Living on tree-lined streets makes you young, thin, and rich

Well, that's a pretty amazing correlation, or is it causation? Articles like this catch your attention especially when you live on tree-lined streets. There are lots of factors here where the Phactors are. Lots of trees usually means older neighborhoods, which means older homes, and lots of younger couples with kids prefer the putty-colored developments in the burbs what with the new schools and all. Young professionals have no time for trees, gardens, and old houses. Of course, the correlation silly because the Phactors are not young, thin, and rich, although we can afford to live in this neighborhood, but so can senior citizens, city cops, gay guys, recent empty nesters, and indeed, some young, thin couples with young kids, but still not rich. Many of us think we get a lot of value in this type of neighborhood. This satellite image shows the east half of our block; the Phactors reddish house & garage roofs show up at the lower left down around 7 o'clock barely visible through the trees. Notice how the houses at the top with smaller lots have way fewer trees, except for the remarkable fellow who clearer his lot of trees and shrubs (just above center right). If you bisect the hedge row of trees at the top, that's about where our rear property line is backing up to four of the properties there. Trees are supposed to help your state of mind, and no question about it, our trees and our gardens make us feel much better, much happier, much thinner? HT to the Treehugger for the original article; check out some of the links therein.   

Market Apartment Complex that obviously is not in the USA

Little by little markets, particularly farmers' markets, are working their way back into the thinking of people in the USA. But markets like you see all over Europe remain rare in the USA although some dandy ones still exist in some cities, e.g., the Reading Station Market in Philadelphia and the City Market in Kansas City. This is an amazing market apartment complex (in Rotterdam), and it makes so much logistical sense for urban living. How convenient! You won't need a great big huge fridge if you are buying fresh almost daily.  And you won't need a car to bring home a week's worth of groceries either.  Everything about this concept is smart except you don't see such ideas being put forth in the USA. Our country is not very good at acknowledging that just maybe somebody somewhere else has a good idea and has figured out how to do things better than the USA does. TPP would like to see a sky-light down the center and more "green" space below, a tree-lined promenade for example, but hard to argue with otherwise.

Parking spaces - bikes vs. cars

Our local municipality did a pretty neat thing.  It constructed a big bicycle rack, one big enough for a dozen or so bikes and placed it in a parking space right in front of our favorite coffee shoppe.  How cool is that?  Does TPP have to tell you that car drivers, most of whom now lack the skill to parallel park anyways, complained.  That's right, take away one car parking space and the complaints came rolling in even though in the process a dozen or more people get to park their bikes in front of the coffee shoppe (which is also near the post office, bank, theater, etc.).  Here's the math simplified from an article found at the Treehugger.  Take away even more car parking and you've got room for trees.  Take away more car parking and you've got room for sidewalk cafes. Or should we pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Oh, so you live too far out in the burbs to make biking efficient, well then, you chose poorly didn't you? Contemplate this while you search for a car parking spot. 

Wildlife friendly yard to a point

My wife and I own a most excellent property, a big park-like yard right in the middle of our city. Properties like ours are rare, especially when their fate is usually to be subdivided and developed. Indeed, the former owner worried that an unscrupulous buyer would take advantage of a buildable lot to make a quick buck. Our goal is to garden.

Our yard is certified friendly to wildlife, and indeed many animals live in and stop by. Night before last we watched a little red bat swooping over our lily pond to grab drinks of water. The birds are certainly a constant delight. But there are times when my love of wildlife wears a bit thin in the rodent department. The rabbits are a bit annoying, but the fox squirrels and woodchucks can be a downright pain.

My early kitchen garden was coming along quite nicely: spinach, lettuces, broccoli, snap peas, scallions. And they were fenced to keep the rabbits at bay. But a woodchuck pushed under the fence and made quite a nice feast of our early garden. Small gardens only provide a modest meal for such gluttons, and here I publically declare war. Live and let live extends only as far as the boundaries of my garden. I cannot say how it will be done, but with some luck and our superior intellect, a truce will be reached whereby the garden goodies will be eaten by the people raising them and a woodchuck will continue their life of plant consumption elsewhere, a distant elsewhere.

I'm all for ecology within limits. So let this be a warning to the squirrels. A repeat of last year's consumption of every single strawberry long before they were ripe will have severe reprecussions. You've been warned. Exile awaits.