From the God gives us what we need, not want we want File:
My wife and I have longed to live on five or ten acres out in the country, far from the madding crowds. This is more a romantic rather than practical vision since we are presumably taking the phrase "the grass is always greener" literally, and Little House on the Prarie exists only imaginatively. Though Horace in Epodes wrote of the happiness of country living, working the ancestral acres "like the pristine race of mortals". Samuel Johnson translated: "Like the first race in Saturn's reigh, /When floods of nectar stained the main.".... "Whom no contracted debts molest / no griping creditors infest". Don't know about that debt part.
But we did buy a house with a generous backyard that overlooks a field, giving us the illusion of privacy and space. I say "illusion", because our driveway abuts a house with three windows overlooking it, three windows from which our movements are monitored with some precision. And we were gifted with a neighbor who to describe as "nosy" would be a disservice to nosy neighbors everywhere. On the bright side, she is so intimately caring of what goes on in our mundane lives that I can scarcely take offense.
Is it providential that in craving privacy (in real life, ha) I am given a neighbor who thinks fences make bad neighbors? Surely!
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