So, here are some recent pictures. The first two are the lot directly across from my house. Only, really, it's only about a 3/4 lot. Used to be a little pump shack sitting on top of a little, man-made hill, smack-dab in the middle of that lot, that served the neighbourhood water supply. When the roads were re-done last summer, a new shack was built at the top of the street, this shack was abandoned, then removed, the hill demolished & now the family who owns that land has decided they're going to plop a full-sized house smack in the middle of what used to be a nicely wooded (even if it was only willows) little lot. The last of the trees in the neighbourhood. Or, the last of the "unplanned" trees, anyway. Except for our next-door neighbour, who's been in his house for over 20 years and has a couple of huge birch, a few choke-cherries, and some willow & cottonwood in the back yard, the rest of the trees throughout the neighbourhood are scrawny, transplanted little birch that just can't dig through the hard-packed ground well enough to really spread & grow. And even those birch that do produce nice canopies are short, multi-trunked things that never get any real height. Even our little gangly birch, transplanted last year, is still a scrawny little guy that doesn't look like he'll ever "flesh out". So, here I have been, watching this lot get razed, then dug out, over the last 3 days. And it pisses me off, and it makes me sad. The houses in this neighbourhood are all packed in like sardines. Our next-door-neighbour (the one who's lived there for 20+) and a neighbour across from him, have triple & quadruple sized lots, but because they bought 3 (and in J's case, 4) lots before the rest of the lots were developed. Even if my husband and I DID want to purchase another lot, adjacent to ours, there aren't any. The two neighbours directly across from me COULD have bought this spare little lot & divided it down the middle, and each had a larger lot themselves, for extra space, but they didn't.

But, it just irks me that these folks who own this property can't see how homely, how unattractive this neighbourhood is, with no attention paid to landscaping, with no attention paid to house placement. That each house literally sits feet away from it's neighbour..... Between my house & my next neighbour over (not the one with the 4 lots to his property), there are maybe 12 feet. TWELVE FEET!!!! That's 3 feet off the side of my house, and another 9 for her vehical, then her house. I hate, hate, HATE being packed in here like sardines. I WISH we could afford to purchase a new house. Not even a larger house necessarily, but one with a bigger lot. (Well, with 1170 sq ft, 1400 or 1500 sq ft would be great! And I really don't want to have to clean something much bigger than THAT. Though there was this beautiful little 1800 sq ft log cabin we looked at that had THE MOST INCREDIBLE custom wood & counters & a wood-stove with a slate surround.....)

Anyway, had to gripe a little bit, show the damage done to those trees. Mourn a little bit for their loss.

The other picture is obviously, my daughter. All dressed up as a vampire for Halloween. She did have some black lip-stick that got smudged all over her face (actually, as much as I hate to admit it, that was black lipstick left over from my "goth" days in HS). And black nail polish. That wig is hilarious (and a disaster). The hubby tried it on, but I didn't get to the camera in time to snap a pic of him. I'm trying to talk him into letting me take a pic so we can give it to his mom for her photo albums. He's not falling for that reasoning. He knows I wanna show it to my friends. He looked like he belonged in an 80's hair-band, with the wild, black & maroon hair, and his very prominant nose. It was adorable. And DD looked adorable (when she looked fresher, instead of at the end of a long night, when this pic was taken).

Ok, there ya are. Some new pics.

Have a Blessed Day!