Neighbors

 

OK the universe just posted this by mistake, but perhaps it's good to see since we've got quite a lot of the opposite kind of weather these days!

My shaky hands/fingers will sometimes do whatever I have little control over.

I walked (last week) to the top of the hill in the apartment complex in North Carolina. Just to breathe deeply the cool air...though later in the day it was muggy as can be, triggering lots of coughing fits. But for a while I could just get out of breath and stop for a bit to catch my breath. At the top of the parking lot, where I stopped, I found a neighbor having breakfast.

After my first photo on phone, I kept walking and taking more, hoping to get a closer image with my 5X magnification limit.

He actually continued nibbling in between these shots, perhaps 10 seconds apart.

Sharing with Saturday's Critters.

Some other views of my neighbors...

And my back was aching as I walked back down the hill.

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And as I move away from the familiar to be closer to at least one family member, I was happy to help out my next door neighbor this week. She lives here to be close to her daughter who just had a second baby. My neighbor doesn't drive much, but keeps her van running. She needed a ride to pick it up. I needed ice cream. So the cost for her was to stop at the "Blue Cone" for ice cream on the way to her car place where it had been worked on. Mmm, that soft serve locally owned little store makes just the right coolness for a hot day!

Yes, neighbors are important, as are family, and especially our chosen family, our friends! At least for me that's what I've learned in this lifetime.

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There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincere, active, constructive hope for the human spirit.

MARIA POPOVA

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To be fair to phone readers, and Vicki Lane, who commented on the header, here it is.

Photo from the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle, her sister ships, Portugal's Sagres, Romania's Mircea and Germany's Gorch Fock in the Sister Ship Race (Germany won) on the way to Boston July 11, 2026

As fall closes

 

What's going on in my neighborhood?

I put many plants out to catch the recent rains...

The neighbor on far left has only a hanging fern, and a nice welcome fall banner.

At the end of the building another neighbor has a pumpkin displayed

My other next door neighbor has some flowers still blooming on her railing. We may share a wall, but it's a concrete fire wall, so we never hear each other thumping around.

My balcony is in the center and still had it's healthy Kalanchoes out when I walked around the building last week. It was warm enough a downstairs neighbor, and myself had our bedroom windows open. I used to cough so much at night, I wouldn't open my bedroom window and bother my 3 neighbors who sleep so close to me. But these days my cough has become much more infrequent, so if it's in the 60s at night, the window is cracked usually. I know TMI~~!

The Bradford Pear has lost a lot of its leaves...as have the maples outside my windows. So I can wake up and see the mountain ridge again...a true pleasure.

P.S. I need to mention that the management has sent out a letter saying we are not to put any decorative items off our porches...and can only keep our porches with just porch furniture. So I dare say the person with decorations stuck in the ground, and the one with planters at the end of the banisters may have removed them. It's a sticky wicket, as they say, because apparently the woman who lived in my apartment before me had little figurines all over the grass in front of her porch...which of course meant the grass couldn't be cut. Thus rules are made. And we're threatened with eviction if we break them. Ugh.

Today's quote:

It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story. 

Mary Oliver

Out and about again...

 Remember a week or so ago (time is so mixed up these days!!) I showed you the back of a house with several nice balconies...well, I finally drove around to the front...which looks very different, don't you think?

 Here's the back...yes, I swear it's the same house!~

 And here's the remainder of the sunflowers...at least the zinnias are still blooming.

 Then I noticed the roofs of new homes...and drove where I could see them...but not where there was access to them.  They look really big compared to many of the existing homes in this area.

 This road didn't really connect to the one that their approach is on. I'm glad because this little road has a 90 degree turn in it already, as well as a steep hill next to the sunflowers fence....it doesn't need any more traffic than the 3 houses already on it.

Today is the anniversary of my granddaughter, Cayenne's birth. Happy Birthday to a gifted young woman!

Today's quote:

We feel like separate water droplets but we are also ocean.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Being in the right place...

I missed meeting a friend yesterday, never caught up with her as to why she didn't make it. (see below)  I hope all is well.  While sitting around, I got to chat with the administrative person at church, who works in a small office with computer and printer.  That was nice.   But after a while I decided to go on home.  That's when the administrator said she had a message for me, but she couldn't find it, and didn't remember what it said.

I called my friend and left a voice mail, asking her to reschedule.

Went on home and got the mail.  And there was a woman with an electric wheel chair walking her dog, on one of those leashes that retract.  But the leash had gotten under the big motorized wheel and wound several times around.  The woman was trying to go back or forward and another woman was rushing out of the laundry room (right next to mailboxes and the neighbor with wheelchair and dog).  She tried to do something, but needed to go pick up a grand-kid at school.

Location of boardwalk in front of laundry room (no people and tables today.)  Mailboxes in corrider to right. Office is in building to right.

I was free to help, but couldn't figure out how to unwind the many turns of the leash (more than just once) on the axle of the wheel.  I thought maybe we'd have to cut it, but also I wanted to get the manager and or the maintenance man to come help.  The manager came out of her office with me, to find our neighbor lying by the wheelchair, trying to reach through the few openings in the wheel.  Manager and I were both worried about neighbor on the boardwalk.  She said she knew how to get down and work things that got caught.  She actually had moved the chair back and forth a few times, and now only had one more loop stuck on the axle.

The Manager had contacted the maintenance man, to perhaps use some tools to reach the leash?  In the meantime, I pulled one end, and neighbor puled the other, and then she reached through and pushed the leash the other way, and at last it was free.

By then we'd put the dog who was shivering from the 31 degrees of cold into the laundry room.  But we brought him back outside.  And neighbor was praising God for giving help.  But she couldn't get up from the boardwalk, as she's paralyzed from the waist down.  The foot rests of the chair were in her way to lift herself up to sit in it.  A couple of neighbors tried to lift her, but she was facing the chair and was just total weight, not able to get into it.  And they complained of their back problems.

I offered to get a straight chair from the laundry room, and she was able to get herself pulled into it, and then transferred sideways into the electric wheelchair.  By then it was snowing lightly.  And then the maintenance man came to help, and there wasn't anything left for him to do.

So I figure I was in the right place at the right time.  And then I was happy to bring my mail home to my warm house, and feel thankful for what abilities I have after seeing what my neighbor had to deal with.

And then I turned to Facebook and read about someone who got a horse out of the second story hay loft using a power lifter thing (and I can't find it again, sorry, I don't know who posted it, someone in Virginia I think.) My life is so simple!

And then my friend emailed to apologize for standing me up.  She had been in ER with a TIA this morning.  She said that our meeting wasn't really that important.  I agreed!