!

As for Christmas, I already have my gifts: the large plasma TV, this renovation, and my move back HOME. What could have been better, even if I paid for it all myself. A gift to me, from me.

We had a small family get-together last Saturday, went to a restaurant to eat, exchange inexpensive gifts. Now they all seem to have come down with some kind of stomach virus, but I'm fine (so far). Keeping my fingers crossed...

That's it for now. More to come next week when I write my year end summation of this past year and plans/hopes for the New Year!

3 comments:

Stacy Horn said...

I loved this, getting to see your neighborhood. I'm going to copy you and take pictures of walking around mine.

And again, I'm very sorry about your mother. Death is so terrible. I don't know what else to say. Oh, here is everyone's favorite death poem, from Auden, I'm pretty sure you know it:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Cara said...

Thank you Stacy for your kindness and the poem is one of my favorites. I felt exactly like that when my husband died 3 years ago, and now my mother's death.

R'laine said...

Thank you for sharing your neighbourhood with us, I must do that the next time I take the dog for a walk. It's a great way to see the world through another's eyes.