Just Plain Sad

Went for an early morning walk in the cold weather this morning. It was 35 degrees when I stepped outside the door. I decided to walk around inside our gated community to see what kind of Christmas decorations people had put up. Here in SoCal, people love to decorate the outsides of their homes and they love to put decorations in their front yards. Usually, the weekend after Thanksgiving, just about everyone is outside putting up their decorations, and most years, just about every house here (400 strong) has some kind of yard decorations or lights on their homes.
Well, I guess this year the economy has hit everyone. I saw only about 50 homes or so that had any kind of decorations and a lot of them just had a wreath on their front door.
I'll admit that there are a lot of empty homes in our community now due to the fact that people could not keep up with their mortgages and had to walk away from their homes.
It's just plain sad.
It was pretty cold out there as I was walking. When I was on one of the "upper" streets, I looked down toward the riverbed and noticed that all of the houses had ice on their roofs.
When I finally got back to my street and started walking up the hill towards my house, I noticed that there was a huge bird in the neighbor's birdbath. About 4-doors down from us, they have a nice bird area in their front yard....a birdbath, several bird feeders, including hummer feeders, and a lot of plants that attract the birds. I noticed this huge bird just sitting in the middle of the birdbath. As I got closer, I realized it was a red-tailed hawk. I tried to get a picture of it, but it flew off before I could get close enough.