Why Neighborhoods Feel Familiar

The Spectrum Of Curb Appeal

The House That Looks Abandoned

Where My Home Fits In

The April Halloween Purchase Problem

Propagating Plants And Donating Locally

Seeing Altadena After The Fire

How To Support The Show

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. Today I'm gonna talk about my neighborhood. I know I've talked about my neighborhood before in bits and pieces in other episodes, but I was thinking today as I was walking my dog around the block, it's about a half mile or so, that my neighborhood is probably a lot like your neighborhood, give or take. Wherever you are. Let me explain. Now, my neighborhood is made up of single family homes, and your neighborhood may not be made up of single family homes, but I think there are still similarities. You may live in an apartment, or you may live in a duplex, or you may live in a similar situation, maybe a rooming house, or something that right now the name escapes me. But even if you live in a an apartment or say a condo complex, I think that there are similarities. It's perfect, right? Then you have your everyday home. It may be pretty nice, but it's not perfect. Now, the number of perfect homes, I don't think it's any more than ten percent. The regular ones, you know, there's some some trees that are leggy, some plants that are leggy, um, because they're not getting enough sun, or people are holding on to them because they like the plant, but it's not doing as well as it should, perhaps. Or there's weeds growing in the plant, right? Maybe a patch of the grass has turned brown. Maybe there's some ground where the there's no grass, or it's all weeds. Okay. And maybe part of the house, the exterior of the house is not pristine or it's cracking, or the paint color is fading, or something's wrong with it. Then there's the homes where everything looks okay, but aesthetically it's not planned very well. It just doesn't look right. It's not organized well, right? Now, if you live in an apartment, you may not have these same issues, but if your building has balconies, let's say, there's still that aspect of it. Some people crowd their balconies with nice things, furniture plants, pots, what have you. Other people crowd their balconies with things that they can't fit into their apartment. Other people just leave their balconies empty because they don't even want to deal with their balcony. Okay, and then I think in every neighborhood there's maybe that one house or that one residence where the person that lives there, the people that live there, just don't take care of it. Or maybe they don't care at all what happens, or maybe there's something else going on in their minds. Uh, like they're crazy. We have a house like that where it looks like it's completely abandoned. The front of it where there should be lawn, it's mostly weeds. There's a driveway, but it's all cracked, and again, weeds are growing through it. The exterior of the house could use a lot of help. There's a car at the top of the driveway, but it looks like it hasn't been moved in years. It's dusty and uh dirty to the point that, yeah, it looks like it hasn't been touched. If you go by at night, as many times as I've driven by at night, the lights are never on in the house, in the windows, but I know that somebody lives there because I've talked to some of the people that live around the house, and yeah, somebody does live there, but apparently she's a little bit uh, shall we say quirky or different. She does walk to get groceries, which is a little bit of a strange comment because I think the closest grocery store, if you were gonna walk, well, the closest place that you could actually buy anything is probably a mile and a half. You'd have to walk out of the canyon and down to the liquor store, which is the closest thing, right? If you're gonna go to a supermarket or any kind of a larger market, it would probably be closer to two and a half to three miles. So it's quite a walk, especially if you're carrying groceries back with you. And if you're a little crazy or or just not into being outside or caring about things, then why would you go to a market? But anyway, I digress. Uh and there are other homes where well, there's one other home where I think the people that live there are older because it looks like the the blinds or the drapes never open and there's never any light on. Well, there's a very faint light at night sometimes. But the front yard, well, I mean, maybe they meant to do this, but it's mostly California poppies that come up in the spring and some cactus. So maybe that's intentional, I'm not sure. But it looks like it's more of an abandoned look. Now, where do I fall in this whole range of different homes and residences, right? Well, I'll tell you, I am not the most organized person. So my yard, my front garden area is pretty well taken care of in the fact that I do have a gardener who comes every week. And there's really not that much that he should or can or has to do because I mean there's mowing the lawn, but he doesn't really have to mow the lawn every week because the grass doesn't grow that fast. I'm sorry to say. We did beef up the lawn uh seed this this year, and it's doing better, but it just doesn't grow that much because we get a lot of shade um throughout the day. We don't get a full day of sun with the with the hills and all the trees. So um he mows. We have a hedge, so sometimes he cuts that. But unless it's super windy, we don't have leaves to pick up, there's there's