Morning Walk

[wrenb]

Things I saw on my walk to work this morning:

Signs of Foreclosure
Damn. That's not supposed to happen in my neighborhood. We're a neighborhood of long-time elderly residents, rented 2-flats, and young people who buy estate sales. I was sure that the house in question was owned by people who had lived there 20 years. This morning there was a moving van and I was excited -- I wondered what the new people would do with the house. But then I saw 2 Sheriff's cars parked outside.

Housing Hope
A house being fixed up by Operation Fresh Start and sold (funded?) by a city Community Development Block Grant. I'm curious as to how one finds out how much the asking price is, and who is eligible to purchase it? OFS is a cool program to train people without high school diplomas in the building trades. There are two houses in our neighborhood being worked on by the program (although neither are listed on their website). One I know of is a lot where a house burned down.

Signs of Spring
I saw someone tapping their maple trees! At first I wondered why there were buckets tied to a tree on the terrace (between sidewalk & street). When I got closer I saw the tubes for maple sap. So cool!

Comments

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

there is an area of town here - the rich people's bit. Houses start at $2mn.

Colleague was driving past there a couple of months ago and saw 2 or 3 foreclosure signs...

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

See, I expect that there. People who overextended themselves and bought too much house. In my neighborhood (and this house in particular) there haven't been a lot of people moving in the last few years. And the average house is assessed at $200k. So I was really surprised.

[onelargecat.livejournal.com]

That sucks about the foreclosures. :( But the maple sap thing is cool.

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

Our local village newspaper used to list one or two foreclosures each issue. They were usually in some weird part of Chicago I'd never been to, as if the editors wanted one to include but had to search to find it.

The latest issue had six and a half columns of foreclosures listed, and I recognized every street name. All were within 3 miles of my house.

Eep.

On a happier topic, I wonder, how much maple syrup can one reasonably expect to get from one maple tree? I've heard, repeatedly, that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, but I've no idea how many gallons of sap a maple tree can yield. Mmmmmm, maple syrup.....

Newt