Over the Hill and Far Away

Although I don’t want to wish Gustav on anyone, least of all longsuffering New Orleans, I was relieved to see this morning that our area is still well outside the Cone of Probability. Although it was quite warm when I set out on my walk about 7 a.m., there was a light breeze that made it fairly pleasant. It wasn’t a stiff enough breeze to be whipping trees around, though, even small ones, so I was puzzled by what appeared to be a small tree waving in the distance. As I approached, it became obvious that the “tree” was in fact a bundle of black helium balloons tied to an A-frame sign. It seems that the neighbor my husband and I have dubbed Mr. Status Quo (because, judging from the campaign signs in his yard, he intended to vote for the incumbent in every contested race in our municipal elections) is turning 40. One side of the sign read, “HI HO, HI HO, OVER THE HILL U GO.” The yard was filled with plastic penguins decked with sunglasses, leis, and, in one case, a widow’s veil. This was a new variation on the “Flamingo-a-Friend” concept; the display was provided by a company called Laughing Gulls Special Occasion Lawn Greetings. Presumably the penguins will be collected before Gustav has a chance to carry them off.

For the most part, people here don’t seem to be freaking out over Gustav. When I went to the grocery for milk, there was plenty, though the bread aisle did look a bit picked over (that’s common on Sundays, though)—a far cry from the scene a couple of days ago at Wal-Mart (or Walmart), where the canned vegetable shelves had been stripped bare. Most shoppers seemed to be buying ordinary grocery items in a relaxed, unfrantic way. Our neighbors across the street—the ones with the newest McMansion—have applied custom-cut plywood storm panels to their Palladian windows, but mostly people aren’t bothering to board up. While walking I did encounter one neighbor who was hitching his SUV to the back of his Winnebago. When I remarked on the obvious, asking if he was really bugging out, he said, yes, they were going to go to Ozark, where they rode out Katrina. I expressed surprise, pointing out that the projected storm track seemed to have veered well away from us, and he said, “We just couldn’t bear to live in that cave for several days.” When I got to his house (around the corner from where he had pulled the Winnebago in order to have a straight stretch of street), I saw what he was talking about: all the windows were very thoroughly boarded up, so it was undoubtedly very gloomy inside.

I hope that such precautions will turn out to have been overkill. The Winnebago owner was convinced that “this one is going to be worse than Katrina.” And indeed it probably will be, for some people. But he wasn’t here during Katrina; if he had been, he would know that it was no real threat to our neighborhood. In the 29 years since Frederic, we have not experienced any other storm as destructive or frightening. We’ve had strong gusts from subsequent storms, but not the relentless howling that was so nerve-racking during Frederic. After Frederic, my husband vowed that he would never again stay during a hurricane; we would pick up and go to his parents’ home upstate. But then his mother died, and his father sold the house and moved here and later died also, so that retreat is no longer an option. And our observation has been that all our friends who do pick up and leave seem always to have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. During Ivan our next-door neighbor went to stay with her parents in Brewton; her house here was untouched, while several trees fell on the house in Brewton. Another neighbor went to stay with family in Birmingham, and the ceiling of the guest bedroom collapsed in the middle of the night; she also returned to find her home here without a scratch. A friend of my husband’s evacuated to Atmore during Katrina; the motel where he and his wife were staying lost power, and they had to sleep in the bathtub during the storm; their house here would have been an equally safe haven.

So we won’t be leaving. I don’t think I could stand to be far away, worrying about what was happening to the house. I’d rather be here where I’m in a position to defend it. If our house were below sea level or barely above it, or if it were exposed to the wind, our decision would doubtless be different, but, as I’ve said before, we are high and dry, in a house that has withstood storms since it was built in the early 1920s and is now surrounded (and hence sheltered from the wind) by larger homes, so we feel confident.

Walk/Don’t Walk Revisited

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the city of Fairhope does not have pedestrian crossing signals. That is now changing! As part of the City’s continuing campaign to create a “walkable community,” these signals are currently being installed at some major intersections on Greeno Road (U.S. Highway 98) to supplement the miles of sidewalks the City had previously created. Time will tell whether these signals are classic plain-vanilla ones or the sort of high-tech ones I reported on before.

