There aren't many sidewalks where I live. Everything seems to flow downward, and my house sits right at the crest of the steepest hill in the neighborhood. People call it the "work out hill" because so many joggers like to run up it during their daily work out. As there aren't any sidewalks at all on my street everyone walks on the road. There road is pitted in a few places and can feel a bit hazardous to drive on. Some of the telephone and electric wires strung up around the block at tattered looking. It rains and storms a lot in our area, so branches and other debris often strike down the power lines and the constant repairs make them look checkered and patchwork-y. There's many tall evergreen trees all around everywhere you look. But people here hate the trees. They strive to cut down as many as possible because the trees obstruct the view of the ocean. That's why many of the houses are built so high up on the hill, with huge glass-fronted second stories that loom up one after the other to take in the view of the bay. It's gorgeous around sunset when the water seems to get lit up from below and the sky turns orange. It's cloudy more often than not, though, so you end up seeing most of the sunlight through a haze. Most days are overcast and damp. Moss grows on everything it can: roofs, cars, and railings. I once left my car parked out in my driveway for a month and when I went out to use it, it had turned green and furry with moss. Took me three hours to scrap it all off. There aren't that many children around where I live, though there's a school only a few blocks away. Most of the people in my neighborhood are older, many of them retired. Instead of kids, people have dogs. It's common to see them sitting out in people's lawns or racing down the street after each other. If you leave a door or window open you risk having them sneak into your house. I found one once in my living room and had to shoo it back out the front door. Rabbits run wild around the area. Some of them are good sized, and the gardeners hate them because the dig up the roots of plants and burrow into people's lawns. My cats love them though, and have hunted most of them out of our neighborhood. We also get the usual assortment of birds: small sparrows and hummingbirds, and the occasional hawk or eagle sometimes swoops by until the neighborhood crows chase it off. There aren't any stores around, but if you hike downhill to the waterfront there's a few restaurants that serve fresh seafood. There isn't much of a beach down there, but the rocks along the shore are fun to hurl into the water. The bay itself isn't very wide. You can see the opposite shoreline clearly even through the mist on most days.
