Our Neighbors Love Us

Though there is a hint of sarcasm in that title, in some ways they really do love us. For example, just before we moved in, our house looked like this.

It had been vacant for three years. The lawn was mostly dead. (Not all dead, or we would have looked for loose change.) This is actually what the house looked like half-way through fixing it up. (It already has most of the siding, two of the new windows, and a new door. You can imagine what the house looked like before.) Our neighbors were very, very grateful it would be occupied again.

We worked really hard on bringing the lawn back to life, but we haven't always done the best job. There is so much quack grass that we don't really stand a chance. We've tried treating it ourselves and even hired a lawn care business this year, to no avail. Last summer when my husband was very busy in school and work and I was in charge of everything else (kind of like now) I let the back lawn go a bit. I figured that no one would care except for us. Then my neighbor on the right kind of went ballistic and made a really nasty call to my mom (who she thought we were renting from--excuse me, we OWN our home!) about "that gal and the two guys and the baby" (as if something inappropriate were going on) who were, among other things, "letting the weeds grow taller than the wading pool in the back yard, and letting them grow under the fence."

I was mortified. We had always gotten along reasonably well with her and her husband. They had never given us any indication that we were bothering them. I didn't know my weeds were growing under the fence! But what was she doing, sticking her nose over our 6 foot fence to look at the wading pool in our backyard? I immediately took some bread over to apologize. (I wanted to TP her house, but hey, we're going to be neighbors for a while longer.) She acted all nice like nothing was wrong. I mowed the weeds and tried to forget about it.

Then we put in THE FENCE. See, our entire backyard was fenced except for the space between our house and unattached garage. I assume the reason it had never been fenced was because the driveway continued into a two-level patio in back. (Sounds fancy, but what was really going on is that our entire property slopes in the back, so they decided to pour two levels of patio, which was ugly and annoying.) We broke out the patio ourselves, put in some patches of sod, and then erected a fence we had gotten for free from my aunt. It was crooked, wobbly, and sadly in need of a fresh coat of paint, but it was FREE. And it kept our dog in.

Until a snow drift knocked it down last winter. So I tied it back together with a belt. And then the dog kept escaping. So Nathan started nailing partical board scraps to various places. And then I decided that something different had to be done.

So we put it in the front yard.

Now before, only the gas meter reader and our neighbor on the left ever saw it. But now, EVERYONE can appreciate it! Okay, not really. The truth is, I was about to throw it away when it occured to me that it would make an awesome Halloween decoration. I mean, you couldn't make something look that sad if you tried! So Steven and I put it up (i.e. he did all the hauling and post pounding while I said helpful things like "a little to the left") and then I immediately dashed to our garage, frantically calling "Hurry!" to my brother. I was desperate to get the rest of the Halloween decorations put up so that our neighbors would know this was not our latest real estate devaluation project.
As it was, our neighbor on the left smiled sweetly and asked "getting into the Halloween spirit?" when she pulled into her driveway. "Yeah!" I assured her, knowing that she was really just making sure.

And what about our backyard? We forked over some big bucks to have this lovely gem installed.

Child safety, dog containment, and privacy, all for under $600.

Nothing for the neighbors to grimace about now, right?

Welllllllllll.......

There's this Harry Potter party that I'm planning in a few weeks, and I was thinking that the graveyard fits in perfectly with my decor plan . . . I wonder what they'll think when our Halloween decorations not only don't go away, but start to increase over the next 14 days . . .

Maybe I should bake some more bread.