I can see my house from here

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

It's the little things that excite me.
Up until this week, the Google Earth view of my neighborhood was years out of date. The condo development a few blocks away which has been finished for a year now was still depicted on GE as warehouses that were torn down before I even moved here.
Today I discovered that the imagery in my neighborhood has been updated, to as recently as this summer. I can see my recycling bin by the garage, my flag flying in front, and my plantings all around the house. What clinches the timeframe is my backyard. I can see the furniture I bought this summer, the large vine that covered my backyard fence was removed in favor of roses and lavender, and what used to be an overgrown bush on the boundary between my driveway and the neighbor's house was cut down to size around the same time; in addition, there's an empty lot on the next street where a house burned down, until this spring it had a construction fence hiding it but in this picture the fence is gone and property clean up has started. But the picture was taken before my neighbor to the north had to dig up his front yard to replace a water main, my neighbor across the street had a teetering, dying tree taken down, so I'd say this picture was taken toward the end of August.
Strangely, Google Maps still shows the years-old imagery...
[Looks like the whole area is new... our year-old Target is now pictured and judging from the image of the finished but unopened Trader Joes that opened on June 29 it looks like my date estimation is a little off -- the picture was probably taken in mid June. Further south the new imagery shows the burned areas on Communications Hill from a brush fire at the end of May, so mid-June sounds more likely.]

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