Neighbors I Never Knew

We live in a friendly little subdivision called Terra Mar Village on the Intracoastal Waterway, halfway between Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral. While it’s not a 55+ community like so many here in Florida, and there are some families with children, most of the neighbors we’ve met are in the 50+ age range. Besides two swimming pools, an activity center/clubhouse, and our 300 foot long fishing pier and boat launch, there is shuffleboard and some things like that. I think they have bingo one night a week and occasional potluck dinners and such, but Terry and I have never taken part in things like that. We seldom did when we were fulltime RVers. And since I spend much of every day writing, we just don’t mingle all that much. We know some of our neighbors fairly well, and others enough to nod and say hello to, but that’s about it. Yesterday, I found out that there are a bunch of neighbors I never knew.

If you have been reading this blog for very long, you know that Terry and I are both night owls. I usually write for several hours during the day, then we knock off for dinner and watch some television in the evening. After the 11:00 o’clock news, I go back and write my blog, sometimes do research on whatever book I’m writing, jot down any story ideas that have come to mind, and answer e-mails that came in during the day. So it’s seldom that we get to bed before one or two AM, and by the time we snuggle for a while it’s often 2:30 or 3:00 o’clock before we fall asleep.

Just as there are night owls like us, they are also early birds, those people who are up and about at the crack of dawn doing their thing. Yesterday morning I was an early bird myself, because Terry’s new Whirlpool microwave oven was supposed to be delivered at 7:45 AM. It was still somewhere around 3:00 o’clock by the time I fell asleep the night before, so when the alarm rang at seven, I was pretty tired. But I got up and got dressed to await the delivery man.

It was a little after 8:00 AM when they arrived, and by then, I was wide awake. It was a comfortable morning with just a slight breeze blowing, so I checked on the perennial peanut plants we had put in to create ground cover along the canal that runs down one side of our property, pulled some weeds, and rolled up and stored away the two soaker hoses that I’ve been using since we planted them. We’re coming into the rainy season soon, and I’m not watering as often as I was.

Then I checked on our citrus trees, which are coming along very well. A while back, I posted a picture of some of the small fruit buds I had pulled off the trees because until the branches get stronger, they really can’t support the weight of fully grown fruit. I left a couple of key limes and lemons on the trees just to see what they would do, and they are all getting bigger. I hope to be able to leave them on until my kids come to visit at the end of May because son Travis is a gardener, and I want him to see them.

Before we planted the citrus trees, we had to take out a big old dead water oak tree, and it left a big patch of dirt where it was. We filled that in with topsoil, and I planted grass seed, which is coming up very well in some areas but not at all in others. So I figured that while I was at it yesterday morning, I might as well spread some more grass seed and water it.

While I was doing that, several neighbors who were out for their morning walks said hello, and I noticed that some of them were people I had never seen before. One couple stopped and asked me if we were just here for a short time before we went back up North (quite a few of our neighbors are snowbirds), and when I told them that we live here full time they said they did not know that because they had never seen either one of us before. I laughed and said that that is because we live on very different schedules and that we were usually sound asleep this time of the morning. They looked at me like I was a lazy lout and wished me well before continuing with their morning walk.

When I back went back inside at about 9:45 or so, Terry was just waking up. We snuggled for a few minutes, and then I jumped in the shower because I’d gotten sweaty as the morning warmed up. I’d only had about four hours of sleep, and Terry asked me if I was going to go back to bed. I told her no, I was wide awake. Apparently, that didn’t last long because right after breakfast, I fell asleep sitting at the kitchen table. Terry woke me up and suggested I go take a nap in my recliner, and I told her I was just fine. She disagreed, so I got in the recliner and slept for almost three hours. I woke up feeling guilty for sleeping half the day away, but she reminded me that I was just catching up on the sleep I had missed earlier and probably had the same amount of hours I normally get.

Those neighbors I didn’t know I had seemed like nice folks, but I think in the future I’ll just stick to my regular sleep schedule, even though I may never see them again.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is a four-book set of audiobooks from my pal Carol Ann Newsome’s popular Dog Park mystery series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – I have the RIGHT to remain silent. I just don’t always have the ABILITY.