By the side of the road.

Goldenrod. Bald Mountain Road, Norfolk, Conn. July 2022. C.M.

24 JULY—Our nearest neighbor, let me call him Bill, lives several hundred feet up hill from us along our common country road. His house, with its lovely wraparound porch, is almost entirely hidden from view when the deciduous forest that surrounds us is in its full green glory.

Bill is a mechanic by trade and apparently a very successful one. He and his wife own enough acres of maple forest to harvest sap in the spring and keep the extended family stocked with syrup for the rest of the year. Bill feeds the birds throughout the four seasons and in summer their walkways and patios are graced with flowering borders and a profusion of potted plants. Ripening tomatoes hang from trellises in a raised garden bed. It’s a lovely and well-tended home.

But it’s what happens behind windows and doors, rarely mentioned and well out of sight, that impresses me the most. Bill and his wife care for two relatives they share their home with, an elderly and infirm mother and another relation who is severely disabled. Always friendly and quick with a smile, Bill helped split the logs of a birch tree that had fallen near our cottage. When we recently needed to borrow a ladder a knock at the door quickly produced one.

These are our neighbors. Ordinary people. Fellow citizens. The world is better because of Bill and his wife. They brighten the neighborhood like goldenrod by the side of the road.

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