As for the day-to-day walk/don’t walk decision, this has been a bad week for walking (for me). In the end we did get about 4.5″ of rain from T.D. Fay, spread out over Sunday and Monday and preventing walking either day. Tuesday and Thursday were ballet days, and Friday morning I had an early Rotary board meeting and didn’t get home till 9 a.m., too late for a walk. So this morning was only the second time I’ve been out this week.

Wednesday morning’s walk took 46 minutes (compared to the usual 38–41) because so many of the people I ran into were inclined to discuss the results of the previous day’s municipal election. The outcome of the mayoral election stunned the supporters of at least some of the five candidates who didn’t make it into the runoff, and there’s considerable interest in whether the incumbent can withstand a challenge from the opponent who outpolled him on Tuesday, especially if all the voters who voted for other opponents flock to the frontrunner’s cause. The runoff takes place on October 7, and it bids fair to be an interesting month.

Today’s walk was interesting in another way: another storm is on the way (Gustav, which has now reached Category 4 strength), and a few residents have begun to batten down. We did go and collect our generator from our rented storage bin and hope that (and the six cans of Vienna sausages we bought yesterday) will be enough to encourage the storm to go elsewhere.

It was as we were driving home with the generator that we noticed the new pedestrian signals being installed. My husband recalled having heard years ago about students at Florida State University “playing Walk/Don’t Walk.” This was a prank whose successful execution requires a large number of participants (such as a student body). How it worked was that a long line of students would walk through town, single-file. When they reached an intersection, they would begin to cross it when the signal flashed “WALK.” When it changed to “DON’T WALK,” they would stop—in the middle of the intersection. Since there was a continuous line of students, this meant that intersections all over town were continuously blocked. Needless to say, the Tallahassee police were not amused. This sounds like the sort of stunt that would appeal to the pranksters of Improv Everywhere (not that I want to be accused of suggesting it to them!).

Fay Fizzles

Well, I didn’t expect to be able to get out for a walk this morning, and in fact I didn’t walk, though in truth I could have. When the radio came on at 6, I looked at the sliver of gray sky visible through the high windows in our bedroom and rolled over and went back to sleep. At 6:30 I did get up, and when I went out for the paper, it was obvious there had been rain in the night: water was standing in the dip at the end of our driveway, and the paper was double-bagged and tied, with water droplets on the outside. But it wasn’t actually raining, though the streets were wet and the overcast skies didn’t look encouraging, and in fact it didn’t start to rain till 8, so I could theoretically have fit in my 40-minute walk.

But I didn’t. Instead, I tucked into breakfast and the (dry) Press-Register, whose main headline, “Fickle Fay,” sums it up. Sure enough, T.S. Fay, now downgraded to a tropical depression, has veered north of us and is inundating central Alabama instead of the coast. It’s raining pretty hard here now (after 9:30), but the prediction is that we’ll probably get only an inch or so of rain, far less than the four inches being forecast last night, much less the 12-inch deluge that was earlier feared, causing the City of Mobile to open shelters and the University of Mobile to shut down for the weekend, sending resident students home (actions that both struck me as overreaction even at the time).

Elsewhere in the paper, Frances Coleman writes about the danger of becoming blasé about storms, but it does seem inevitable when every storm is blown out of proportion by wolf-crying media, not least of which is the Weather Channel, whose business model depends on severe weather. I worry, though, about the long-term effects of triggering everyone’s “fight or flight” response numerous times every summer. This kind of emotional stress can’t be good for us in the long run.

Awaiting Fay

They tell us that T.S. Fay (or perhaps, by the time she arrives, T.D. Fay) is on her way here. She is taking her time. Although her forward speed has increased from 2 mph to 8 mph, it will still be something like 24 hours before she arrives. So it was probably just coincidence that it was overcast and quite breezy this morning, perfect weather for yard work.

Yesterday I ended up getting out to edge the front walk after my usual walk, breakfast, and online chores—about 11 a.m. Not quite High Noon, but still a ridiculous time to be outside on a sunny day. This morning I skipped the walk, had breakfast, and then read newsgroups until A Decent Hour (8 a.m.) before getting out with the ridiculously noisy electric edger to do the driveway. Most of our neighbors are distant or absentee, but I do feel bad about “breaking the peace” so early on Saturday morning when our next-door neighbors (the ones who are actually in residence) are just yards away. Still, despite the sun’s occasional alarming attempts to break through, it was uncertain how long I would have to work before the rain began.

