Hey Youse Guys,
Mulchy gave me an idea from one of her posts on a different thread. Apparently the lucky woman has a doggone RIVER running near her house - close enough that she can hear it rushing.....ooh, am I ever green with envy! Natural sounds that aren't pre-recorded....how cool. Anyhow, it made me wonder what the rest of you have to lull you to sleep at night.

So.....go outside...close your eyes....tell me what you hear in your part of the world.

Me....semi trucks whizzing by 30 ft. from my front door. Grrr.....guess I'll go put my nature sounds tape in and put the headphones on. Too bad Great-Grandpa wasn't able to see into the future and know they'd be turning his dirt road into a major thoroughfare some day. Then he could have built the house about 100 yards further away from the road.

Mulchy....you're SO lucky....even considering the pipe organ thing!!

Don't feel too bad Janet. Right now I am at work and all I hear is the large refrigerator humming and the vent system blowing with the occassional phone ringing. I don't even have a window to look out. Well, even if I did it would be overlooking the hotel across the street with the 7 lanes of traffic in front of it. What I wouldn't give right now to be out in the country listening to the frogs chirp!

Why not take a picture or poster and put it in a window frame and hang it above your desk, change picture with seasons.

what do i have to lull me to sleep at night?
well there is the building next door, right across the driveway from me. they have a parking garage underneath so never hear me. but boy do i hear them! seems to be a VERY social building. people coming & going until 2 am on summer weekends. & of course the host family has to yell good night & whatever right before they go out the front gate. can't just wave.

one night a few summers ago i couldn't sleep because of a party at one of the apts. i'd asked them to please be quiet several itmes during the night. so at 11.30 i got dressed & went over. walked in thru the open door, sat down at an empty seat at the table & sevred myself. (dinner party) the people at the table were in shock. i looked around & told them that either they were all in bed w/ me or i was at the party w/ them. "i don't like the idea of having that many strangers in my bed, so i thought i'd join the party instead." i ate my fill & then excused myself & shut the door behind me. haven't had any problem since. ]

then there's the restaurant on teh other side of my building. they are suposed to have a license to have live music... but you know how it goes. they have private parties till 2am as well. 3 weeks ago i got fed up & went over there.
do you see it coming??????
i was in my bathrobe, i walk in the front door of the restaurant. go thru the customer area & into the office, which is easily visable fromt the customer area. & start shouting at the manager, intentionally causing as much disruption as possible. ] told her that i'd already lost one tenant because of that building being changed from a hardware store to a strip mall & all the noise that entails(true). told ehr that if i lost another i'd sure them all for the lost income.
she had been carrying a cake for the party (birthday?). she put it down on a chair to try & calm me down..... see it coming??? one drunk guy came into see what was going on. he wanders over to the chair & sits on the cake. i let him sink in real good & then calmly ask the manager if it was a good idea for him to be sitting there? i could hardly keep a straight face!
haven't had any problem w/ them since either!

aren't i wicked????
it's actually been pretty quiet 'round here lately!!!

See, youse guys have got to figger it all out one day, just like I had to. Relatively simple thing to do.

Noise. Environmental noise. The low-pitched hummm of an interstate in the distance. Tires whining on a cold winter night. A train rumbling through in the dead of night. Airplanes coming over so people learn to stop talking for a while until it's past. IT'S SO WRONG!!!!

Used to live on a typical small town Bumfuxxxx Ontario street, hospital 2 blocks away, railroad 2 blocks away, 401 3 blocks away. Drove me nuts! No peace, no quiet. NO escape from Humanity....

"They" say that one gets used to it, learns to "tune it out". Horsehockey! That's called accumulating stress.

Personally, I loathe "noise". Then again, some people would freak out being in the middle of a field at night, seeing only stars, as far as the eye can see. I can live in that. I like hearing crickets and a Vixen in heat and wind in trees. Conversely, I can take cranking up Ozzie to waaaay past 120 dB.

Moved to a non-city, Victoria. Little or no traffic, little problem finding green spaces or beaches. Yet, like everywhere else in this country, one is never far from the Trans Canada Highway. Get up at 6 am and listen to that hated hummm gathering decibels. By 8 am the floatplanes fly over towards the Inner Harbor. By 10 am it's a constant brown noise.

Airport flyways. Interstates. Construction. Sirens. Morons with boomboxes, fragments of inner-city "music".

Now you know why I for one moved into a Green Zone. And the green is browning. Unless you move well away.

Some people have no tolerance for "noise". I know that I have been happiest sitting in the middle of 300+ acres.

Know this: Noise, background noise is bad for you. It gnaws away at your essence. If you can withdraw, if you have chosen to live well away from it, you are fortunate indeed. Or very smart, like Marilyn of Ecologicals moving away from a rural road getting busier and busier to a place where you can hear the Trumpeter Swans.

Humans are designed to hear sounds, not noises. To have to listen to noises is destructive.

Just my musings, of course...

