This week, while I've been away from my blog, Mother Nature has been doing her best to paint our landscape. We've had sunny weather well into the 80s with unusually warm nights for April. This morning, as I was having toast, I looked out into the grove, and realized that the shrubs and trees were beginning to blur the outline of the the houses to our west.
During the winter, when the trees are bare, we are very aware of our neighbors. There are six houses along our lot line. From where I'm sitting, I'd guess the houses are about the distance of a football field, or one hundred yards. Our grove is old, and a great deal of it has fallen over the years. We've purposely left it wild as cover for wildlife.
I welcome the leaves in the Spring. They give us a sense of privacy you don't normally have living within the boundaries of a town. The noise is muted and the trees give us a little relief from the afternoon sun.
Despite what Robert Frost had to say in "Mending Wall," I rather like the barrier my grove gives. Perhaps I'm like the neighbor who is buried in the past, but there are times when privacy is to be cherished.
Comments (3)
Cop Car had this to say to me.....but my blog guardian objected: "Each of us has a need for privacy--some of us more than others. As the rats in the maze show us, we get psychotic if we don't have sufficient psychological space. My mother's ideal space was 40 acres--into the middle of which she wished to plop her house! Most of us can get along on somewhat less than that. Think in terms of Ronni's Manhattan. Perhaps a person there perceives the whole of Manhattan as his/her psychological space?"
Posted by Buffy | April 20, 2005 9:11 PM
Posted on April 20, 2005 21:11
Bogie replied:
"Buffy - We have neighbors that are a lot closer than yours, and we are hyper-aware of them until the leaf cover hides them (okay, it only helps fade them into the background, but it is much better with the leaves).
Cop Car - So that's where I get it from; I've always said that my ideal house was one plopped smack down in the middle of 30 acres!"
Sorry about the censor problems, ladies. I see if I can get help with it. Buffy
Posted by Buffy | April 21, 2005 3:20 PM
Posted on April 21, 2005 15:20
Yes, Bogie, you are into self-sufficiency in many of the same ways that your grandmother was. She would have loved to have lived on a farm her whole life. Mom & Dad H left the farm because Dad couldn't wait to get away from it. First, he became a machinist, then an electrician--anything to get away from farming!) Mom H loved canning fruits and veggies, making jams and pickles, and growing things. Mom S also loved to grow things; but they were usually flowers, and she never had much space in which to grow them. You should remember what a fabulous cook she was (she had boarders during the 1940s),
Posted by Cop Car | April 21, 2005 9:47 PM
Posted on April 21, 2005 21:47