Home From The Outside

Here at last are some views of our new house, from the outside.  Here's the front of our home; the shrubbery nicely trimmed in front and one of my oak trees (off to the left) providing some nice shade.  Below is that very oak, which is either a "Live Oak" or a "Laurel Oak" - there are 19 species of oak trees that grow around here.  This one's pretty young; having very little Spanish Moss to call its own.

  On the right is a view looking up into my other oak tree, which is on the east side of the house.  It's much older and larger than the other one.  As I mentioned in the previous blog, there are many oaks all over the neighborhood, which actually provide a goodly amount of charm.

On the left you see that larger oak, which is on the east side of the yard, and to the right is my back yard which looks west.  It's rather narrow and is bordered on both sides by hedges; the taller ones on the right side divide my property from my northerly neighbor's and the other, shorter hedges provide a nice climbing opportunity for the squirrels to get up onto the roof of my Florida Room.   If you step just to the left of my back yard you find yourself on my tiny patio; just big enough for a table, some chairs, and my inherited barbecue, which is nestled in the arms of some shrubbery.  It's the thing on the left of the below photo covered in black.  We've never actually used it yet so for all we know there might be a stash of stolen diamonds under that cover!  Well, it COULD happen! 

To be entirely truthful, we don't spend a great deal of time outside in our yard - not only because of the famous Florida humidity but because there are a plethora of bugs, including wasps, to whose sting I am allergic! (I have my Epipen right next to my monitor in case of emergency).    We DO use the patio when Al smokes ribs or other meats and the side benefit of this is that the local squirrels (which, as I've mentioned before are very plentiful) are put off by the "burning wood" smell and since he started using the smoker they've stayed away much more than they did when we first moved in.  One for our side!!

That's pretty much "it" for the exterior of the house.  It's a small place - just a few feet shy of 1600 square feet.  When we downsized, WE DOWNSIZED!   The old house was over 2600 square feet so living in this much smaller place takes some getting used to.  I must say though, that there was a lot of space we nearly never used in the old house and here we're pretty much using every room.  Please keep in mind that we DO have a lovely, sunny Guest Bedroom (you'll see it in the next blog) all made up and ready for you to take a closer look!

Here are two of our permanent though nomadic neighbors.  Herons and other waterfowl constantly stroll around the neighborhood, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, no doubt eating some of the plentiful bugs I mentioned above.  The little lizard to the right was sunning himself right outside my front door the other day.  We see a lot of his family members around here, too.  There are also cardinals that probably live in one of our trees - we often see them lighting on our air conditioner but sadly, it starts up so often it scares them away!  They ARE beautiful, though.



So that's our neighborhood.  Not too bad, really.  Come on down and take a look!