“My S had a professor who told us regarding S “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”.”
Did that strike you as an unusual expression? I don’t think that’s unusual at all. I think that’s a very common saying.
I much prefer Dorothy Parker’s questionable quote: “you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
Regarding “up north” – growing up in far northern Wisconsin, I was literally “up north” to a Chicagoan. In fact, thousands of Chicagoans vacation in my old hometown every summer. The only industry is tourism – lakes and trees.
To us, “up north” was the UP of Michigan – literally 25 miles or so north of us… or Canada.
The recent posts about going faster reminded me of “off like a herd of turtles.” This was often said in our family as we slowly gathered the group and baggage to get out the door for a trip, finally.
What do you call the strip of land between the sidewalk in front of your house and the street in front of your house?
Here (Chicago suburb) it’s a “parkway”. Did you remember to put the recycle bins out on the parkway?
I don’t think I have ever heard a term for that space. I might call it the “outer lawn” or maybe the “public lawn”.
We have no name for that, not even in the cities where they actually exist. At least not that I’ve ever heard.
I’m in Chicago and I’ve never heard that expression. I don’t really have a term for that strip of land either.
Sidewalk strip AKA “Hellstrip” (when weeds and trash overtake it). 
I grew up calling the area where you walk the pavement instead of the sidewalk, but I understood both terms.
I also grew up calling a collection of houses a development, and didn’t hear the term subdivision til I moved to the Midwest.
What do you call triangular parcels of land inside intersections? Here they’re “heater pieces.”
We call it the boulevard. My neighbor calls it the road verge.
It’s the terrace. But some city ordinances refer to it as a parkway.
Never heard a term for it…(I’m in CA)
I learned that it was called Hellstrip when we tried to landscape the one in front of our old house. There was no soil, just leftover gravel and crushed cement from sidewalk pour covered with an inch of dirt with some sorry looking sod on the top. We had to excavate a ton of compacted stuff to make the thing at least marginally plantable.
I vaguely feel that I’ve heard it called the “tree lawn.” But generally it isn’t called anything here.
I don’t have a term for those triangular pieces. No need to refer to them.
A boulevard to me is a very wide street, with grass in between the opposing directions, and often local side streets that parallel the main street. They’re big and expansive. Using that term for a little piece of grass does not compute for me!
What Pizzagirl said - big, pretty, tree-lined street with a grassy divider.
I just asked someone if something was “up her alley”, meaning something she did or that she felt comfortable handling within her professional capacity.