As it turned out, it was just beginning to sprinkle a little when I came inside a little before noon, and we haven’t really had any rain to speak of, though the treetops are still waving boisterously. I’m told this is Not Fay—well, maybe just the farthest outer bands—but it’s certainly pleasant nonetheless. We’re probably in for a drenching, and if Fay stalls in this area as she has over Florida, there will certainly be flooding in coastal and other low-lying areas. Our personal situation, however, is quite secure—on a bluff high above Mobile Bay and nearly at the top of a slope down which rainwater runs directly into the bay.

Without wanting to minimize the severe conditions experienced by others in Fay’s path, I have to say I can’t find much reason to get exercised about the coming storm. In our 32 years in this area, we’ve experienced a lot of storms, beginning with Frederic in 1979, the hurricane to which we have compared all subsequent ones, and so far none has come close to being as generally devastating, though severe flooding did result from Danny, who liked our bay so much that he just parked out there for three days, dumping heavy rain continuously, and of course Katrina did affect a good bit of the Gulf Coast, not just New Orleans. Not that we want another Frederic—far from it! We know we’ve been lucky, and if we’ve become a bit blasé about storms, it’s because no subsequent one has come close to topping Frederic.

In every case, though, the waiting is the worst part—not knowing exactly where the storm will strike and what the result will be. Will it be worthwhile to stock up on canned goods and batteries, or will we wish we hadn’t bothered? Should we tape the windows? (The answer to the latter, I can now categorically state, is no. Boarding up may do some good; taping just gives you a false sense of security. It also results in a lot of work getting the tape off months later, when all threat of storms has passed and your husband finally decides it’s safe to do so, by which time the tape has become very gooey. Now that we have finally had storm windows installed, perhaps this tape nonsense can stop.) Once we’ve stocked up on “hurricane supplies,” brought in the trash cans and anything else that might blow away, backed up the hard drives, and made whatever other preparations seem reasonable, there’s nothing left to do but wait. Worse still, we can’t even just go on with “business as usual” because our city has figured out that it’s prudent to turn off the electric power well before the hurricane hits to avoid the possibility of downed live wires.

Once the storm arrives, all we can do is hunker down and endure. Storms at night are worrying because we can’t see what’s going on. During Frederic we kept hearing loud cracks that, by the light of day, turned out to have been breaking pine trees, felled in our neighbors’ yards (there were no trees in our yard). In the end, though, we frequently end up sleeping through them. Storms during the day are frequently just boring. They never look as bad as they sound. Sometimes all we can do is sleep through those, too, though my husband likes to walk down to the end of the street and watch the bay thrashing (he stood out on the front porch during much of Katrina).

After the storm has passed, then we get out and assess the damages. Maybe we will be without power for a few days, using the Coleman lanterns and camp stove, opening all the windows in hopes of a breeze, and living at subsistence level till power is restored. At least we will have phone service (we virtually never lose that) and hot water (gas water heater—we never lose gas or water service, either). Or maybe power will be restored quickly and we’ll just have to get out and spend a day picking up debris—blown-down limbs and foliage enough to make a gigantic pile for the trash pickup. A halfway respectable storm will have downed some large trees that will be blocking streets or will have crushed someone’s roof, and these will provide interest for a day or two. Waterfront residents may have lost their piers or had a boat wash up in an odd place. By and large, though, most of us will be “back to normal” and ready to move on long before the local TV stations are willing to stop covering the storm in stupefying detail (to make sure that those whose power has just been restored get the full benefit of their reportage).

For the most part, though, even hurricanes here lately have been nine days’ wonders, so I won’t get excited about a tropical storm.

Back to School

I’ve always maintained that the Jews have it right: the year really does start in the fall, when school starts. The weather is part of this: I always find myself energized by crisp, cool fall days (though we don’t usually get those till well into October on the Gulf Coast). But there’s also the excitement and suspense of starting fresh with new teachers and classes. We moved so often in my childhood that I was often starting in a new school in a new town as well, so it was always a new adventure. Although I haven’t been a student for over 35 years and haven’t had a child in school since 1999, I still get a lift when school starts.

