It’s a delicate balance to find and maintain neighborly love regardless of cultural divide. Take a garden pedant, add close proximity, throw in cultural differences and spice it up with the other neighbor’s devotion to “laissez-faire” yard work and you’re bound to find an interesting potpourri of things to “discuss” over the fence.
That same fence doesn’t keep our turbo-charged grass –eh, and maybe some weeds thrown in there for good measure– from overgrowing into our neighbor’s very meticulously kept flower bed which lines their long drive bordering our property.
In our neighborhood the Swedish need to avoid conflict doesn’t always extend to the property line. Truthfully, our neighbor deserves well-earned for being neighborly enough to audibly express her “suggestion” that we trim our lawn bordering the fence.
Gratefully speaking, she is supplying additional practice in the fine art of “Keeping nice with the neighbors.” Earlier this spring, over the same fence, she offered me some unsolicited advice on how THEY always take their pruned branches to the waste collection place rather than burning them on the property–as we were doing. In my pursuit of neighbor harmony I astutely performed the assigned task of politely acknowledging the advice while simultaneously ignoring the”helpful suggestion” -ehem-criticism and returned to the very contained blaze.
Back on the weed front– this weekend I neatly lined the fence with a row of leftover bricks from our knocked down chimney to stunt some green growth from invading the neighbors. Interestingly, the neighbor of the speaker of Robert Frost’s poem The Mending Wall, is most often (mis)quoted saying, “Fences make good neighbors” when it’s a stone wall which the speaker of the poem is out mending.
Perhaps it’s a wall that we need. Anyway, our fence chats are leaps and bounds better than the nasty, anonymous notes in the laundry room.
Must remind myself to require the husband to talk to me in person. *wink*
