We live in a Villa. It’s a collection of 25 bungalow-style homes of varying sizes. The 25 homes are incorporated into 9 buildings so that all are attached to some, the larger units tend to have one neighbour with a short wall shared. It is an effective way to build and we love having our neighbours. We have really settled in and are enjoying our neighbours.

This is a quite place. It’s a place where neighbours care about and look out for each other.

We’ve had a few deaths as the residents age out and younger people move in. There is a general sense of loss when someone passes away and memories are shared around the coffee table. We’re still too new to be able to identify, but slowly we are gaining ground. It is clear that this place has had a pretty active social mix, but that has changed too with time.

This Friday is the annual summer BBQ, which I hear from some has been scheduled too late! According to the weather man, it will be sun and cloud with a high of 22 on Friday – the weekend is warmer. So we’ll see how the event goes.

Down the street one of the condos is being renovated extensively, and will soon go up for sale. The general feeling is that they are spending too much on the renovation to get their money back, but the owner inherited the property so I think they’ll be fine!

We arrived back the day after a large wind/hail storm rolled through. There must have been 300 apples on the ground. Some were fine but many were quite beat up!

Still, many are on the tree and we’ll be picking them shortly to make apple sauce. These are very sweet apples and this year, due to all the rain we’ve had, they are a good size!