Now it makes sense, I'm not good enough for my neighborhood

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Finally it makes sense. I bought a house above my means. Oh I can afford it. But apparently my neighbors aren’t happy.

My wife overheard snippets of a conversation between neighbors about us, specifically about the yard. Now it’s a big yard and I have a bad back and a bad foot. My wife has physical issues and can’t do much outside in the yard, so it’s all up to me. I have raked all the front yard leaves into the space between the sidewalk & the street. This weekend, assuming it stops raining, I plan to suck them up w/ the leaf blower/chopper.

Yes right now it’s ugly, but I picked them up in previous years, I’m going to pick them up this year. It takes me a while, but I’ll get it done.

I know the past two summers I attempted to weed treat my yard instead of paying someone else. It didn’t work out as well as I’d like, I fully plan to hire someone this year to treat the yard if my wife finds a job and if I can save some money put aside for my wife’s unemployment.

Due to both of our physical issues, I cannot shovel the snow as well as I’d like. I don’t have a blower. Usually I make one lane in the driveway so we can get to work, it usually takes a couple days for the entire driveway & sidewalk to be cleared. I’m only one guy and I’m not going to throw my back out again, just so I can be more presentable.

I just moved in 3 years ago, and the neighbors have been here for years. Apparently they were reminising about the good old days when the yard used be up to snuff. I figured I was a step up. The previous people (who only lasted 3 years) ran a day care. Now it’s just my wife & I and 2 reasonably well behaved dogs.

Now it makes sense why, when I held a big garage sale for me and some friends this summer, none of the neighbors came over to socialize.

Yes, I’m an eccentric. Yes, I tend to wear shorts, wife beater and headband when I mow the yard. I’m a very sweaty guy and it’s frustrating when sweat drips into my glasses. But the front yard only takes 15 minutes. I’m sorry if I can’t afford a service and don’t have kids to help. I’m sorry that I drive around in a 10 year old Toyota while you have a boat, Mini and Hummer.

We are wonderful people if you get to know us, ask our friends. I was always jealous of friends in town who know all their neighbors and drink with them and help them out w/ small things. We’ve just been totally shunned by our neighbors and they have nothing better to talk about than us.

2

People care what someone else’s SNOW looks like? I had no idea. :eek:

3

How frustrating. Maybe it’s time for gigantic, inflatable Christmas decorations? Or paint the house an obnoxious shade of green. Might as well earn their enmity.

4

Two words.

Garden gnomes.

5

I can’t imagine why you’d want to chum around with these judgmental jerks!

What you wear to mow your yard? How you clear your snow? How you weed your yard?

Seriously?

I’d be smiling ear to ear, waving and shouting, “Howdy neighbour!”, at every single opportunity.

6

I feel for ya, man. I moved into a neighborhood where most folks don’t lift a finger around the house and the yard, and there’s constantly service trucks going in and out because they have everything done for them. I mow my own lawn, pick up my own leaves and generally do my own handy work with the help of some of my family members.

Yes, I heard the mutterings when we had 10-yard dumpsters and piles of topsoil in the driveway. I heard it when I had to re-seed part of my lawn because I mucked it up with a Bobcat. I heard it when my brother-in-law and I had to replace the central air and left the old units outside until I found a weekday when I could get off from work and take them to the scrapyard in my pickup.

I’ve found the best revenge is continuing to plug away. Eventually, doing your own work provides handsome rewards and the neighbors will learn to respect that. I found that my next-door neighbor is an older guy who has to do a lot of his own stuff, too. We help each other out and frequently hang out in the driveway making fun of the richies who completely freak out and start dialing numbers when a tree limb comes down in their yard.

You might also find an opportunity to reach out and give your neighbors a hand when they (inevitably) find themselves with a problem you can help with. My neighbor on the other side didn’t talk to us for months after we moved in, and then one day I found their mail scattered all over the road. (The mailman must have left their box open.) I picked it up, walked up to their front door and did the neighborly thing. Next thing you know, they invited us to one of their parties.