John

On a bad day: it's the jarring obscenities bellowed by my sociopathic neighbor across the road, when he's verbally abusing his latest "live-in" or one the mothers of his many children!!X-( Honestly, Jerry Springer would have a whole week of shows outta that household!! :O

For the most, though, from beginning of May through Sept. , it's blessedly calm & quiet. (I think that's when he takes his "dysfunctional routine " on the road) Oh, there's the occasion kid whizzin by on their latest toy (one of those motorized scooter-thingys). But, mostly it's the birds' calls (I've gotten pretty good at identifying them by their calls), the fluttering of their wings. And on a nice breezy day, leaves rustling through really tall oaks.

But, the most disconserting sound is.........[u] my plants[/u]. Their constant "whispering"! :O

Yes, I hear them! Think they can talk behind their leaves, or pull petals up so I can't see their lips move (betcha didn't know they had "lips", didya?)

But, I hear them alright! Yammerin on and on about "Who's got more mulch.... Who's closer to the soaker hose.....Who's gonna stay where they're planted and who wants to move?" And cause egos transcend all species: "Who's better/prettier/stronger than the other!!"

gardenz

Crickets, the dog down the road barking, and a car going by down at the end of the lane every once in a while...I love just sitting out on the back deck star watching and hearing night sounds. I have been known to fall alsleep only to awake when the dew is making the blanket wet....I am torn between closing the deck in or just putting up a roof...

After reading the postings here I have to remind myself I am quite lucky. Although I can hear traffic in the distance and occasionally a noisy kid with a loud stereo comes blarring through, for the most part it is good. I live in a cul de sac with neighbors who are very considerate. The ones next door are just finishing raising three teenagers and they have always been quiet as church mice when I go to bed. We all know each other very well and have lived here for years. They all know I get up at 3 am to go to work and go to bed at about 8 pm and try very hard not to disturb me. With the windows open I can hear an assortment of wind chimes, different birds and breezes in the many very large trees around me. Also the occasional barking dog and laughing or fighting kids, but that's just part of nieghborhood life. All in all, good.

Growing up, we lived way out in the boonies, surrounded by BLM land, high up on a ridge above a large town. It was so quiet, we heard any car coming up our road while it was still miles away. Sometimes in the summer, when the wind was blowing just right we could hear the cars racing on the dirt track in town. As a kid it made me feel less isolated.
Now I get to deal with a relatively quiet neighborhood except for the train that goes through at about midnight every night and has to set off a RR crossing bell while it blows it's warning horn. Oh yeah, and the guy or gal that picks up their buddy in the morning for work and honks their horn to let them know they're waiting for them across the street. That's at about 5:30 or 6am. Other than that- not bad noise-wise.

Sleep ...what the heck is that...I havent slept since I moved into this crappy city life......I LOVE QUITE.....I could live in the middle of a 3000 acre field with nothing but trees,birds,,wind blowing thru the grass and my hard work.I guess it comes from too many concerts,people,airplanes,ect, when I was a DJ or when I was building F-16s for a living.What kept me sane was ...you guessed it my garden. Well I have said it once and I will say it again..."I will live in the country again"..now I might have to work in the city but .....I will have a "HOME" to go to.....

I live in the country so I am lulled to sleep by the sounds of frogs doing their thing and an occational barking of a distint dog and our dog joining in under our bedroom window until I tell him to be quiet. This is on the nights I am home, but thats another story.

I lived in a place for four years where my (very poorly insulated) front door was about 50 feet from the train tracks. I was a starving student at the time and man, was the rent CHEAP! It was so loud that when a train went by I could not hear anything else over it. Phone calls were put on hold. Video tapes were paused. I got accustomed enough to the sound that after the first week it no longer woke me up at night(my bedroom was in the front of the house!), but it certainly took a toll on my nerves.

These days when I walk outside I might hear hundred birds singing, the coyotes, the wind in the trees, cats meowing, dogs barking, the river, a tiny bi-plane using the runway across the street, or during rush hour, the cars that use our country road to avoid highway traffic.

(sigh!)

Muuuuuuuch better....

Hopefully when the time comes that I am ready to buy a house, I will not even have the cars to contend with!

My sympathies to those of you who live in "noisy" places. As I sit here with the window open, I hear all the birds waking up and if I step outside I can hear the neighbors cows fart. We don't have to go outside or have the windows open to hear crickets, they give us the honor of their prescence by coming inside. Don't know how they get in. Then there's the frogs and locusts at night. I don't have to wear a watch outside, at noon the town whistle 3 miles away lets me know it's lunchtime. Then the country church 1 mile down the road sounds its chimes and I know it's 6 pm. Then there's the occasional cat fight in the middle of the night, or a coon roaming the yard and the dog trees him. Pure Heaven.

Mumsey - I'll be headed through your state this summer as we head to our vacation destination...South Dakota. I'll be sure to roll my windows down when we go through Iowa and listen for those cow farts! That's not one of those Iowa tourist traps, is it???

A roof??? How can you watch the stars??? Get yerself a tarp!!! Keep on keepin' on!