ode to my neighborhood

Every day I am grateful to have found a home in such a wonderful neighborhood.  There are several contributing factors to this little area's wonderfulness:

*my neighbors, of course~  We've got a few houses right next to us filled with lovely folks from whom we have borrowed many things, swapped pet sitting chores with, lent many things to, talked for hours and hours with, cooked with, walked with, learned from and shared meals with over the past year or so we've called this house our home.  I look forward to continuing this for years and years as we watch our children grow and explore together.

Our backyard neighbors, both Hungarian, both cooks, who don't realize that things like mowing the lawn in (only) your Speedo (he) or standing on your back porch in your underwear (she) while talking with your neighbors aren't normally considered acceptable practices in these United States.  And as such, I find it strangely endearing.  They pass over tastes of homemade goodies from time to time, she tells me about her fears of all things that fly, even butterflies, and how the chickens are helping her out a bit there because she loves them.  Loves them so much I have to keep an eye on her or she'll feed them every scrap she can find in her house and from the cafe where she works.

A little ways down the road are the lovely women who allowed us to pick 3 bushels of apples off of their tree last year, just after meeting them.  There's a woman in a house a block or so away that I direct my flower growing questions to, the man currently staining the side of our house (so that it matches the rest of the house!) lives 3 blocks away, we've already been invited to share in a big neighborhood 4th of July party in the backyard of another woman a few blocks down for whom Mike has done tree work.  She and I also plan to get together to knit and play around in her craft studio some time soon.  The decades between us matter not.

I feel I should mention the time I was walking back from town with Claire and one of our neighbors greeted me over his fence with a loaf of fresh bread right out of his oven.  Now seriously, does it get any better than that?  He happens to be the same kind soul from whom I recently purchased Mike's birthday rain barrels.  He's also raising chicks at the moment and he's got a lovely wife who is a pianist.  She played some carols for Claire when we stopped in to say hi last Christmas.

While we were out walking 2 nights ago a woman asked if I was the one who wanted to know what kind of flower a certain one in her yard was last year..... "yep, that's me" I said..... "here", she said, "I dug some up for you yesterday, it's called carya japonica".

It's a fun kind of neighborhood, for sure.  The kind of neighborhood where, in nice weather and sometimes in not so nice weather, it is more common to find the majority of us outside piddling around and talking to one another than not.


Also list toppers,

*the short walk to a just-right sized town that has all that we really need
     (though a small movie theater would be really, really lovely)

*the many playgrounds within walking distance

*free music at the lake (also within walking distance) in the Summer

*the greenway-in-progress that will one day make walking further easier

*our yarn store (that as I learn more about knitting I will hopefully have more cause to visit regularly), our library, our hardware/general store, the local coffee roastery,  Fresh, Blackbird, the Farmer's Market, the Tailgate Market..... etc