Paradise people...

Paradise people...  This is one of those days when we can't help but think we're actually living in paradise...

First, this morning I was out moving some irrigation pipes (a routine thing out here).  My neighbor Tim D. put-putted up on his ATV, hops off, and starts helping me move the pipes.  He'd spotted me from his place, a half mile away, and decided that I needed help.  I could easily have done it myself (and did so quite a few times last year), but the job was much more pleasant with a friend helping out.

Second, Michelle H. came today to clean our house.  She's been coming every two weeks since January, and we've come to think of her as a friend.  Always cheerful, her daughter Lizzie often helping, and the house looks great when she's done.  Our dogs love her (an important measure for us :).  This morning when she drove in, I warned her that Debbie had fallen and hurt herself, and talked with her about what we needed done.  An hour or so later, Lizzie rang the doorbell – and she had a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Debbie in her hands.  I got her a vase and she fixed them all up; now they're at Debbie's bedside.

When we were looking at houses up here, we were looking at the properties and the homes to evaluate them.  I did go interview all the neighbors to make sure we weren't going to move next to some raving lunatic, but we weren't consciously using the quality of our neighbors as a selection criterion.  Now that we're here, we think we screwed up: we should have found these Paradise people first, then moved into whatever hovel would allow us to be near them.  Instead we accidentally bought a nice property right in the middle of a whole bunch of the nicest people we've ever met.  The “provincial Mormons”, as one of my friends called them (a Mormon himself!).  He was gently poking a little fun at them, but I think they should wear that label as a badge of honor...