So much is changing, my head is spinning. My favorite grocery store of 39 years is now shuttered. The local bowling alley is being torn down today. My sister and brother-in-law left California for Nevada. They used to be just 90 minutes away.
A friend died of cancer last month. My middle daughter’s dog died. My youngest daughter lost her job as the whole operation shut down.
And so on and so forth. It’s only August. What else is going to happen?
It just goes to show that nothing stays the same.
I have new neighbors next door. They asked the gardener to rip out the juniper hedge. He took out the wrong hedge. My five-year-old oak tree that planted itself is now getting sunburned. The hedge used to shade it. I’ve wrapped it up in white for these three days over 100 degrees. It may survive, and it may not. Why do I care? I didn’t pay for it or plant it. I thought it might someday become a nice shady tree, enough to shade one car on the court.
I love my sunny court, but no one has front yard trees anymore. The guy on the corner cut his down because it as messing up his lawn. Really? A gorgeous shade tree in exchange for even- colored grass? What a shame. Another neighbor planted three birches but didn’t water them. One is gone, and the other two are on their way out.
Two other neighbors have front lawn but no trees. A third has a big birch tree too close the house, and a small magnolia tree off to the side, but mostly grass and flowers.
I, on the other hand, let most of the volunteer trees stay. I was telling the new neighbors that one of the valley oaks started off in 2015, another in 2019, and the little one in 2021. None of them look like the stately oaks they will become someday, unless the next owner of my house cuts them all down.
And they might. People seem to care more about solar panels than shade. I just don’t get it. Shade helps reduce the AC bill, and solar panels help reduce the heating bill (in theory, anyway). I didn’t buy solar panels when everyone else jumped on the band wagon. I read one of the leasing contracts, and it said the company could come into my yard and cut down any trees that got in the way of sun reaching their solar panels.
No thank you, I told the young man who wouldn’t give up until that moment.
But I digress.
The bowling alley will become townhomes. No one knows about the grocery store. I now shop at Lunardi’s, where everything costs fifty cents more, and stylish couples shop together on Sunday mornings. I prefer the old guy with the honking nose who was always there when I was, and with Meredith, the friendly cashier, and the happy bag boys, not the one at Lunardi’s, who, when handed my cold bag, only put one thing in it — the ice cream bars, and then overloaded my other bag with everything else, the two avocados squished in the middle.
I’m going to have to train him, I guess.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 