In any case, I find that most of the people who deride others for doing their own yard work and maintenance chores are usually the ones who are most clueless when something out of the ordinary happens. One day, they’ll have a shitload of leaves on their lawn in between lawn service visits, or they’ll have a pipe burst or something and they’ll look to you. You know - because you “do this sort of thing all the time.” And there’s your opportunity to show them that they should have respect for people who do their own work.

7

We had these cliques in our old neighborhood as well. The landlord called them “The Desperate Housewives”.

These people would stop her in stores to tell how “The New People(we were there for a several years) have a new baby. She didn’t even look pregnant.” The landaldy gave them blank stares.

Our new eighborhood is much better.

8

I’m casual friends with most of my neighbors, and wave at them when I see them, but my really good friends I’ve found through mutual interests, not geography.

If my neighbors worked all day and the guy had a bum back, we’d be over there shoveling the snow for him, not judging him on it.

Life’s too short to worry about the yard measuring up. It’s also too short to worry about people who are petty like that.

9

No offense intended Digger1914, but I’m going to move this from The BBQ Pit to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share. If things get acrimonious, we can move it back.
**
Gfactor**
Pit Moderator

10

My husband and I rent (for an awesome deal) in a really well-to-do neighborhood. It used to have a lot of nice little houses, Chicago bungalows, that kind of thing, plus a good number of very expensive homes. Then the whole dot-com thing, the investment craze, all sorts of influences came together and made it into a haven for teardowns and tract mansions. Now it’s a lot of new money people who used to house-hop every couple years during the boom and now are trying to get rid of their last house (overpriced, no yard).

Almost no one around here does their own yard. That’s barring the few elderly people who can still afford to live in their older home, and the occasional people who like to handle it themselves. My husband is dark-haired and of partial Mediterranean descent and works outside so he can get pretty tan. While mowing our lawn, he’s been asked by someone driving past if he could come over and handle their lawn next. :smack: (Mexican or Mexican-appearing landscape/yard workers are common on the crews hired around here.)

He’s also a postal worker and used to deliver our house. One day I was heading out to the store on a Saturday, and ran into him heading up our walk to drop off our mail. I greeted him, said I was heading out to the store, and gave him a fairly mild kiss on the lips. As I was walking off, I inwardly giggled at the thought of “kissing the mailman” and wondered about someone misinterpreting that. Sure enough, the busybody across the street stopped my husband and harangued him about kissing his “girlfriend” out there in front of everyone. My husband said, “Mr. So-and-so, I’m your neighbor, and that is my wife.” We had lived there for a few years at that point. The guy huffed and puffed a bit about inappropriate to be kissing me on the job, but it’s not like he dragged me into the bushes or anything. Just a quick smooch. I know my husband cleans up well when he’s out of his postal polyester, but it’s like we’re not important enough to recognize as living there, yet important enough to spot when apparent hanky-panky is going on.

The funny thing is, the place looks much nicer since we moved in. We dug into the flower beds and tended all of the perennials that had run wild, including a rose bush. We yanked down the ivy slowly wreaking its havoc on the house. We used our own money to buy nice things to accent the yard with, like a bench, a flagstone patio. The place we rent from absolutely loves us as tenants, because we take care of it better than anyone previously. So, screw 'em. They’re not good enough for us, either.

11

I have a bunch of kids hanging around my house and if you were any close to the Quad Cities (Iowa) I would sure send them on over to give you a hand.

Not sure your neighbors would like that much either though since these kids look pretty rough but they’re all good at heart. Some with long hair, some with tattoos and/or peircings and most either on a skateboard or bikes.

You should see the way some of the other church groups look at us when we show up for missions! But these are for the most part the first group of kids to dig in and get dirty to help.

Actually the offer stands for anyone here in my Doper family. If you’re close to the Quad Cities or know someone in our area that could use a hand from time to time let us know. This wouldn’t be a church thing. I’m the neighborhood mom and I usually end up with four out of my five here and whatever friends they decide to have over. Some kids just show up around dinner time to see what’s on the grill.