Buying new school supplies was always part of the fun. A new blue buckram–covered ring binder filled with fresh filler paper, new pencils and crayons and spiral notebooks—does it get any better than this? Alabama, along with many other states around the country, declared a tax holiday this past weekend that was also honored by the county and most municipalities. School supplies, books, clothing, and computer equipment up to certain dollar amounts were tax-exempt. Many families were able to shop tax-free for merchandise for adults as well as students, though some still grumbled about the timing of the holiday—so close to the beginning of school that many items, especially school uniforms, were in short supply.

For schools that start after Labor Day, as is traditional, a month would be plenty of lead time. But when the high schools in our county went to a semester block schedule, the school system adopted an insane calendar in order to finish the first semester before Christmas. The school year now ends in early May and starts in early August. Our students will be returning for the 2008–2009 school year this coming Monday, August 11 (the teachers have already been back all this week). Sweltering temperatures and copper thefts that have put many school air conditioning systems out of service will make this a trial for all concerned, I’m afraid.

Still, school must go on, and in fact this morning we got a bit of a break. A wild storm last night, with lashing winds and over an inch of rain, cooled things down considerably. It was in the low 70s when I walked this morning, with a fresh breeze that made it feel actually chilly. One walker I met commented that it felt “almost like fall.” Indeed it did. I encountered another reminder of the beginning of the new season (in education if not in nature) just around the corner from our house. As I approached, it became increasingly clear what I was looking at: two dozen yellow No. 2 pencils strewn across the street. Sadly, they had been run over and smashed into uselessness—perhaps a poor omen for someone’s fresh start!

Update: The spotted/invisible house (along with its outbuilding) is now entirely leaf-green with cream trim, blending even more invisibly into its surroundings. It does look quite nice, though.

The Names They Are A-Changin’

On my walk this morning, as I passed the salon where I get my hair cut, I noticed that someone had hung over the doorknob a plastic bag of magazines. [An aside: The bag was the type known as a "Thank you" or "T-shirt" bag. The first I understand: the generic bags are printed with just "Thank you!" instead of a merchant's name. But why "T-shirt"? The shape of the bag much more nearly resembles the other kind of undershirt, the kind called an "athletic shirt" or "singlet." I guess "undershirt bag" didn't sound nice.]

The bag was from a certain giant discount retailer that advertises “Always low prices.” Seeing this reminded me that I had recently been taken aback by a surprise move on the part of this retailer. For years I have been correcting “Walmart,” “Wal-mart,” and even “Wall-mart” to “Wal-Mart.” The company’s logo actually used a five-pointed star between the parts, but for general use a hyphen sufficed. The first time recently that I ran across a reference to “Walmart,” I assumed it was an error, but the other night I saw a commercial from the company itself that clearly showed that its new moniker is “Walmart.” It will undoubtedly take time to roll out new signs and rebrand everything in sight. I see that the “Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.” Web site still shows the old logo (and the favicon of the site is a blue star). On the other hand, Walmart.com has the new logo, including the six-pointed yellow starburst (flower) as its favicon. Wikipedia has one foot in both camps (it should be noted that probably the corporate name will not change even though the branding does).

I don’t suppose that this change should surprise me. Snappy names, free of punctuation, are more Web-friendly and look clean and modern. But I can’t help reflecting on a bygone era when staid, formal names connoted strength and stability. In those days, the name of my father’s stockbroker was Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Bean. I thought this was a wonderful name. When it became Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, I didn’t feel it had quite the same cachet. Now, of course, it’s just Merrill Lynch.

There was a time when an ambitious young lawyer or accountant or stockbroker who became a partner in his firm would aspire to senior partner status and perhaps even eventual recognition in the firm’s name. He might have to wait for a few other senior partners to drop off the twig, but sooner or later, if he worked hard and didn’t blot his copybook (and especially if he married the boss’s daughter), he might see his name added to the top of the letterhead. Those were the days when the firm’s receptionist might wear herself out just answering the phone.

