Sunday Recollections

My acre lot is narrow and long so I can, for the most part, see my east and west neighbors, although on my western side, I have transplanted 12 Magnolia trees from my parents house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and several years later they are a good 15 feet tall and wide and since I planted them close together, they make a excellent privacy fence.  On my eastern side, my neighbor I can see but he seldom leaves his dwelling and it is his garage that is next to me which acts as an excellent buffer.  On my northern side there is nothing but an open field where deer stroll and a wooded area where our cats like to roam.  My southern side is my front lawn of sorts since outside on the back deck is where much time is spent.  My neighbors are at a good distance and while I can see them when they are out and about, a good spyglass I need to distinguish their features.

I perform my own lawncare during the fall, summer, and spring, sow my own grass when needed, and trim back all the shrubbery that we planted ever fall which gets a little more daunting the older I get.  So...  instead of doing all this maintenance in a day or two as was typically the case over the Thanksgiving Holiday, I now spend a leisurely week or two preparing my landscape for winter...  and while these winters have recently been very mild there are still COLD days which bother me tremendously as does the humidity of summers.

The pace in the SOUTH is somewhat slower than the NORTH although one can find several exceptions to this generality in our larger cities like Atlanta and even Knoxville has become more frantic as the years roll by which is why I remain out of the city as often as I can and if I do have to venture into that despair, I always time my visits  before or after rush hours.

My front porch has two rockers and a swing and parallels the entire length of the house but is seldom used; in fact, I don't recall a time when we ever sat out there and watch the traffic pass by as so many of my neighbors do and have done for hundreds of years.  It seems that front porch sitting is something indicative to the SOUTH and I cannot imagine why because whenever I have done this at other house I find myself getting incredible bored just looking out and about.

COVID-19 has completely retarded our travels this year and no doubt beyond and I fear that we will do little travel elsewhere until a vaccine has been found and even when that is done, my Oncologist may or may not let me take it depending upon whether the virus used is dead or alive.

Rain just blew in and has forced me off the back porch but it will soon blow out and I will return as the warm days will soon become few and far between and inside this house I will remain until it warms up again since some 5 months hence.