Someone suggested garden gnomes I second that with the addidtion of pink flamingos! I’ve always wanted pink flamingos for my yard.

12

Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re better than those richie bitchies. Don’t let them get you down. I have a neighbor that hates us and tries to gossip about us. We moved into my fiance’s late grandmother’s house (we’re buying the house from the estate). She found out we weren’t married when we moved in here and started gossiping that I was pregnant and we were being forced to get married. She later realized that I wasn’t pregnant, just a little on the heavy side. Then she started gossiping that I’m morbidly overweight and I’m getting married so I can be married before I die, because obviously I’m going to die right away for being fat.

The neighbor on the other side of us, luckily, is a great guy. He’s been in his house as long as my fiance’s grandmother had been in hers… since the 50s. He watched my fiance’s father grow up (with his kids) and is really fond of us. We’re kind of like surrogate grand kids for him (his grand kids are about our age, but live hours away). He keeps sticking up for us when our neighbor gossips about us. Sometimes we’ll have a bonfire in the backyard, he’ll come over and have a beer with us and we’ll all laugh about the stupid things the other neighbor says.

13

Geez Digger1914, you even got kicked out of the BBQ neighborhood!

“did you see his post? It looked like he made it himself! I always have my posts hand crafted by this nice Spanish man who comes to my house once a week”

“I know! and did you see what he was wearing when he posted? Not even a designer headband for God’s sake!”

14

I have a feeling my neighbors might feel the same about me. BUT, no one says anything.

It just sucks because I am a single woman who works 8+ hours a day, and I’ve got the same sized yard as everyone else. Everyone else, at least in my corner of the neighborhood, is either retired and/or has a family to help them out with their yard work.

They all do their own yard work, but it’s turning in to me paying other people to do mine for me (sort of the opposite of THespos’s neighborhood).

I noticed last week that every house on this end of the street has Halloween decorations up. Lights and flags and big home-made ghosts. Everyone but me, and good ol’ Pearl across the street who is also a single woman living on her own, albeit retired.

Anyway, like I said, people MIGHT be thinking the same about me, but I don’t go outside enough to hear it :slight_smile:

15

If I had neighbors like the OP’s, I’d be out on my front steps, sipping a 40 from a brown paper bag every night.

16

I’m pretty sure my neighbors think I’m the derelict in our neighborhood. My yard is never in great shape. I have to park my dirty pickup in the driveway because my garage is full of tools, unfinished woodworking projects, and motorcycles.

But, no one ever says anything. Maybe it’s because I’ve done minor repairs for most of them. It could also be that they’re a little afraid of me because they’ve seen me trim the hedges with a large chain saw.

17

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas used to be a real Army post. Nowadays it has a couple of schools, the prison and a lot of empty buildings and land. It used to cost a fortune to keep it all neat and pretty. But then some smart Sergeant-Major thought up a great idea. Now these idle areas sport a nice sign,

"This Area has been Allowed to Return to Natural Prairie Grass. "

I’m just sayin’

18

Sorry, Digger, but reading between the lines and accounting for how your version of the story is the best version and the truth is probably about 50% worse, you don’t sound like a great neighbour. You actually can’t afford to live there if you can’t keep up with your yard because of financial and physical problems, not just make excuses for why you can’t do it properly. Keeping up the yard (at least the front one that everyone sees) is part of living in any neighbourhood. What seems to you like just leaving your old leaves in a pile for a couple of days looks to your neighbours like, “Oh, God, they’ve got a big mess in their yard AGAIN. It’s been three years of looking at their messes. And would those dogs ever SHUT UP?” (Speculating based on my own experiences.)

19

Wow. So, based on pretty much nothing but your own experience, you’re speculating that the problem is much worse than the OP described, even though he has no reason to lie. Then you’re making two fantastic leaps of logic - that yard upkeep is a prerequisite of living in a nice neighborhood and that physical ability equals financial freedom.

Something tells me you’re one of those problematic neighbors.

20

Well, if it’s yellow it would make sense!