You & your neighbours

Thanks osso....I know that technically they are right. But they could say something like, "Hey, you might wanna pull your car up cuz theyll ticket you if you hang over the sidewalk." OR "I saw last week that you have a really hard time starting your mower....need any help/need to borrow mine?" (I cannot get the mower started myself as it is a push and the primer is broken...what a piece of sh*t our landlady provided) OR "When I'm done here, would you like some help with that snow?"

ANYTHING except blatent disregard for other people. We had one neighbor who was so nice....they told us any time we needed anything to come over. Mower, gardening tools, smoke....whatever. They were really nice and they moved.

(I knew I'd started a thread about neighbours here at some stage, but it took me ages to track it down. Page 3 of 4 pages of threads!!!
Some pretty good posts in the back pages, BTW.)

Anyway, anyway ....

I just wanted to say that I have new neighbours. For a few months now, actually. The previous ones (who I started this thread with) have moved on. The day I realized that their house was up for sale is one of the happiest in all my time living in this little street. (I won't go into the details. Let's just say the world's best negotiator couldn't repair our fractured relationship! Awful, just awful ..)

Anyway ... my new neighbours are a breath of fresh air. I'm so relieved. A very young fellow (who doesn't look that much older than some of the students I teach & his girl friend) He's the spitting image of TinTin, so that's what I'll call him. His friend, K, I've had very little to do with. For some unknown reason our paths haven't crossed much. But TinTin is a delight. He makes me feel rather jaded, actually, because he appears to find everything so exciting! At the moment, his current cause for excitement is gardening & his vegie patch. We natter over the front fence about mulch, transplanting plants, our parsley plants turning to seed, native plants, cuttings from my garden to theirs ... good stuff. TinTin tells me he plans to get into bush tucker - grow it and eat it. We are both considering throwing some dandelion leaves into our salads, but which bits are best?
The third resident of their house is Henny, a great big fluffy ginger tabby who has yet to make friends with my cat, Poppy. Sadly, they don't appear interested in forming a feline friendship.

But, anyway, let me tell you, having the old neighbours move out & the new lot move in has been something like a black cloud lifting. Finally. Who knew that the neighborhood could be this easy?

A couple of doors down resides the Lawn Mower Lady. Where I live one has to maintain the nature strip outside the front of one's house. Well I never have to. Because, before the grass has grown an inch, even, she's out there at it! With a passion! And not only her & my nature strip, but about a third of this little street! She's incredible.

OK, this is the first neighbours post since 2005. Feel free to post yours, if you have the inclination!

I'm glad you're smiling, msolga. My tree-cutting, leaf-burning neighbor story is on hold until next year. We're all huddled inside and the leaves and trees are resting comfortably.

Hooray!!!

Very pleased for you, JPB!

More tomorrow, but I'm presently liking neighbors.

Oh good, osso!

Would you like a reminder?

Just want to say again that some of the back stories here make for good reading, too. Farmer & his Amish neighbours, for example. Good stuff.

wow, I missed this thread the first time around.

Quickly reading through the pages, I realize I'm very very fortunate with my neighbors.

To the left of me is Bill, he's gone a lot because he's some kind of engineer in the oil industry. He could be somewhere in the state, or off to Venezuela or some other South American country. When he's home, he's a pleasure to have around. He loves to to cook, and always makes too much. In the summer it seems he's always knocking on our door with the announcement "I made too much BBQ chicken, ribs, roasted vegetables, pecan pie....here"
So, when I cook, or Wally bakes, he benefits.
I'll come home from work, and Wally and Bill will both be standing on their respective side porches, having important conversations over the expanse of the 2 driveways.

Past Bill is Eureka. A few years back her house burned down in the middle of winter (I still think it was her kid smoking pot and feel asleep), and she stayed a couple of nights with us. Her insurance paid for a new house built on the site, her son is grown and moved out, and she's a really nice woman.

On my right is Mike and Anesa. She's now pregnant with their first child. We're actually not that close to them, but we got to know Mike's father really well when he came down to custom build their home on the property next to us. I consider us to be really good friends with his mom and dad, even though they live in upstate NY, a couple of thousand miles away. In a few months, Mikes mom will be coming down to stay with them during the last months of the pregnancy. I'm looking forward to seeing her.

