There’s 100 plus people in this photo of our new urbanist

neighborhood’s July 4th parade this year, amazingly none of them are actors!

My new urbanist neighborhood is a real place full of real people with real lives.  Our lives are not any less authentic than those of people living in “real” urban areas.  My life and the lives of my family and neighbors are not less authentic because our neighborhood doesn’t mix beautiful historic homes next to falling down crap shacks.  We are not less real because we don’t see grafitti and homeless people every day.  I am sick of “real” urban hipsters saying people in new urbanist neighborhoods are shallow for wanting a new home in a mixed-use neighborhood with good schools instead of living in the “real” gritty city and living an “authentic” life.

I like cities and I like city living.  Denver especially is a great city with many wonderful city neighborhoods but, I don’t want to live in them at the moment.  First, I can’t afford to.  Suburbs are cheaper than the city core at least in Denver and by a significant amount.  For what I paid for my brand new 2400 sq foot house, I could get an old 1200 sq foot bungalow in need of major repairs in one of Denver’s city neighborhoods.

The people who accuse new urbanist neighborhoods of being fake, well every neighborhood was new at one time–even your historic neighborhood.  I’ve read multiple articles written by urban dwellers–most, I’m sure who do not have children–asking why would anyone want the “fake” thing when you can get the “real” thing like them?  Because not everyone wants to live in the city, and they should be able to have the benefits of urbanism (walkable, mixed-use) if they want to live in the suburbs in a new house with great public schools.  Have a kid and then look at the schools in your urban area and then ponder your question of real versus fake again, your perspective will change believe me. 

People walk past my house all the time in my neighborhood and stop to admire my small garden (primarily the front and side of my house and my containers).  Sometimes they ask me “How do you do it?”.  I always have to stop myself from saying “It’s helps to be psychotically obsessive”.  What I usually say is more diplomatic along the lines of “I water a lot” or “it’s my hobby” but the truth is a bit darker I’m afraid.  I am obsessed with plants, flowers in particular.  While everyone agrees it’s good to have a hobby, sometimes I think I take it a bit too far.  A few of the things that exemplify this:

—I don’t like to go on vacation during growing season because I don’t like leaving my plants

—I would never get a dog because dogs can dig and one of my neighbors is always telling me about the destruction her crazy German shepherd is wrecking on her backyard (he ate all my petunias!  He ate the baby Aspen tree! etc..) I know I would probably have palpitations should such a thing occur in my yard so I just steer clear.  Fortunatley my kid only likes cats.

—I wanted a house with a very small yard because I knew if I got a house with even a medium sized yard I would probably drive myself insane (I do a pretty good job as it is with a lot of around 4500 sq feet).

—I’ve run out in golf ball sized hail to protect my container plants

—In May and June, I went to at least 8 different nurseries (multiple times each) looking for exactly the plants I wanted

—I was shocked when a fellow less hard core gardener in my neighborhood hadn’t thought about the annuals we might put in our pocket park.  It was March when I asked her.

 Exhibit A

Last year I spotted a pair of American goldfinches in my neighborhood.  They are beautiful birds with a lovely song, so I bought a special birdfeeder to try to entice them back this year.  I put up the birdfeeder in April and to my delight it worked, a pair of goldfinches started hanging around the feeder in May. I’ve been enjoying seeing them all year until yesterday when I saw them violently assaulting my gerbera daisies.

I have a large cattle trough on my deck filled with gerbera daisies that I wait very patiently to flower.  Sometimes it can take a few weeks between flower bursts, but I consider it worth it because I love their colors and how big the flowers are.  When they do flower, the flowers last quite a long time (two to three weeks).  Yesterday morning I was cleaning the kitchen and noticed the goldfinch pair that I usually see in front of my house at the feeder.  I stopped dead in my tracks in shock when I notcied what they were doing: hanging off the stems of the gerberas and dissecting brand new blossoms into tiny little pieces looking for seeds.

I didn’t know what to do–there was an ironic conflict going on in my head.  Finally I could stand seeing them pulling out petals no longer and went onto the deck and shooed them away.  Then I realized what must have happened.  Those little buggers were blackmailing me to fill up the bird feeder, which was running low.  So I’ve filled it hoping they will leave my flowers alone–but if they don’t, let’s just say I’m going to have to reevaluate our relationship.