My Neighborhood

I have lived in my district all my life in various locations.  Before I was born, at the beginning of WWII, my parents bought a brand new house in the new "Parkside" area.  My mother used to tell me that west of our house was all sanddunes.  Soon after the war was over, the district began filling in with homes "for the newly returning people in the armed forces" who purchased them with money from the G.I. bill.  Now I live a little closer to the ocean between two parks and on the sanddunes, but there is a lot of concrete and asphalt between the sand and us.  However, the sand dunes definitely prevail--I see evidence of them in the unkempt gardens as I wander through the neighborhood on my walks.  In front of people's houses, there is lots of sand with foxtails poking out along with brownish grasses and other weeds.  When I sweep my basement and the patio, there is always sand, and my cat brings home lots of fleas.  The gophers also make lots of tunnels and leave little mountains of sand all over any open grassy areas.  At the beach is the last remnants of the dunes--they are now planted with more indigenous plants, but the dunes are always changing shape and moving.  As the sand piles up, the highway has to be closed and machinery brought in to haul the sand away.  Sometimes I think it would have been better to have left this area to it's natural state, but it's too late--I live here along with lots of other people.

I have been trying to think about what this blog will be about--I have decided it will be about me mostly and what I do, my memories and my observations of the neighborhood, and anything else that pops into my head.  It's nothing scientific or cultural or arsty or even specific--just about how I relate to everything around me--including my family who are welcome to write something also.