I’ve learned to never take for granted the location of one’s residence insofar as it relates to how comfortable it is to live there.
For the longest time, I lived in a house with my family that was on a piece of land that saw direct sunlight with very little foliage to give us shade.
The most we had was some simple bushes and other types of landscaping, but no overhanging trees or even tall shrubs to give us respite from the sunlight and heat. We simply got used to buying heavy curtains and shades and using the air conditioning system all the time. All these things were very necessary in the summer, in particular, as you can well imagine. Then, last year, we moved into a new house. The house is just at the edge of a glade, and there is plenty of shade on three sides of our house. We even had to trim back some of the trees in order to protect our house from falling branches. Once that was done, however, my family and I very quickly became appreciative of just how much shade we were getting surrounding our house. We moved in in the month of May, and by mid-June it became very apparent that we would not have to use our air conditioning system nearly as much as we needed to on the old property. The house is oriented on the property in such a way that the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is blocked by trees on either side. Considering the fact that our new house has comparable square footage to the old one, my wife and I are ecstatic that our energy bill seems much lower!