Monday Meandering - 8.26.2019

If the old almanac observation about judging the depth of the coming winter by observing how the critters pack on the fat during the Fall is to be believed, we are in for a hard winter.

The pecan crop around here seems to follow a bi-annual pattern - good year, then lean year. This will be a lean year. Not that many pecans to begin with, and certainly not after the squirrels get through. The entire pecan crop seems to lying in fragments on outr driveway and front walk.

From early morning to late evening, the resident squirrels gnaw the still-green pecans into fragments and discard the detritus on the ground, where it remains to be crunched beneath our car wheels as we come and go.

The yard guys come and blow the fragments away periodically, but I think the squirrels just consider this a challenge to recover the driveway as quickly as possible, which is pretty darn quick.

Monday Meanderings - 8.12.2019

News from the Neighborhood

The car is gone!

The car that showed up across from our driveway when the City was repaving finally got hauled away. After a police officer had tagged the windshield with the orange sticker of abandonment, I thought it would be weeks still, but in less time than that another officer showed up, followed shortly by a tow truck. The officer and truck driver took an album full of photos each and finally hoisted it onto the truck and took it to a far better place. At least as far as we are concerned.

The Crack House is gone!

A house up the street from us fell into disrepair and the various groups of renters in the recent past have not exactly added to the over-all quality of the neighborhood. A neighbor up the street had reported drug deals that occurred there, and it was getting pretty dicey. No more.

The owner - new or old - stripped the house to the studs, literally, replaced the wiring, plumbing, windows, cabinets, and appliances. It has been re-roofed, re-painted and landscaped and placed on the market. For $415,000. I notice there's a contract pending.

The fence is up!

After we puzzled a while over the row of flags dotting another neighbor's yard, and decided that they marked where a fence would be positioned, and a great deal of time passed with nothing happening, the fence went up this week. Looks pretty strange to us. Sort of a ranch-style fence positioned across the side and front yards.

What was that?

The other night, at 11:55pm, to be precise,  a very large, very loud, very low airplane flew over the house - and took a long time to do so! The next morning our local chapter of the Nextdoor social media app, which usually concerns itself only with lost dogs and cats, blew up with questions from a large swath of neighborhoods about the mystery airplane! At last count, 123 neighbors posted questions and opinions about the plane, and what it might or might not have been and why it was so low, and why it was so slow. As with most social media, the conclusion was inconclusive. It was a very large, very loud, very low, very slow airplane. Go back to bed, folks.