Sometimes when I’m walking through the suburbs I ponder street names. Our neighborhood has a faux English theme: Folkstone, Treadwell. You half expect to be strolling through the Cotswolds — but of course you are not.

Close by are roads with names like Flat Meadow, Hay Meadow, Cross Creek and Still Pond. These belong to the neighborhood called Franklin Farm. The farm is gone, the creek is but a shadow of its former self and the meadow is a narrow strip of land hemmed by houses. The ponds are so still (that is, stagnant) that this summer they were renovated, if that’s something you can do to a pond. The trees around them were felled so daylight could freshen them up.

The small dairy farms that still dotted our landscape half a century ago are gone now. We grow families here now. But in my walks through the woods and fields, I like to pretend. The place names make it easier.