What's outside of your picture window today?

It’s not what’s going on outside my window exactly.
It’s the screaming noise overhead.
The Air Force Base near by (15 miles) is a training base for the F-35 jet. They fly 2 by two very close together. The noise, when it’s cloudy is deafening.
The afterburner sounds of 2 jets flying overhead together is window shaking.
We’ve had rain and clouds all week so the jet noise has been tremendous!
I am not complaining about the military. I’m just saying what is outside my house.

we bought a home here during the first year of Covid and planned to use as a vacation place and rental. But then when schools were closed in Q1 2021 again we decided to have the kids here for a semester just because we could be outside and be with other people. We just fell in love with the school and community...and then I had my heart attack here in costa rica May 2021 which threw a wrench in things. The diagnosis was a stress heart attack from too much work (ET was not diagnosed yet) so to de-stress we moved here. Been here since July 2022 after a year in MN recovering and through the school year. The health care here is amazing actually. My heart doctor here (who put in the stent) studied in the US and worked for years in Houston. Now that I know I have ET I've got a little local blood lab about 5 minutes from my house + (based on advice from Mayo) getting a "back-up" hematologist and care person here. Amazingly that person worked through the Mayo system and the UofM and is the head of the cancer clinic here in San Jose CR. So...its actually really good as most of the doctors here are US educated and trained. I'm still planning primary through Mayo but it's nice to have great care here in case something goes wrong.

Yes, there ARE climate changes (not just normal cycles over time), but this is NOT climate: this is all due to development. Many things have been done, most of them illegal, by the eight developers who've tried to develop the hundreds of acres of old-growth spruce east of us, and the additional 22 acres of the lower part of our creek they bought from a single landowner early on. The creek has been channelized (illegal) and our road extended due west, requiring an additional culvert, instead of following the north bank of the creek. Beavers moved in an attempt to "fix" the channelization, creating dozens of dams up and down the length of the creek, plus using the bad seam in the newly-placed used culvert as a base for a dam that created a large pond. The result is that there's now a huge marsh filled with silt, so much silt that frogs can no longer live there, meaning that we don't have a resident great blue heron for the first time in over 60 years: heron's gotta eat, too! I've lost about a half acre of front yard and look out over an ugly mudflat every winter, instead of having the pretty little creek between a row of alders on each side. (Alders like wet but can't live in a place that's always water.) When we have really bad storms, so much water pours off the hill on the back of our acreage that the house itself floods. Even though I now have a pump to use to pump out the pantry before the water reaches the kitchen, I can't keep anything I want in the lowest foot of the pantry. The hill never had water flowing off it during the first 47 years I owned this place, but, as soon as a swath of old growth spruce 650' by a half mile long was sliced down to extend a road and provide for lots (none of which ever sold) water comes off the hill, adding to the driveway mess and sometimes flooding the house. I bought this property because it was such a beautiful place: sparkling little creek, then a sweep of land up towards the spruce forest. I never dreamt that it would be despoiled by would-be developers, all eight of whom have gone bankrupt trying to develop all those acres of forest. Fortunately, none of the forest has yet been cut down, except for that swath 650 wide to allow for a swell new road. The eighth developer did actually build four duplex townhouses on land that drains in the opposite direction, fortunately. (That drainage just adds to annual flooding of the huge lake on the east side of the town, causing hundreds of homeowners to have flooding every winter.) Yes, development is a really wonderful thing--not!

@joyces, and all...Wow! What a horrible scenario. I'm appalled at the series of thoughtless, ridiculous stripping of your surrounding land. I can't believe these 'developers' got the proper authority to do all this to the land with so many acres badly affected. What a mess you're in now. I'm sure you have no recourse, nor do the others in the town or you would have taken that action. Is there no way some of the damage can be repaired or undone?

Your property sounds wonderful and I'd be furious! I'm so sorry for you, your neighbors, and the damage to the fauna and flora. I know you miss that beautiful heron...one of my favorite birds. We have them here in Florida and even on our condominium property on occasion. I'm sad for you and these problems that should never have been...
Blessings and I hope you can find some peace, perhaps some way of improving the situation...
Elizabeth