And the names used punctuation—commas after the names, the last two joined by an ampersand. Such niceties are now entirely passé. Firms generally first drop the commas, then the ampersand. Some companies then start to run the names together: Smith, Kline & French becomes Smith Kline & French, then SmithKline & French; now it’s GlaxoSmithKline. I have stock in JPMorganChase (or at least that’s what’s on the dividend checks; apparently the name is actually JPMorgan Chase & Co.). As a result of the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, a Big Four accounting firm is named PricewaterhouseCoopers. A long-established publisher (also as a result of mergers) is now HarperCollins. (Presumably someone will have the sense not to try Merrilllynch.)

These are the kinds of names that make life difficult for editors and typesetters. Not only do they have to be carefully verified, but they pose hyphenation problems. Still they are preferable to contrived names (actually logos) that use unconventional punctuation. The star in Wal-Mart is one example. Another came up recently in a report I was typing. It seems that a certain appraisal firm wanted to be known as “Butler¨Burgher.” (In case that doesn’t come through for you, the central character is a small diamond.) I faithfully reproduced this usage in my report (although I thought it looked stupid). I would have preferred to use some more typographically friendly form, but I was unable to determine that there was a standard one. Others had referred to the firm as “Butler Burgher,” “Butler-Burgher,” “Butler & Burgher,” “Butler+Burgher,” “Butler*Burgher,” and so on. Ordinarily, I would consult the company’s Web site for guidance (usually at least the contact address will use standard characters), but alas! the firm is no longer in business.

Just one more example of the challenges that face copy editors!

Update: I see that Bill Walsh has written about the Wal-Mart “refresh” in his blog. He links to a Wal-Mart press release that in turn links to a page showing the evolution of the Wal-Mart logo.

Looking Up

Someone (I think it was my daughter) passed on this wise advice for tourists: Don’t forget to look up. Many of us, when overwhelmed by magnificent architecture or unfamiliar surroundings, tend to look down and around, whether we’re making sure we don’t stumble or admiring a Roman pavement, examining carved woodwork or taking in a scenic vista, while some of the most glorious sights may be above our heads. This is especially true in the case of classical architecture. The Lady Chapel of King Henry VII at Westminster Abbey has the most spectacular fan vaulting I’ve ever seen. A mirror is placed flat on a pedestal in the center of the chapel to help visitors admire its intricate tracery without getting dizzy. One also must look up to see the unique crests and banners of the Knights of the Bath and, partially concealed behind the banners, 95 medieval statues of saints. In a venue such as this, it is natural to look up, but one doesn’t always remember to do this outdoors, especially when bent on getting from Point A to Point B. (This is even more true if it is raining, which it was most of the time we were in England; getting a faceful of rain is something you try to avoid.)

When walking, I wear a hat with a brim, to keep the sun out of my eyes when it’s sunny and, if it should start to sprinkle, to keep the rain off my glasses. So I tend not to look up much. Today, however, after yesterday’s researches, suspecting that the mysterious blossoms might have fallen from a vine, I did look up. Sure enough, twined around the trunk and among the upper branches of the pine tree was a vine with clusters of three or more of these orangey blossoms. I picked up a fresh one to bring home, planning to google “orange honeysuckle” (a term I’d run across yesterday, though it seemed very unlikely since these flowers have no fragrance at all and certainly don’t seem to promise much in the way of nectar) and “trumpet vine,” a phrase I thought I’d heard somewhere.

First, however, I dragged out my Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Eastern Region. This guide is useless for identifying the flowers I see in people’s gardens, but since it seemed to me unlikely that anyone had planted this vine on purpose, I thought there was a chance it was a “wildflower.” Fortunately, the guide is organized by color and shape, and I very quickly located “trumpet creeper,” with a color photograph that unmistakably matched my sample. Sure enough, googling for “trumpet vine” or “trumpet creeper” produced many similar photos, including one from the Encyclopedia Britannica (which I reproduce here), which describes the flower thus: “The petals of the delicate flower of Campsis radicans (trumpet creeper, or trumpet vine) form a corolla tube with five spreading lobes. A shortened calyx tube covers the base of the flower.”

