My neighborhood is a funny place sometimes. There is usually always a
happening of some sort.
The first Spring I moved there, I came around the corner to find a huge
caterpillar ride sitting on the street. This was part of the yearly fair
that comes to the neighborhood so that its large Portuguese population can
celebrate. I'm not sure what the festival is, perhaps May Day. I know two
things though: It's a celebration of spring's arrival and Portuguese people
know how to have a great time.
Then there's the lady just down the street who has weekly garage sales in
the summer. It's like our street's version of Winners. The merchandise
changes every week. One weekend you'll have a set of hubcaps from a '74
Chrysler, the next a Coke machine from the 1950's. Amazing.
There's the guy with the leather jacket who listens to his walkman while
performing his one man tribute to Metallica as he goes to get beer, Crebby
the Cat who has made it his mission to spray every car's tires, every day at
least twice, and at least once a weekend, our street brings out the opera
lover in someone. They perform an aria of their choosing, some sober, most
not.
Like I said there's always something happening.
I'd reconciled myself to winter and had been approaching the Christmas
season this year with a little bit more enthusiasm, even though I still feel
like the time is still running away from me like a Rottwieller with a
T-Bone. I was in such a winter mode, that I was seriously concerned about
what my next journal entry was going to be about, since an entry on a
gardening topic seemed out of reach. The only thing I could come up with
was some unoriginal item on wreathes or holly - like there isn't enough of
that around right now.
Then it happened. I walked out of my house late last week to find all the
concrete on the other side of the street ripped up. I just assumed they
were working on underground pipes or something and went on my way. But when
I came home, I noticed they had started to lay sod. Yes, sod.
Why they are doing this in December I know not. As I said, my neighborhood
is a funny place. What I will say is that it's given the schoolyard new
life. It always looked tinged with inner city barrenness and now it looks
downright hospitable. It's amazing what a touch of greenery can do, how it
can transform an environment. It grounds us and gives us more of a sense of
place than any slab of concrete ever could.
So I walk out of my house and get nipped by a cold morning wind, but am now
greeted by a frost-tinged bank of green. How determined it is to stay that
way remains to be seen.
I'll let ya know come spring.
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