I really like where we live. We are within minutes of the mall, lots of restaurants, Target, Wal-Mart, grocery stores, gas stations, and most importantly Starbucks. We live in a nice little neighborhood, that is relatively new. There are lots of young families like us, and after 5 years our landscaping is finally starting to mature…slightly!
We especially love the neighbors who live on both sides of us. On one side is an older gentleman who lives by himself. He swears to love the cold weather and shows his affection for it by snowblowing our sidewalk and driveway for us almost every time it snows. He also does this for a large number of the people who live on our street. Even when we get huge snowstorms he is out there for hours with his snowblower helping us all out. He has even been known to mow our lawn if he notices we are out of town for a while. He has also given Madeline a few hand-me-down toys that his grandchildren no longer play with. He’s a great guy!
On the other side is another young couple that just had their first child, a little boy who is 4 months younger than Anthony. We spend a lot of evenings outside talking to them, watching our dogs play, and discussing how we can’t wait until next summer when our boys can play together!
That’s the good. Now the bad…
The people who live behind us are nice people, but they don’t seem to possess a desire to mow their lawn, or to perform much upkeep on their yard in general. It’s a Russian mother and her son who live there, and once a month or so he goes outside and undertakes the huge task of trying to tame his lawn. We don’t really care, because there is a rock wall behind our house, so their yard does not really meet up with ours. We’ve just always assumed they don’t really care about their yard, and we just ignore it.
Until today.
We came home from church and we could tell that there was a big project underway. I suppose I should have been tipped off when the son was outside mowing the lawn yesterday. It was a little shocking, since it happens so rarely. Today, there was a man outside building a brick wall all the way around the house from the front of the yard to the back. All day long we watched the man build the little retaining wall around the house.
I kept telling David that I couldn’t understand why they were trying to spruce up their yard with a fancy brick wall, since they can’t even be bothered to mow the lawn. I am pretty sure that they don’t realize that their little brick wall just created a huge weed wacking situation for the son that is going to completely up the ante in his yard work regimen.
The man worked all day long and by late afternoon the wall was done. As the wall-builder was sitting on a chair admiring his handiwork, my eyes were drawn to where his feet were resting. A place where the wall got a little higher and some strange steam-type of substance was rising from it.
After talking to our next door neighbor he informed us that they had build a little pond behind the house, complete with a fogger. So, the people who don’t give a rip about their yard and its upkeep have now built a nice retaining wall that wraps around the house, complete with a water effect, that shoots a vapor into their yard.
Tonight I went upstairs to take a look at the new pond and it was like a scene straight out of Sleepy Hollow. The backyard had an eery effect as steam was shooting out of the fogger, enhanced by some bright blue lights, lighting up the pond that has some type of fountain effect as well.
And to top it all off they are now shooting fireworks off their deck creating loud booms in our house. These neighbors are usually very quiet, and keep to themselves but apparently the pond has brought out their wild sides.
1 Comment
October 25, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Wow! That’s interesting! My neighbors aren’t nearly that exciting. I’d love to hear if there are any more “developments” with their yard. Funny.