Opening Up Our Perspectives ????

above photo...our neighbor's property looked dense and lush with native vegetation. But this is soon about to change.

At the time we moved into our finally finished, but not totally completed home, the real estate bubble had burst and almost every neighborhood had its share of lingering for sale signs. It would take a truly die hard optimist to believe there was going to be an immediate return to those halcyon days of overly inflate property values.

The people who own the lot directly across the street from us had pinned their hopes upon that old escalating market and had made plans to subdivide their parcel of land into 8 individual home sites. I'm sure they were rubbing their hands together in gleeful anticipation of all the money they would be making. Forever pragmatic, they ignored the grim real estate indicators around them and continued to work on their future subdivision. Time passed, first one year then another but the market showed little signs of rebound. Undaunted our neighbor would sporadically crank up his old bulldozer and clear a few patches of brush and saplings, or give his backhoe a work out filling in low lying areas.

photos above and below...Clearing begins

Just last week he spent several days clearing out a thick swatch of vegetation at the far back of his property, the end that abuts our neighbor, Linda's property. Linda, being the good-natured person that she is, cheerfully asked him if he was getting ready to start selling his parcels, to which she got the news that his 8 lot development was no longer going to happen. Perhaps the bank's construction loan expired or perhaps their expectations met the stone hard wall of reality...the real estate market was not the market it had been and it would be a long time before any of us would see the buying frenzy of those super charged days.

 

above photo...Was that always there ?

 

No, he had given up on his get rich quick scheme and was...darn, I have no idea what he was doing. Rearranging the dirt piles ? Just keeping the old bulldozer lubricated ? Wanted a better view of Linda's farm ? Whatever his intent he did manage to clear out a lot of growth and opened up our view to his amazing technicolored rusted shed and his small fleet of well used, earth moving equipment.

 

photo above...Yep. Cleared out and opened up the view. Wonder how long it will take for it to all grow back ?

 

above photo...If you squint real hard could you call it rustic ? Nope, just plain rusty !

 

photo above...maybe a closer look ? No,no, it definitely looks better the farther away you get ! The palms are nice though.

above photo...Well it certainly "opens up" our view.
 

Oh what the heck ! This is Florida and everything grows like weeds here. In a month or two the wax myrtle bushes, shrubs, vines and saplings will have grown up to hide everything and we won't even know it's there.