I see Ronni. That looks like a nice countryside there. I looked at Google maps and could see that there was plenty of land and water where I could imagine that deer could roam. It looks like a very nice area of your country.
Sjoerd, you post reminded me that I could show you what I'm talking about in terms of my yard, the other yards without fences, and the land and river behind. arial shot ( photo / image / picture from Ronni's Garden )
wow... now THAT is a backyard!! Edited to add: Okay... now you made me go out and get an arial of our place. Yellow square is the house. Little green circle is "my" spot. Pink outlines our property. the homestead ( photo / image / picture from cherylad's Garden )
Gad Ronni--That looks....well..... I don't know-- fabulous. I can see easily how there could be deer there. Is that a large river flowing there? At any rate, a water source for the deer. I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to inform me.
Looks like you have a lot of land Cheryl, yes? Also, if your property is boundaried by the pink, why is the "A" on the photo all the way over to the left? Is that where your mailbox is or something? Why did google decide THAT'S where you are? Sjoerd, yes that's a river that runs behind the property. Back in 2010 when Nashville had its disastrous flooding, that river rose to almost the back door of our house, and actually did flood some of the other houses in the subdivision. You can't tell from the photo, but the street our house is on rises gently and peaks just about where our house and the one to the right sits, and then slopes gently down again, hence the lack of flooding of our home. That abundance of land behind us, about where the trees start, and the river beyond, and beyond even that, is all city land. About a quarter mile from us there's a canoe launching site, and beyond that is a huge soccer field. It's really nice to know that there won't ever be houses back there. The position of the river, the lack of access to the land, pre-empts any possibility of building anything, so we don't have to worry about being encroached on. There's also a train track that you don't see in the picture. It's far enough away that the noise of the train is almost imperceptible, but the train whistle isn't. I can't tell you how lovely it is to hear that train whistle blowing off in the distance. It's not intrusive at all, somehow comforting .....but I guess you have to like train whistles to feel that way. Anyway, that adds to the ambience for me.
Ronnie... we have 2.5 acres. Google has a hard time pinpointed my exact location sometimes... don't know why the "A" is way out there in the neighbor's pasture. And try finding the place with GPS... the only way it will find you is if you type in the old name of the road... which used to be Charlie's Lane. But it's mis-spelled "Charlias". Good thing it's a County Road now... with a sign. I like your back yard view much better than mine... don't get me wrong, I love all the open space... but to have a those trees and a river right there.... that would be great.
Well, the more description that you give, the better your place sounds. It was a stroke of luck that your home was at the crest of a hill when the floods came--sort of Biblical, that story was. The best part of your writing for me was your description of hearing the train's whistle and the feeling that, it evoked. From a musical standpoint, the train and its whistle as well as what the train represented was translated into a whole range of romantic, happy, sad and wishful emotions that one would feel. It is perhaps difficult to imagine it could mean such things to a person in these days and times, but I can well imagine how the somewhat haunting sound of a distant whistle could call-up these feelings in someone. I do not know what sounds your trains make exactly, but the ones here are not really something that would inspire poetry. Passenger trains pass by the lottie every thirty minutes or so, thus I have become so accustomed to them that I almost do not notice when they pass. Having said that, there is a small tourist steam train that passes through the residential area of our city and that DOES have a sound that could inspire the feelings that you describe. The feeling of calm and the reminding sense of a history that has not and will not be forgotten.
One of my most prominent childhood memories... getting to stay the night at my grandparents house. Rain on the tin roof... the train going by... and those handmade goose down pillows and quilts. Ohhh... but before that... the most wonderfully simple supper and the world's best cookies. Oh wait... and then there was the stories and the 78s on the record player. And add in a few cousins. And who could forget those old photos of ancestors on the wall. You know the ones... like their eyes followed you around the room. I could go on and on... but basically, that is why I LOVE to hear the train go by.
You can very faintly and intermittently hear the chugga-chugga-chugga sound of the train moving along the tracks, but the whistle is very clear, though also faint and far away. Any why on earth do they call it a whistle? It doesn't sound anything like a whistle sounds. When I was house hunting for us, I looked at another house much deeper into this subdivision where we are now, and actually that first foray is what made me instruct my realtor to keep an eye out for any other homes that popped up here, because I liked the area, the proximity of trees and river and the general country feel of it, even though just a mile away there's a busy, thriving commercial strip that has everything I need on a routine basis...loads of restaurants, grocery stores, craft stores, discount department stores (where I get all my goofy knick-knacks for the outside) pet stores......and everything else you can think of that you'd need on a routine basis. That other house? I loved it (though it had too many stairs for Lee) is was SO cute. I was actually brainstorming with my realtor how it might be able to work, when I noticed a noise, that began faintly but kept building, until she and I were having trouble hearing each other. Yeah, you guessed it....that same train, the tracks of which were angled across the back yard in such a way that at one corner, it was only 3 or 4 car lengths away. There were bushes and foliage in front of it so that there was no way to see the track, and you barely even saw the train when it passed. But you sure could hear it! Glad that happened when it did, or I might have gotten much further into my planning for that house before I discovered the problem! Oh wow Cheryl! I want to BE there. Right now! It honestly sound like a scene out of a movie! Which, I'm sure, is where those kinds of movies got their inspiration from! What a lovely set of memories for you to have.