Elizabeth, the only recourse is to sue the City, which refuses to replace the main culvert (installed during the 30s, now almost totally rusted, only 2'8") under the main road in our community. The culvert above that is 6'...go figure! I have elk and deer and birds for neighbors. The 24 acres southwest of my place are undeveloped, haven't had the fine hand of a developer applied. But the more than 200 acres east and south of my place, as well as the 22 acres between my place and the ocean are all part of one mega development. For nearly 50 years, the City had tried to annex our area of Roads End, but couldn't get enough people to agree. Finally, they started telling new owners that, if they didn't ask to be annexed, the City would turn off their water. (Our area bought water from the City to run through our own distribution system.) In this state, you cannot hold people's water hostage, i.e., it was illegal...but enough people were frightened into agreeing that the City had a majority of owners and valuation, but those of us with acreage that was either not built upon or had its own well had a majority of the acreage, spoiling the necessary triple majority to enable annexation. So, the City fixed that by drawing up an annexation map that excluded all acreages, and the annexation of Roads End was accomplished. Many of the illegal things, like channelizing the creek, were done before annexation, when it was illegal by county standards. Because the illegal acts were all done in last-ditch attempts to sell lots to avoid bankruptcy, the fines were never paid, nothing was ever fixed. I still love this land, even though I hate the marsh. I would like to leave it to the City as a nature preserve, to protect "my" deer herd. Supposedly, if the City were to replace the culvert with a 10' box culvert, much of the silt would be able to move out, eventually restoring the creek, even bringing back its run of sea-run cutthroat. Suing the City would only result in bad karma; the problem isn't on my land but on the land downstream. I'm talking to land use attorneys to find one able to sort out this mess.

As I moved the curtain a suffused whiteness welcomed

As I slid the window, gentle air rushed in brushing past my face

So eager? Wait! You are damp! But it's fresh fog

Four tall trees in dark bark stood motionless a little far

What a mischief are the white clouds up to?

Hide and seek with the sun? I guess,

Yay ... it's weekend ... my friends!

I am curious about the context of the original post on this thread. I don't have a picture window, or a house, or a yard. What windows I do have face either a brick wall or a loading dock and dumpster.

I thought I was a reasonably smart guy, with about as good a job as I could get, but I was not able to buy my modest condo until I was 55. I have had years-long periods of unemployment. Everything has been a struggle economically since I graduated from college in the middle of the 1985 recession.

What I want to know is how did so many people manage to buy houses surrounded by nature, and acres of land? Where did the necessary wealth and income come from? That knowledge won't do me any good, but I could pass it on to my nephew so that he knows what to do.

In response to timt347: I bought this bit of acreage (2.5 acres) in 1962, when I was 19. There was a typical Oregon coast beach shack on it, the original 20x20 cabin built 30 years earlier, with a bedroom and two garages shedded onto it...first garage was, at that point, a large dark "shop" area with a newly-installed old toilet at the back corner. (That owner had, ta da, added both electricity and water by having a well drilled.) Dad had always loved the coast, worked hard as a self-employed house painter in spite of having shattered five vertebrae in his back at age 64, and here was an affordable bit of forest not too far from the ocean. I had a really great job that paid extremely well, so I bought the place and gave it to Dad (my parents). In retrospect, I should have given them lifetime tenancy on the place...long after Dad died, so did Mom, and she left it, 50/50 to me and my very rich sister who lives in GA. It cost me $250,000 to buy her half. I paid that mortgage off years ago, so live here full time at little expense, other than all the work of keeping the land and house in shape. I also have the money from selling the house I had owned for 40 years in Portland, two hours northeast, plus great Social Security, so I bank $500 or more most months. Better yet, although the City annexed most of this area in 2013, they couldn't include acreages in the annexation as we would have prevented the necessary triple majority, so we're in the county, paying a quarter of what we'd have to pay if we'd been annexed. The downside is that the lovely little creek that attracted me to buying this place is now a huge ugly marsh; my driveway's flooded off and on all winter, this being the 15th year. Still when I mowing the little 500x10-50 strip of grass out by the one-lane gravel road, people stop to tell me how beautiful the land is: it sweeps up a steep hillside into the deep old-growth spruce forest. "My" deer herd is often just outside my 6' office window; sometimes the entire local herd of 40 elk is in that side yard. So, in spite of the need to put on knee boots or chest waders to get out to the road and my car all winter, I love this bit of land and am forever glad that I bought it...twice!

And sometimes it's the window of a bus ... as yesterday on way back from grocery shopping ... as afternoon sun streamed its rays on earth in the lazy wayward company of white clouds.

Still other times it's the window of my imagination. I mean reading the NY Times coverage of galaxies forming and moving away for ever at ever greater speeds is enough for me to get lost (drunk?) on the stunning mystery of it all if only momentarily.

I don’t know what Mr Groundhog will report tomorrow, so I took these from car while hubby is driving. 57 degrees with mostly sunny sky as we are headed to Lexington Ky.