A walk on the quiet side

I just returned from a walk in the cool of the 5:45 a.m. day. As those of you who know me know, my major enemies are noise and heat. These days, it’s too hot for walks unless it is 5:45 in the morning. The air was very damp, but not sauna-like as it would become with the appearance of the sun. Not a single car went by as I walked the quiet, pleasant streets of my neighborhood, passing the large, attractive, lovingly maintained houses and lawns. My only company were the birds, who provided that cacophony of birdsong I would miss if I were deaf.

Each house I passed was distinctive – no tract housing here. Most are New England white, of course, with the usual black or dark green shutters, and all are made of wood. But there is the occasional pale yellow, deep rust, grey, dark brown one, to add variety. There is even one outrageously bright blue house (all right, I can hear Bob the cartoonist and iconoclast say). The vast majority are two-storied; one magnificent example of Victorian architecture has three floors, the third including a large cupola. Most of the houses have sizable porches, often with wicker rockers or other outdoor seating on them; a good many of the porches are screened-in.

And people make their homes distinctive in ways other than the architectural. The gardening is very individual, from neat beds set here and there across the green lawn, rimmed in with ground cover like white and green hosta plants, to large patches of side lawn that are given over to a riot of flowers and tall grasses, making them look wild. And there’s the house that has made its small front lawn into a vegetable garden. The long, straight brick walk of another very impressive house has tiny plants growing up along the cracks between bricks, so that standing at the end of the walk, you seem to be looking at cultivated farm rows in miniature.

There is the smiling face (not a “smiley face”) made of what look like walnut shells, imbedded in the trunk of a handsome black maple. The collection of homemade birdhouses -- no two alike – that cluster like a small town at the edge of another front yard, with a little stuffed rabbit peering out of one door. At one house they seem to have taken advantage of a sale on burnt gold spray paint, as that is the color of all the balusters in the porch railing, as well as the wooden rockers on the porch.

And everywhere are the enormous old trees, lots of shrubs and flowers. One of the reasons I love living in the northeast: the lushness of the vegetation. The ubiquitous orange day-lilies are a little past their perky prime – the relentless sun and lack of rain for the past week have drained the blossoms of their sunset brilliance – but they are still to be seen in nearly every yard, their long stems reaching up and leaning forward out of their collar of long, narrow leaves. A number of porches sported hanging baskets overflowing with colorful flowers, and one house even had a great, fat cluster of lavender flowers, seemingly pinned to the middle of the front door (how did they do that?)

I feel very lucky to have found my cozy little house in this lovely neighborhood. When I could be struggling to stay alive in Darfur, or Burma, or even a poverty-entrenched village in Mexico, I have to see how lucky I am. While my job is the source of some frustration for me, and the low salary makes my life very difficult, my home, and my physical surroundings, never cease to give me pleasure.