Pat them is Dan and Brooke, and their 2 kids Reese and Will.
They are the people we are closest too. They are such good people, and Reese and I somehow bonded as friends since she was a toddler. We're the neighbors the kids would run to is there was ever an emergency, we have keys to each others houses, fed each other pets during vacations etc.

I think I have good neighbors.

That sounds like a good, rock-solid neighbourhood, chai! That sort of situation is unusual in the transitory inner-city neighbourhoods I've mostly lived in. How long have you lived there?

It'd also be good to hear about your neighbourhood stories if you're not living in the suburbs. I'd be fascinated to hear about your relationship with your neighbours in high rise apartment blocks .... right through to really remote areas, where you neighbours might be miles & miles away.

We just had dinner with my neighbors. They live a few houses down
and have two little Yorkie brothers and they get along well with our dog,
so we always talk and finally we got together for dinner. We all had
a good time. Another neighbor and I, we work out together and it keeps us
motivated to know that the other one is waiting at the gym.

Hey, Jane.
Do you recall posting this way back in 2005?
Do things sound pretty much the same, still?

If he has questions I can probably answer them. I did quite a lot of research and marketing back a while. sold some stuff to one of the premier restaurants (Hyatt on the Park) in sydney
Tell him i have muntries slowly ripening after about 8? years of waiting and can Wild harvest pepper berries if he wants them.

Why thank you, dp!
So very kind of you!

I won't disturb him & K today because there's some Big Project going on in the back yard. They've been at it for hours!

Bush tucker in an urban setting. Now that's a idea!

Farmer, if you happen to stumble on this thread. More writings about your community. Please. I'll pay you, even!

Yes, MsOlga, when I read back what I said in 2005 I seem quite repetitive,
but I've had luck with neighbors so far. Feeding them helps too!

I'm sure it does, Jane!

Ill look back on my neighbors and what lies I told about em and get back to uou. Were going to the Pa Farm Show today so its all about pigs, n chickens, n cows,,nsheep,n tractors, n funnel cakes ,n fried twinkies today.

I bought the house in 1991, and actually started living in it permanently in 1998.

Over the years there have been issues, all centered on the house where D & B now live. Before they bought it and renovated it, it was opened by some woman in another part of town, and she totally did not care what kind of crazy people she rented to.
Across from me, there was a house that, by the time I moved there, the elderly couple who owned it had moved into a retirement home, and their no-good son (who didn't live there) would use the house for all sorts of unusual time of day/night brief meeting, if you know what I mean. The house apparantly became uninhabitable inside, and wasn't so great looking from the outside either. Eventually the property was bought by a young couple. He's a hedge fund manager, and I guess he's doing ok as he drives a porsche, and they basically tore the house down and rebuilt. They now have a son the same age as Will, about 1 and a half. The house next to them is owned by a female couple. They have REALLY done amazing things with the place. They left the original house, which they rent out. They built a 2 story dwelling behind it,which they live in, They added a 2nd story onto the front house, and connected the 2 upper floors with a sky way.
They use the 2nd floor of the front house as a karate studio. You know how there's certain sights/sounds that mean "home" to you?

When I'm working in the front garden, and I hear a sting of "HI-YA's!" and powerful grunts, I know that all is right with the world.

It's taken time to establish such a stable neighborhood.

The common denominator has been people willing to buy homes that were built in the 1950's and put in the time, money and commitment to upgrade.

I feel extremely fortunate, since (as I've told this story before) I bought the house while married to my ex-husband, as a bank repossession. It was a a mess. At the time, the ex had gotten it in his mind to buy a house, and I felt like I was just being drug along becaue I was the one with good credit. It was just luck that this was the house we ended up with. My ex husband had no conception of what constituted a desireable neighborhood from a troubled one. Today, I've looked at some of the houses he was interested in, and I thank God that isn't what we ended up with.
All houses that are in high drug areas, or in a really high traffic area, all generally unsafe.

I think to myself "that could have been me"

I recently wrote about my across the street neighbors on another thread. They are the worst sort to have, short of murderous thugs and the like. Another neighbor is a Japanese woman. I am pretty certain she moved here to marry. Her husband died some five or so years back. She is a good neighbor, if a bit pushy. Early on, she tried to enlist my services fixing her house and property. I declined, because I am getting a bit old for that and also because I don't see it as good policy to get so involved with people that close to me. I have her at arm's length now and that's comfortable. The rest of the neighbors leave me alone and I treat them the same.