Today my walk took me on another route through town. I walked the mile and a half and back to my supervisor's house and then back. It's a street I traverse often, but always by car. Walking gave me an opportunity to look at the neighborhoods and houses of our small town of Hastings-on-Hudson.
2 1/2 miles square and no more than 9,000 in population, it's really a village. While there are extremely expensive homes and wealthy residents within its borders this small village is for the most part a humble and interesting mix of professionals, real working people, artists, teachers, seniors and lots of children. Our houses are a varied crazy quilt of styles - Sears houses, tudors, Capes, colonials - and our yards are small, stony and covered with vines. Located on the edge of the Hudson River streets rise upward from the river to hills above the town center. Many of the yards are made up of these steep slopes and require winding stone steps to access. This is not a town of manicured lawns and fences. It is one of unruly hedges knit with weed maple saplings and poison ivy.
There were an abundance of roses blooming in these front yards I passed. It is a banner years for roses it seems, standing tall in the sun as the peonies have dropped their heads and shed their petals on the lawn. Making my way home via the Old Croton Aqueduct I spied three large chickens meandering in the wood behind an apartment building on the trail. One was speckled black and white, the other two red. All three very plump. I wondered where they might have escaped from. This is unusual for Hastings a commuter town just north of NYC not a farming town, but not really.
Hastings is funny like that - some people do keep chickens in their yards. Further down the trail was a child's action figure propped up on a post holding two lost keys and then the home made dog poop bag dispenser installed by a local architect. It's a place of cordial cooperation and creativity where people do look our for each other.
As the world of politics continues to be increasingly surreal and the Byzantine twists and turns of this Russian investigation rollout ever so painfully, I am ever so grateful for my very real and unpretentious little village.
2 1/2 miles square and no more than 9,000 in population, it's really a village. While there are extremely expensive homes and wealthy residents within its borders this small village is for the most part a humble and interesting mix of professionals, real working people, artists, teachers, seniors and lots of children. Our houses are a varied crazy quilt of styles - Sears houses, tudors, Capes, colonials - and our yards are small, stony and covered with vines. Located on the edge of the Hudson River streets rise upward from the river to hills above the town center. Many of the yards are made up of these steep slopes and require winding stone steps to access. This is not a town of manicured lawns and fences. It is one of unruly hedges knit with weed maple saplings and poison ivy.
There were an abundance of roses blooming in these front yards I passed. It is a banner years for roses it seems, standing tall in the sun as the peonies have dropped their heads and shed their petals on the lawn. Making my way home via the Old Croton Aqueduct I spied three large chickens meandering in the wood behind an apartment building on the trail. One was speckled black and white, the other two red. All three very plump. I wondered where they might have escaped from. This is unusual for Hastings a commuter town just north of NYC not a farming town, but not really.
Hastings is funny like that - some people do keep chickens in their yards. Further down the trail was a child's action figure propped up on a post holding two lost keys and then the home made dog poop bag dispenser installed by a local architect. It's a place of cordial cooperation and creativity where people do look our for each other.
As the world of politics continues to be increasingly surreal and the Byzantine twists and turns of this Russian investigation rollout ever so painfully, I am ever so grateful for my very real and unpretentious little village.
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