So, one puzzle solved. There remains yet another. I still haven’t identified the mystery room in the house under construction a few blocks away—the one that isn’t a pantry or utility room but may be an office (albeit rather short of electrical outlets for that, in my opinion). Somewhere recently I’d run across a description of a new house as having space reserved for an elevator. This is becoming increasingly common in an area where many retirees are building two-story homes they’d like to stay in as long as possible. Although a stretch, it occurred to me that perhaps that might be at least part of the function of the mystery room, so I thought I’d “look up” to see. Alas, no, the ceiling was full of ductwork, wiring, plumbing, etc. So that theory was a bust.

On the way home I ran into a building contractor I frequently stop to chat with, and I mentioned this mystery. He was intrigued, saying he hadn’t been through that house yet, but he said he would have to go check it out. I’ll be interested in his conclusions!

A Closer Look

I piqued my own curiosity with yesterday’s post, so this morning I was eager to reexamine some of the things I reported on yesterday. I stopped by the house with the flowers on the lawn and picked up one of the blossoms to examine. It is about 3¼” (8 cm) long, and I will have to revise my description of the color from “salmon pink” to “peach,” as the colors range from a golden yellow at the hollow stem to a deep orangey pink inside, with a pinkish orange on the outside of the tubular body and brownish striations inside. It is an elongated trumpet shape with five semi-detached petals forming the corolla. The petals have a sort of “onion dome” shape. I’ve scoured the Web with Google Images and can’t seem to find anything that quite matches (though there are some honeysuckles that are not entirely unlike it). If it came from a vine (perhaps a vine that has been cut down), that would explain its presence, which I can’t otherwise explain since there were no other plants in the vicinity except pine trees and azalea bushes.

As for the house with the skin disease, today I crossed the street to inspect it more closely. I found that the brown splotches were in fact not places where paint had been removed but rather places where something brown had been daubed on. Again, given the distribution of the daubs, I would imagine that this is some sort of rust preventive applied to the nails. Also, in the interest of accuracy, I should report that the “clapboards” I referred to are actually asbestos cement shingles or siding.

Finally, yesterday’s post elicited a comment (thanks, Luc!) with a question about house moving. I provided some additional detail in my reply to the comment, but there’s more! In this morning’s “Mobile Matters” program on WHIL-FM, announcer Kathy Richardson was interviewing Bill Shanahan, president and COO of the Mobile BayBears Minor League Baseball team. Among other things, Shanahan was talking about the plan to move Henry Aaron’s childhood home to Gaslight Park at Hank Aaron Stadium (or “the Hank” as it is affectionately known), where the BayBears play. As noted in the linked article, a local firm, Hinkle’s House Movers, will be moving the house from Toulminville (a neighborhood in north Mobile) to the stadium in south Mobile. From the watercolor illustration in the article, the house appears to be a modest one, but it also appears to be brick, so the move will be a challenge—though perhaps not quite such a mammoth operation as the one shown in the This Old House video I referred to in yesterday’s comment! Or the moving of Alexander Hamilton’s 1802 house by Wolfe House & Building Movers, which required lifting the house 35 feet to clear a church portico that was hemming it in.

Breaking Routine

They say (“they” in this case being medical professionals, scientific researchers, and other presumably reliable professionals) that the best way to insure healthful, restorative sleep, intestinal regularity, and general health is to maintain a consistent routine. I believe this. I don’t often have the “luxury” of sleeping in, but whenever I do, I can count on getting up stiff and achey and, worse still, becoming cranky a few hours later when I realize that the day has gotten away from me. I do usually go to bed about the same time every night and get up the same time every morning (even on weekends), and I have three (or two and a half) meals every day at approximately the beginning, middle, and end of the daylight hours. When we’re traveling, even without a time zone shift, the variation in timing (and quantity) of meals wreaks havoc with my system. Ideally, I need a little relaxed “warm-up” time in the morning, so I don’t really like early “formations,” but an early start often seems to be required when on “vacation.” That, too, affects me unfavorably.

