There are those who are drawn to the serene beauty and isolating comfort of living in the countryside.  There are the obvious benefits to nature-lovers and those who find the bustle, noise and crowded conditions of urban living not to their liking.  And then there are the irritations involved with not being on an urban power grid or sewage system, or water pipeline. 

Being dependent on providing the basics of living without the widespread assurances usually associated with urban living is not to everyone's taste.  Digging a deep enough well, hoping the water table will not be too impacted by drought; requiring your own septic system which needs periodic emptying, contemplating long rush-hour drives to and from employment in the city.

If there are power outages in the countryside they come with the additional problem of being unable to access your own well water because the pump is dependent on drawing electricity.  That's a huge minus.  Another is not having relatively low-cost high-speed Internet service.  Worse, unable to tap into an otherwise-accessible-to-city-folk cheap form of home heating; natural gas.

Weighed against the attraction of seeing a wide variety of bird species make use of winter bird feeders, watching small family gatherings of hummingbirds who return to spend their summers year upon year, and species that urban dwellers can only hope to see, like orioles and blue jays, and cedar waxwings, among countless others.

Squirrels and chipmunks, beaver, turtles, deer, raccoons and any number of other wildlife species turn up regularly, particularly if there's a wetland on your property.

Our daughter's home is in the countryside.  She has a log home originally built as a schoolhouse in 1864, since modernized and built upon and upgraded.  This summer her grass is golden thatch due to the dearth of rain we've been receiving, particularly in her county.  When, two weeks back, we experienced a violent thunderstorm, thousands of people were deprived of power for days, including her.  No well water access, no electrical light, no power.  But her telephone worked.

Unfortunately, some of her neighbours had no land-line telephone service.  So when Bell Canada sent out technicians to fix their service, they doomed hers, somehow.  And in the two weeks since, although technicians have come out time and again in braces no less, they have restored service, which immediately upon their leaving, lapses again.