just not much to do. But the yard looks pretty good. I think I'd give myself probably a B on that. I have a lot of potted plants that are around, and I have the front garden bed, which looks pretty good. It has um sort of a variety of different plants, and they all look pretty healthy. Uh, and then I have some pots and some potted cactus and things scattered around. I I would give myself a B, but then you have my front porch. And yeah, I do have several things on my front porch because I just have a lot of things. Now, the other thing right now is it doesn't look it doesn't look good because I had some things in my car, and I just I just have a lot of things. That's just my that's one of my problems. I'm not one of these, you know, people that just throws everything out or gets rid of things or easily. Um because I have I have my things, I have my husband's things, I have some of some of my parents' things still, and then I have some of my grandparents' things. Oh, and I still have some of my my mother-in-law's things, right? So uh and okay, and here's the thing. I just uh this week I picked up a new Halloween decoration. Yes, that's right, Halloween, it's April, I know, but um Home Depot had a halfway to Halloween release of new items for this year, and it was a limited time. I did get one of the new items. I'm really excited about it. Uh and I got it earlier this month in April, and I could have had it delivered the next day, would have been a lot easier, would have been more expensive, but I said no, I I didn't want it delivered because what the heck what the heck was I gonna do with it? 70-pound box of stuff, right? I said, you know, ship it to the store and I'll pick it up. Okay, so I had to clean out my car this week. I had a very busy week. I had to clean out my car, and there were some things in my car, because yeah, I just had some things in my car, and I put those things on the porch. I threw some things out, I did, but I had to put some things on the porch so that I could um fold down the back seat of my SUV so they could put this box in the back of my SUV, which is where it's still sitting now. And eventually it's gonna get into the living room, but I have to I have to make some space for it, or I don't know. I don't I don't really want it now, but I have to take it now. So there are some extra things on my porch, and I'm always in the process of going through things, and right now is a bad time because I'm also working on my event. I'm five, four, four and a half weeks away from my event, and my time is just not my own. This week, though, I think I did have a very productive week. I had to get some uh business done with my bank, which was a trip because I was trying to do it by phone and virtually, and that just did not work at all. And then I had to uh go back to my cell phone provider and drop off my old phone because you might remember I got a new phone last month for my birthday, so I had to drop off the old phone after everything got transferred. And uh what else did I do? And I had to go pick up the new Halloween decoration thing at Home Depot, so I got a done, but you know, I'm only one person. Only one person on the gardening end. I did take some of the plants that I've been growing. I took some cuttings of a creeping Charlie that my friend gave me. That had this creeping Charlie has gone crazy in the backyard. And so I took some cuttings and I planted them in pots, and I took some of those up to Altadena. Um, they call it Regrow Altadena, and it's this place where you can take plants that are extra that you have for people that live in Altadena, and then they can come and pick up the plants and put them in as they're trying to rebuild their neighborhood. And so I just wanted to go up and see what it was like, but I took up four creeping charlies and I left them, and so I have a whole bunch of other plants that are in the process of taking root. Uh, I probably have about, oh gosh, I don't know, 30, 35 plants. I need to get more pots. That this is my challenge now. You know, I'm always keeping things and saving things. Like I could use that one day. So in anticipation of trying to lighten my load, I had these extra plastic pots that I had, you know, left over from all the things that I bought at the nursery, and I recycled them like back in the summer. Well, I could have used them now, but every time I throw something out or recycle it, I'm like, gosh darn it, I could have used those now. Anyway, I've been getting creative with things to put plants in, but uh that felt really good that I'm able to do that because people up there really need new plants, they really do. And so I was able to drive through um another part of Altadena that was affected by the Eaton fire. And um gosh, I mean, there are some homes being rebuilt, but there's still so many vacant lots where nothing's happening. And there's still, oh, here's a house that was that was saved, here's a house that was saved, vacant lot, vacant lot, vacant lot, vacant lot, here's a house. I mean it's so overwhelming because you can drive for blocks and so many homes, and it's a year and a half later. I feel good. That's a little part of something that I can do to give back to the Altadena community. I think probably most neighborhoods have some of these similarities. So I just wanted to talk about that today. Next week, well, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, Only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace, and these are the Only Child Diaries.