My walking routine varies somewhat throughout the year. In the winter, I may delay my walk till midday, waiting for whatever warmth the day may have to offer. In the summer, though, I have to get out as early as possible, both to beat the heat and to avoid the sun, so I get up at 6 and usually hit the street between 6:30 and 7—after writing in my diary, bringing in the paper, unloading the dishwasher (every other day), pouring milk and orange juice, setting out vitamins, and getting dressed for walking. There are days when I could probably go almost straight from my bed to the street, but I’d probably kill myself trying to walk before my joints have had a little time to warm up, so these other routine activities occupy enough time to accomplish that.

This morning I was actually eager to get out. Because Tuesday and Thursday were ballet days and it rained Wednesday, I hadn’t walked since Monday. The weather prospects were promising: it was relatively cool (77° F.) and overcast. But when I went out about 6:30 I found that it had in fact actually started sprinkling. So I wrestled the garbage can from the curb back to its assigned spot and came back in to have breakfast, read the paper, answer email and newsgroups, and venture back out about 8:30. It was still pleasant: not only still cool and overcast but also blessed with a fresh breeze—a perfect day to be out, and being out at a little different time meant that I might see something a little different, too.

I didn’t encounter many other walkers (one grandmother with a stroller, concerned about rain), but I did see several people working in their yards. It was an ideal morning for it. I also noted a few other ephemera. A dead armadillo in the street reminded me how incredulous I had been the first time I saw one years ago (I had thought armadillos were strictly a Southwest phenomenon and hadn’t realized we had any around here). As I passed a yard full of overgrown grass badly in need of mowing, I noticed it was strewn with salmon-pink trumpet-shaped blossoms presumably blown down in a recent rainstorm—but from where? There was no likely shrub anywhere near. I was amused by the antics of two male cardinals establishing that they couldn’t both land on the top of a post at the same time.

But the biggest surprise was a house I had never seen before! I have been walking more or less the same route for nearly five years now. Sometimes I walk clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, thus varying the view somewhat, and the stretch of street this house is on is one I don’t always include, but still, I’ve passed this house probably at least five hundred times, and I’d never seen it before. Now, I’ll grant you I’m not always the most observant person in the world. The other day my husband asked if I had noticed the huge tree that had fallen down in the park. No, I had not. I had evidently been distracted by the fallen sign in front of it and entirely missed the huge horizontal trunk behind the sign. Still, an entire house?

I’ll grant you there are a number of reasons I wouldn’t have noticed the house before. The sidewalk where I walk is on the opposite side of a busy street. The previously invisible house is also across the street from another house on which considerable renovation work was being done for some time, and I was always interested in that, as well as in a house that was for sale (it recently sold, and I’ve been wondering if the buyers paid the absurdly exorbitant asking price). And it’s next door to some empty lots that are being advertised for sale from time to time. But still, an entire house?

I asked myself whether perhaps it could have actually been moved there while I wasn’t paying attention. House moving is by no means unknown in this neighborhood, but usually it means moving a small house off a lot to permit new (larger) construction. I’d never seen a house being moved in. In any case, it was clear that this house had been there forever. With its attached aluminum carport and its accompanying privacy fence, unpainted and weathered to silver-gray by years of exposure, it looked very settled. It’s a very small, nondescript house (the sort that are being torn down all around) that I would have had no reason to notice. What caught my eye this morning, in fact, was a change in the house. It looked as if it had developed some dire skin disease. Huge quantities of irregularly shaped brown spots dotted its white clapboard surface. I wasn’t close enough to determine the nature of the spots, but my assumption was that perhaps they represented sanding in preparation for repainting. From the distribution of the spots, I thought maybe rusty nails had been cleaned. Or perhaps it’s being prepared for moving, or for demolition.

Time will tell, of course, but it will not erase the embarrassment of having totally overlooked this house before today. I was still pondering this as I exchanged remarks on the weather with a woman working in her yard. The yard of a new house that was built on an artificially created lot. A lot on which another small, nondescript house once stood. A house that I saw every day for several years—yes, saw, but paid so little attention to that when, one morning, it was suddenly missing, I could not remember what it had looked like. There is another such house next door. It is for sale. Almost certainly, it will be bought by someone planning to tear it down and replace it with something grander. Soon there will be no small, nondescript houses left on this street. But at least I have seen one more of them before it was gone forever.