Monday, November 15, 2010

Our neighbors hate us...

What type of neighborhood do you live in?  Ours is pretty quiet.  We live close to a local golf club in an established subdivision.  Our home was built in 1955 when the little town we live in started expanding.  We love it!  Other than our 3 kids, there are only about 5 other kids in the whole neighborhood.  None of them are near our kids ages.  They seem about middle school aged.  There are a lot of retired people or empty-nesters around us.  I've decided that they hate us.

Why you ask?  Well, the retired and empty-nesters have beautiful yards.  All spring and summer long they were out grooming them.  They were green with beautiful flower gardens.  Ours was not.  Hubs and I refered to our yard as the one bringing down home values...lol.  We mowed about once every 2 weeks.  Or so.  I was thankful that my flower bulbs and perennials came back because I didn't have time to fuss with my flower beds.  We did put in some nice red mulch, but that's about it. 

Now that fall is here, I am REALLY feeling the pressure.  We have a beautiful sycamore and maple tree in our yard.  I love them!  With fall here, we are raking leaves into piles and letting the kids jump in them.  Meanwhile, every.  single.  yard.  in our neighborhood has been raked and the contents put into mulch bins or compost piles.  Our leaves are everywhere.  It's nature, they'll disappear over the winter right? 

Now, this past week it was unusually warm in our neck of the woods.  I look outside and almost all the houses have their Christmas lights up!  None of them are turning them on, but all their decor is out.  We still have out our pumpkins.  From Halloween.  Some are whole, some were carved.  The carved ones now look like people who wear dentures without their teeth in.  It's sad.  I mean, doesn't everyone prefer to hang Christmas lights in sub-zero weather with ice on the roof?  I know that's our families idea of a good time (roll eyes here please).   Truth be told, we may or may not even get Christmas lights up.  Is it really necessary to put them up anyway?  Who knows, at the rate we're going we may put them after Christmas. 

All I this is that the neighbors hate us, and I'm okay with it.

6 comments:

  1. Okay, first it's halfway through November 15th. Throw the pumpkins away. Seriously. They mold in warm weather and I can't imagine how gross they are after the last 2 weeks.

    Second, rake the leaves and get rid of them, otherwise they'll kill your grass - but then I guess you won't have to worry about mowing in the spring if all your grass is dead. (ha)

    And btw, if you don't rake them, they do blow into your neighbor's yards. You're young and have a lot healthier body than those older neighbors, so you are better abled to rake and bag YOUR leaves than they are. (Yeah, that was a serious guilt trip...) Of course you can be a good neighbor and rake the leaves from your tree regardless if they're in your yard or not. They'd appreciate that.

    Do you spray for dandelions? If not, they're probably glaring at you every time a dandelion pops up in your yard too.

    I must be old or something. I lived next door to someone like you and grumbled the whole time about his weeds getting into my yard, his leaves getting into my yard, the grass never being mowed, mosquitos from the gutters never being cleaned, etc. Of course now the house is in foreclosure and we take care of the front yard. Looks better than ever. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrea@mommyconfessionsblogNovember 15, 2010 at 9:09 AM

    I personally don't understand the whole obsession with raking your leaves. I dont rake mine. Then again I don't have any trees. Just the same I think that if you don't like the leaves in your yard then rake them up. Kids like to play in leaves if it was me I would leave them in my back yard for the kids to play in. When we were little our parents weren't crazy about raking the leaves up. Plus they just blow right back into the yard it is an endless battle.
    Let the kids enjoy the leaves. Those are the moments that memories are made of.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Personally I don't understand the raking of the leaves, the kids like it, so what the heck, keep them around for the kids to have fun!

    I just threw my pumpkins (carved) out in this weeks trash. So, make a promise you will throw them out this week or at least into a compost pile/bin.

    Keep up with planing perennials and bulbs, just make sure you put fresh mulch down and something to prevent weeds...it will help with allergies as well and is good exercise.

    As far as your neighbors hating you, just take some time, get to know them and have them over to see you are just awesome parents with great kids and that you want them to accept you for who you are! This is a little hard in the winter, but have a cookie exchange and deliver each invitation by hand.

    I am sure you are doing your best...just try to make your lawn cutting routine next season! Also, watch out, they probably want you to shovel your sidewalks as well!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, in our defense, we do know all of our neighbors. They are great! I just seem to think they hate our yard habits....lol. Truth be told, we don't neglect our yard at all. We just don't cut it weekly. It's NEVER overgrown. With the sycamore leaves, they do have something in them that will kill your yard, so those leaves are always blown into a pile and put in yard waste bags.

    I also wrote this post on Friday, so I did take the pumpkins to our compost heap behind our garage. The carved ones only though. It's still fall, so the uncarved ones are still out front. I will be bringing them in to cut and bake for pumpkin pies this week though (yummy benefits!!!).

    I honestly would go take care of the neighbors leaves, but the middle-schooler across the street earns a pretty good living doing that and I won't take away from the money he earns...lol.

    The snow removal thing isn't as big a deal for some reason. Last winter our sidewalks were the only ones cleaned off after a big snow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think Cyndi must be pretending to be a grumpy older neighbor. : )

    I can tell that you are exagerating the badness of your lawn and you sound like a lovely neighbor!

    Obviously families are more important then neatly bagged leaves or dandelion free lawns.

    ReplyDelete
  6. [...] week when I wrote about our neighbors putting up their Christmas lights?  You don’t?  Well, go refresh yourselves and then come back.  I’ll wait….. [...]

    ReplyDelete