Environment

Here are several shots of the outside of the house and the yard. Note that most people here have carports, not garages; JT keeps asking when we're going to have the door put on the "garage". "It would keep the car warm, Mama!" It DOES get cold, here; we've had numerous freezing nights. But the autumn days are beautiful, bright, and clear! The main title photo is another shot of my front yard; the trees are still lovely, although losing leaves fast!

I kept seeing big piles of leaves at the corner of everyone's lots. I thought, "Aren't those just going to blow all around and make a mess again?" But the city sends around this machine with a big claw-arm on it. It reminds me of those games where you try to grab the stuffed animal out of the machine. This thing scoops up all the leaves and takes them... away... somewhere. Tax dollars at work! AND! Contrary to Orange County, if you happen to have more bags of trash than will fit in your can on a given day, or in my case, a LARGE pile of flattened cardboard from moving, or some other something that can't go in the can, you can put it NEXT to the can, and the trash guys WILL PICK IT UP FOR YOU!!

I can't begin to imagine the look of disbelief on my face when I was told this! "It's going to take me WEEKS to backlog all this trash and stuff so it will fit in the can a week at a time," I bemoaned.

"Oh, no," my friend said. "Just pile it all up out there with the can, and they'll pick it all up for you."

"You're kidding me," I said. "Pies, leaf-collection, and full-service sanitation engineers?"

"No, of course I'm not kidding. Welcome to a small town in the South."