As it's name suggests, it used to be the main street in town, leading to the courthouse. It still does, although the courthouse has undergone several rebuilds. It is now, quite an impressive 1930's deco style building, but it no longer matches the grand avenue of houses.
They use the term avenue rather freely round here and some short, treeless, 4 house roads are called avenue. Court street really is an avenue and at this time of year you can hardly see the houses for the trees. All the houses sit well back from the road and it feels cool, green and rather grand!
What we like is that none of the houses are the same. Even the very small houses are all different, you never see the same pattern twice.
A lot of the houses in this street and indeed just about every building of any age or grandeur in the town were designed by a local architect by the name of Bell. His name is unknown outside the area, but he was prolific and important here.
What this street also shows is the use of huge expanses of grass. Beautifully cut and manicured grass, with trees. Even on small country roads, tiny houses sit in large grounds of well maintained lawns. They stretch right to the road edge and along, go round any trees and up and down hills. It's as if they want to have an area of tamed countryside round their houses. There are usually no fences. Nothing to distinguish where your property ends and the next begins. Very un british.
As you can imagine, lawnmowers are big business. The lawnmowers round here are all sit on and are more like tractors. People spend a lot of time mowing. A friend said it was a good way to have time out and relax and I had to explain that it would be hard to do that while cutting our three by six foot bit of grass back in London.
Another thing we have noticed is they do not seem to mind having huge, mature trees very close to the houses. In England they seem to think a tree will destroy your house from 50 feet away.
The trees are quite a variety. Oaks of various types- Pin oaks, black oaks, northern red oaks, Blackjack oaks none of which I'd heard of, although I gather pin oaks are very successful in Australia. Chestnuts, Walnuts, Elms, Maples, Dogwoods, Redbuds and a lot more. The latter has long, black seed pods, like runner beans that hang off the tree and like the sycamore in Britain, the seeds all seem to germinate. We have them in our garden and the seedlings are everywhere.
Forest cover one third of Missouri. That surprised me. Oaks seem to be the most important tree for commercial use, but walnut wood is the most highly prized. We have just been struck by the diverse nature of the forests.
I have been trying to learn more about the local flora and fauna and have got books out of the library to identify things.
There are huge butterflies. Some four and a half inches across!. Roland thought they were bats, because one of the large ones is mostly black. The Black Swallowtail, or Parsnip! There is also a very spectacular black and orange striped Monarch, also huge. Of course try as I might, I cannot get one to stay still long enough to photograph it. I did get this one though- the Red-Spotted Purple
Not as big, but very beautiful.
The squirrels round here are red rusty grey and prolific. I suppose there are a lot of nut trees. The farmers in the farmer's market were complaining about them scoffing all the mulberries before they could pick them.
Lastly and the only one that posed for it's photo!
I saw this while walking along the main road. It is very typical.
We are off to St Louis tomorrow for a day in town.
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