Postcards from the neighborhood

Susan Gets Native asked for pictures from the street I live on, but I felt a little funny taking pictures of my neighbor's houses, so I decided to extend my search for snapshots to the whole neighborhood. The purple mums are decorating my front stoop (yes, my parents were from Jersey City, NJ - does anyone else call it a *stoop*? ;-)
This is a view from the street beside our pond. Fairly boring, but we have lots of old trees and lots of kids in the neighborhood now. The older people are downsizing and moving closer to their adult kids and young families are moving in.
Our newest neighbor on the street is our family doctor. He bought this house for 1.9 million dollars. Can you imagine? A few houses on the street have been rebuilt lately - this house used to be a ranch, like the one you can see the corner of to the left, but the prior family bought the house for $600,000 and tore it all down, except for the garage. They rebuilt it to this and less than five years later sold it for more than 3 times that amount.
This is our church, technically in the next town, set on a hill. I love the steeple, and on quiet days I can hear the bells ringing.
I think this is considered a creek, but it seems too wide to be called that. It borders our town and the next and often hosts ducks, herons, egrets, and terns. It's a popular crabbing spot, but isn't our usual place. Just to the left of the pic is the local army base and all its communication equipment, which I was afraid to photograph.
Around the corner from our house is this little farm field, usually planted with raspberries and blackberries. The deer fencing is new. Buddy and I often walk the edge of this field to look for the red-tail hawks that like to hang out in those trees in the distance. There is a little creek and farm pond down there and it's a nice spot for warblers and frogs and mosquitos. And an occasional fox.
My favorite place to shop, just down the street. It used to be just a little farm stand surrounded by fields and orchards, but now it's a gourmet market that sells beautiful plants and fresh, mostly local produce, plus anything else imaginable related to flowers or food. There's soccer and baseball fields and a playground, and a wonderful old farmhouse that has been preserved by the town.

Susan also suggested that I take pics of the house I grew up in and the schools I went to, which I think would be kind of fun. I may take a drive to the old neighborhood this weekend to share some memories of growing up.