Too many spiders this time of year for hanging in that corner, haha, they love it in there these later summer months. Otherwise it is a great hammock spot!

Oh yeah I couldn’t imagine keeping this yard up while also having kids, lol, my wife and I both spend plenty of time maintaining it most weekends, the weeds are relentless and I refuse to use roundup. The dog loves it! She gets to explore all the smells from the resident critters and still has a good stretch of grass to run

Honestly, what you see in the Pic is all the previous seasons leaves. Mostly magnolia and Persian ironwood. It’s our first full year here so I’m seeing what works, I think a more natural approach is fine with mature trees like these

It’s definitely it’s own little ecosystem! Always lots of different bees, lately lots of dragonflies, a couple resident hummingbirds. The bees are currently loving the hydrangeas, looks like a constant swarm around it

Here’s said hydrangea, been fading from pink to white as the season goes on.

Funny you say that, there’s a bench directly behind where I took this photo in the corner of the yard. There’s a bare trellis there that it backs up to but it’s very shaded so I’m still deciding what to put there… Thinking evergreen clematis or something.

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Guess it’s more a matter of ignorance on my part (also seems I’m out of my element here), I don’t know much about how current communist societies are living - do you have examples of what you’re talking about? You’ve piqued my interest, I’d like to see an example of housing in one of these situations and how they vary, what kind of amenities people are living with there, what it takes to achieve something similar to what I have here (3 bed 1ba SFH on a 5th acre)?

The reality is we live in a capitalist society whether we like it or not (at least in the US - emigrating isn’t easy). Free housing would be the local shelter for the homeless… It’s there, but it’s a bare minimum most of us don’t want.

Your idealized expectation sounds nice, but a lot of houses and their lots wouldn’t look like what they do outside of a capitalist society… I wouldn’t have two spare bedrooms in my home for an office and guest room when I want to have family visit. I wouldn’t have a backyard for my dog to run around in… It’d be more like what you see in North Korea. No excess to spare (to some degree is a good thing, but I also believe one should be able to earn themselves nicer things should they decide to take on the extra work to do so).

Rather than have some assigned lesser unit to live in that’s paid for with my taxes, probably sharing walls with my neighbors, I think I’d rather put in the decade of renting I did while saving for the house I get to live in now.

Again, I’m not saying we have a perfect system, or even a great one… It’s fucked up in many ways, you’d have to have your head pretty far up your own ass to miss the amount of corruption that capitalism invites into our society (mostly stemming from money in politics), but there are also some good parts to it.

Maybe I’m the outlier here with this take?

What did he say? Not a landlord myself, but I’m always curious to hear both sides. I think there can be good landlords, had one myself… Didn’t raise rent on us, took care of the place when things went wrong, even offered to sell the place to us but we weren’t ready financially at the time…

Some people choose to rent instead of buying for the sake of not having to keep up with house maintenance, and in that case, the landlord I speak of, I’d argue was a good landlord. Win win for both parties. Not common, I know, but speaking in absolutes is rarely productive.