Alley walks are the best!

The neighborhood we live in is full of alleys.  Some are paved, some are not.  I frequently walk the paved alleys with Rowland, the dog with sensitive feet.  He knows where all the dogs live, and he especially enjoys inspecting to see if people have sorted their recycling correctly.  It's an important job that he takes very seriously.

A few days ago we went on a "family walk," our name for when both Michael and I take him out together.  These are the best walks, as Rowland will walk faster when he's with Michae and we cover more ground.  I often see parts of the neighborhood I don't get to see very often.  On this most recent walk we traveled down an unpaved alleyway which I had never been down before.

It was a good one!

Where's the water you ask?

It's private - of course you can't see it!

Alley garages have character of their own.  Some look really old, and I can only imagine the treasure that might be hidden within them.  Or spiders.

This alley was particularly colorful.

Ooooohhhh...

Aaaaahhhh...

These house numbers remind me of my quest to find numbers in order in the wild a couple of years ago.  I set pretty strict rules for myself - the numbers had to be standalone, not part of a larger group.  I would not have counted 23 or 24 here, for example - only 2,324.  I managed to make it to 19.  Perhaps I'll try again this summer, and go a little easier on myself:

• Numbers in order starting with 1
• Numbers can be part of a larger group
• No more than two consecutive numbers can be taken from a group (see what I've done here, I can return to this spot when I get to 23!)
• Groups can be revisited
• No more than two numbers can be taken from a larger set, e.g. campground site numbers

Let the counting begin!

These aren't the coolest cars, but these people may win the award for the most cars stashed in their back yard.  I'll have to keep an eye out for close competitors.

It was a good walk and now that the days are longer and warmer I'm looking forward to more alleyway explorations.  There are quite a few stretches I've not checked out yet.

Cheers!

Why does it smell like smoke?

Yesterday in one of Michael's messages from home he mentioned he could smell woodsmoke, but could not figure out where it was coming from.

We are entering the dry time here, and the possibility of fire increases every day.  But we live in the city now, so the most likely type of fire is a grass fire along I-5.

When I got home, I could smell it too - a lingering smell that was very much like a campfire.

So weird!

Shortly I took the dog out for his evening walk.  One of his favorite routes is to head to the other side of I-5 on the overpass.  There's a wide view from there, and I didn't see any lingering smoke in the air.

But when we got to the other side of the overpass - mystery solved!

A couple of months ago there was a house fire at the very first house across the overpass.  A lovely 100-year old house went up in flames one afternoon.  Recently they've been cleaning the house out, and yesterday I saw they had removed the entire front porch.  Workers were sweeping inside the house, which appeared to be pretty gutted.

I'm going to guess the smell was wafting across the way as they deconstructed the house and threw all the burned wood into the dumpster or a truck to haul away.

Poor house.  I'll be interested to see where they go from here.  It looks significantly damaged.  Will they rebuild exactly as it was?  We'll see...