A fairly well balanced piece on my Sweet Home. Includes the requisite (and deserved) teasing.

THE REAL NEW ENGLAND

I think I had vaguely expected a sort of low-grade rainforest effect: swamps, Spanish moss, magnolias the size of dinner-plates, exotic bugs, and so on. In fact, I was surprised at how English Alabama looks. Driving around the backcountry, I could almost have been in the place where I grew up, the English East Midlands. Gently rolling hills, small farms, grazing cattle, even some hedgerows — pretty much like the countryside I spent many happy hours bicycling around in my childhood. (Though the hedgerows of Northamptonshire are around 1,000 years older than Alabama's. Anglo-Saxon land title deeds often refer to hedgerows that still exist.)