MY NEIGHBORHOOD
I live in a pleasant residential neighborhood in a town of 30,000. It is a neighborhood of single-family homes, conveniently close to shopping, and pleasantly green with glimpses of nature.
Most of the houses in my neighborhood are single-family wooden houses, of the wood frame construction common in the northern U.S. It's an old house and the stairs and the floors creak when I walk on them. The house I grew up in was like that, so to me it is the sound of home. Each house sits on its own separate lot, with, typically, a small grassy front yard and a larger grassy backyard. On summer weekends people sometimes have family gatherings and cook hot dogs and hamburgers in their backyards on gas grills.
My neighborhood is only 0.5 kilometers from downtown, and I can walk to a full-sized supermarket, a dozen restaurants, a clothing store, a drugstore, and the public library. My "fitness plan" for retirement consists of trying to do as much shopping as possible on foot, rather than by car.
My neighborhood isn't the open countryside, but it has lawns, trees, and open space (a cemetery and a school playground). I enjoy glimpses of nature I can see right on my own block. In summer we leave the windows open and we can hear the sounds of birds in the morning: robins, mockingbirds, cardinals, Baltimore orioles, mourning doves. Sometimes at night I hear the creepy whinnying sound of a screech owl. Of course I also hear traffic, train whistles, fire engine sirens, but on the whole is it is a quiet, peaceful neighborhood.
My neighborhood could be almost any residential neighborhood in any city the same size in the Northeastern United States, but it's special to me because it's home.