This is our front side yard and the four plank fence we put up--(the ground is now fixed, and the fence is now straight back by the bush--this picture was taken right when he initially finished). We feel so much better--the bushes our neighbors chopped down 8 years ago were clearly ours--and little by little every year they were mowing way up into our lawn, to justify their pesticide application (claiming the lawn as theirs). Our kids asked us why we were putting a fence in their yard, and even their dog (who had been leaving her piles in our yard) acted very territorial when my hubby was in our yard. Nobody except us apparently really understood that was our yard. Sadly though the neighbors are really angry with us (they won't even say hi), as they feel we took their yard away, even with a survey done by professional survey engineers, who found all the irons in the ground--the survey is 100% accurate within a couple of inches. I guess we could have said something to them all along when they were doing things to our yard, but we chose not to react in anger or say a word, but to simply put in a decorative fence. By the way, because they were angry with us, for whatever reason, the husband tore down his kids' swing set, and it's just been sitting in piles on the other side of their house. I have no idea why he'd do that to his kids or what he was trying to prove. We even deliberately kept our fence a good 8 inches off the lot line out of respect to the neighbors and their play area. It's just such an odd reaction to me--if I had found out I treated someone else's property as my own, I'd be very apologetic to those neighbors, not angry--I'd feel really bad--so I'm having a great deal of trouble understanding their reaction. So, all in all, they had been working about 12 feet into our yard towards our driveway, and 70 feet up the hill into our yard from the cul-de-sac--it had been getting more and more out of hand every year, so we decided it was time to peacefully resolve the situation with a pretty cedar fence.
We had a wonderful relaxing evening enjoying our new fire ring. We roasted "hotdogs" and made smores--we let the kids stay out til about 9 pm, and J. and I stayed out another half hour enjoying the bright moon and the peaceful sounds of the bugs---when we went inside I was very surprised to see it was only 45 degrees out (and my girls were running around in shorts!) I should mention when I ran an errand last night, I saw two people in ear muffs--it's August!
My little Fairy set up camp tonight--after dark we moved it over next to the camp fire--what fun!
There's our new privacy fence! We have to wait a few weeks for it to "season" before we can stain it--but I can't tell you what a difference it makes for us. The comfort level in having complete privacy is wonderful--and the solitude with the campfire--nice--and looking over at a fence instead of a house--so much prettier--we regret not planting like five more blue spruces when we put the first two in 7 years ago!And note, for all you Ohio Folks, in WI we don't call this came Corn Hole, we call it Bean Bag Toss (perhaps it depends what you use inside the fabric, corn or beans:)--my parents made this for us last year. We have been playing this since I was a little girl when my grandpa made ours--it's almost as addicting as skee ball:)--(I swear I'm going to buy a skee ball machine someday!)
2 comments:
It is an odd reaction...I'd also be apologetic to my neighbors if I was in their shoes...but you shouldn't feel bad, you own it and the fence looks nice! Maybe make them a pie...and go to explain that you wanted a fence to keep the dog in?
J already had a very long conversation with the gal next door---she was so angry she was shaking (and the neighbor on the other side came over too, because they had done landscaping on our lot--and saw the marker there left by the survey crew). She was afraid we were going to make her move everything--this was not our intention and we didn't ask anyone to make any changes. We simply put a small fence up about a foot off the lot line (we have the right to go right on the lot line in our city, but we were being respectful to them (their swing set was partially on our lot, and we weren't even asking them to move it)--unfortunately they see it as quite the opposite). J was so professional and polite when he spoke to her while she was yelling at him--she tried to say that the previous owner said the lot line was here; they had a friend come out to find the lot line (but to get a completely accurate survey we found out you have to do the whole yard, which is why we did paying the professionals)--I can't tell you for how many years J studied our Plat of Survey because it was becoming very confusing and unclear why they kept moving up our yard---the neighbors were intentionally coming further and further into our lot and it was getting out of control (they were literally mowing right to our drive way towards the bottom, so they could justify sending their chemical man so far onto our lot). Then she basically admitted what they were doing by saying, well, M (her daughter) has allergies to ragweed, we need to take care of that--again, never said a word about what they did, he just it's a decorative fence and we want to improve our curb appeal, and told her we plan on adding some bushes, etc. He had to explain to her these are professional survey engineers, this is almost 100% accurate. The only reason it didn't cost us $500 to do the survey is because they had a lull time. So at $250 we got a deal.
When J finished the cedar fence project--the 80 something yr old neighbor across the street who's lived here for years and knows where the lot lines are (he's an engineer too:), came over and said, "H. won't be able to mow your lawn anymore." Even he saw what was going on, and he was gone up north all summer.
Anyway, I'll keep being friendly, (though I admit their anger makes me feel very uncomfortable--I don't deal well with people being angry at me, even if I know we did everything right,( I'll send over the Xmas cookies and a card, if they choose to remain angry, I guess that's the choice they make.
The sad part is their older kids are mad at our kids now--but my girls are handling it all pretty well, and have literally become the best of little friends:)
Post a Comment