Looking down the road

(c) 2010 by Steve Martaindale

“I love our place,” my wife is fond of exclaiming.

With about four acres, there is room for trees, a nice-sized pond, all the garden we care to keep up, roaming space and dreams.

It does require no small amount of upkeep, however, and we’ve come to understand why the previous owners, who had several years of age on us, seemed to let things go a bit before they sold out.

All of that led last weekend to a frank discussion on the topic, “Would We Rather Live in an Apartment?”

Of course, the question comes up late in the summer after the ballet of watering grass and plants just so we can mow more often. There’s always something.

A year ago, the pond was so low I was able to build a dock on it without getting my feet wet. Last winter, it rained so much I had to park the pickup on the edge of the property rather than get it stuck in the driveway, which led to buying rock to keep the dirt drive drivable. The ground is dry again and we’ve watched numerous rainstorms around the area that somehow miss us. Of course, it might flood this evening.

This growing season we’ve done battle with an unbelievable number of caterpillars attempting to eat the garden, the usual onslaught of grasshoppers, various other plant-eating bugs, moles and gophers. Plus, we have lost a few trees around the pond to beavers. I didn’t even know we had beavers in this neck of the woods.

All considered, we decided we still love our place and it’s worth the effort to keep it up.

For now.

The time will come, we’re certain, when we will no longer want to work that hard. When it does, we’ll either return to the full-time RV life we sampled a few years ago or find an apartment or some other rental option, a situation where we can say, “Hey, there’s a leak in the kitchen; come fix it.”

There remains another choice ... retirement communities.

A news story caught my eye about a place in Florida called The Villages. There are many others, such as numerous Del Webb developments, and I’m sure they all differ to some degree, but the first thing I noticed in the story was at least one resident of the home must be 55 or older.

And there can be no permanent resident under the age of 19.

I love kids and I’ve always enjoyed working with young adults, but there is something to be said for settling in for the evening and not hearing loud music coming from a passing car.

These retirement communities usually bill themselves as homes for “active adults” and they seem to live up to the message.

The Villages website says it offers free entertainment at different venues every night. It hosts numerous special events, two shopping centers, fitness centers, a bunch of recreation centers and swimming pools, and 10 houses of worship.

There are 37 golf courses listed. Enough said.

The worry-free lifestyle comes with a cost, but I haven’t explored that at all.

I mean, we’re still happy mowing grass and fighting grasshoppers. We’ll re-examine it at the end of next summer, I’m sure.