Moving To Shawshank

I no longer have a residence at Brandywine. In my snowbird phase I have a place down here and up North. Down here it is now West Shore Village, affectionately known as Shawshank within the family. It is a gated condo community which is good and bad. Supposedly the gate keeps the riff-raff out, but since it lets me in how good can it be? If in your vehicle you get a clicker that opens the gate but pedestrians and bikers are not allowed to go through the car entrance. Uh, OK. Other rules state that no pets over 30 lbs., and one must keep their garage doors closed. The good things: I can now grill and picked up a small Weber grill last week. It's also cheaper than Brandywine, and Ceridian is right next door. It appears to be a mixed bag of residents: young, older, some kids, too quiet but with a great large pool right in our back yard.

Officially the address is: 3255 39th Street S, Unit B, St. Petersburg, FL 33711.

The benign sign out front that doesn't have words like "prison", "correctional", "institution", or "complex".

Guard house. In a cost-cutting move, there isn't actually a guard in there anymore. They went to a gate system: I have a clicker that opens the gate and a pin number for the pedestrian gate.

The wall at Shawshank. This turns into chain link on the non-public road side.

Visitors go to a box that lists residents. You then call that number, and the resident then pushes a number on their cell pohone, opening the gate.

The pedestrian gate, although I see people using their clickers to open car gate: which is expressly forbidden in the resident handbook.

Now why is it 19 and not 20 mph? Whimsey?

Quiet, nice roads.

The place is well maintained.

A pool in our backyard.

We were told this is a Lanai room, not a Florida room. What I do know is it is a porch with AC and blinds. You can either use screen or pull window units down to use a stretched plastic to keep the rain out. This is what Herb and Marj needed in Seaton in their porch. Every fall Herb had to install plastic sheeting which was a tedious project.

It's a fun room where we can spy on the neighbors, see who is swimming and keep an eye on the grapefruit tree to see if breakfast is ready. On the far area I'll hav a table and another easel or two and fire into some painting.

A small collection of greenery which should do well here.

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