How have you been a less than good neighbor?

[jujsky]

We have a small strip of our property that separates us from our sweet, elderly neighbor. This bit is too narrow to mow now that we've have our driveway widened, so we don't mow it. It's all a bunch of disgusting weeds, and they're creeping into the nice flower beds she created on the edge of her property. We've been meaning to dig up & mulch that strip for 3 years now. We're going to do it this year for sure..... no -- REALLY! I mean it this time! ;)

[Baseball mom]

I have loved this thread :lol: :lol:

 

We are the people whose outside Christmas lights stayed up for 2 years. :w00t: Yes 2 years. I mean just on the gutters, nothing major :001_rolleyes: When they started to droop down do you think dh took them down? Noooo, he to the broom and flipped the drooping part up into the gutter!!! :ohmy::blink:

 

We are the people whose extra lot isn't mowed and there are tree limbs littering the lot.

 

We are the people whose sidewalk cracks are full of grass. Well we use to be those people. Everyone else had clean sidewalks and ours was awful. The other day dc and I were doing yard work. We got out there and really worked on the sidewalk. Not totally clean but much better.

 

Would say we are the people with all the stuff on the front porch. Oh well we are but the whole neighborhood it pretty much like that. Our porch is an extension of our living room if you ask me. We love our big porch and spend lots of time out there. Most of the houses in this neighborhood have big porches and they are used all the time.

[Tap]

We have a small strip of our property that separates us from our sweet, elderly neighbor. This bit is too narrow to mow now that we've have our driveway widened, so we don't mow it. It's all a bunch of disgusting weeds, and they're creeping into the nice flower beds she created on the edge of her property. We've been meaning to dig up & mulch that strip for 3 years now. We're going to do it this year for sure..... no -- REALLY! I mean it this time! ;)

Just mow it down, put some landscape fabric down and mulch over it. That way you don't need to weed it in the future either!

[Pippen]

I have loved this thread :lol: :lol:

.

 

I just landed on this last page and I'm afraid to read the rest. It will probably surface so many bad neighbor traits I didn't know I had that I'll need therapy.

[dirty ethel rackham]

These are cracking me up. Here's my full-blown confession:).

 

Well, I am not much of a gardener... if I can't eat it, I can't be bothered to grow it and we don't have much sun in our yard for growing food. Dh decided to put in a "butterfly" garden with native plants. To me, they look like weeds. I even had a landscaper come up with plans to rearrange his "weeds" into a more attractive setting, but he never did anything about it. I am sure that this is a thorn in the side of the woman who used to live here and had beautiful gardens - she moved 2 blocks away and walks her dog here, so she sees how her lovely house has gone to pot :|.

 

Oh, I don't want any chemicals on my lawn (I am chemically sensitive and I am concerned about ground water contamination) and forbade the use of Roundup. So, that means we have a nasty patch of Creeping Charlie that is getting worse every year - so much so that a neighbor has repeatedly commented on it. I think he did come and spray one year because we did have a bad brown patch for a while. Either that or dh did it behind my back.

 

Our garage looks like a cyclone hit it. I have a bad back (and I am lazy) so I haven't cleaned it out. Dh doesn't believe in throwing things away, so too many things just sit there! We can't park our cars in there. I am always telling my family to keep the garage closed so the neighbors don't see what slobs we are.

 

I am a little bit of a hermit - when we leave the house, it is not to hang out outside but to go somewhere with our small group of homeschooling friends, so I never hear the neighborhood news. I didn't know that our next door neighbor was in the hospital :(.

 

We have lived here for 10 years. I only knew the other next door neighbor as the woman with the two Corgis. I didn't know her first name until last summer. Dh talks to the neighbors more than I do. I am the weirdo homeschooling mom in our "excellent school district." ;).

 

I haven't sent out thank you notes from my mom's funeral from 5 months ago. My neighbors, who give me more grace than I deserve, gave me a beautiful poinsettia at that time. I was really touched because my mom LOVED poinsettias and they remembered. I still haven't sent thank you notes. To tell you the truth, I just can't bear to pull out that box that is sitting on my dresser.

[bookfiend]

Our neighbors have a very elaborately landscaped yard. It's beautiful and something that could be in a magazine. Three years ago their oldest daughter got married in an outdoor ceremony there. From our vantage point it was a large and impressive wedding with lots of catering vans, equipment, tents and covered areas, a wooden dance floor, etc.

 

We were not invited guests, though I received two shower invitations, attended both, and brought a gift. :glare: We knew when it was (who within five miles didn't?) so we left for a few hours with the kids to avoid the street parking and noise. After we got home we noticed our dog missing. She apparently dug her way under the fence to hob-nob with the wedding guests. And eat the catered food. And swim in the pool with the floating candles. And knock over a tent. She's such a social butterfly. I'm sure she was the life of the party!! :D

 

Hey, it's on them - if they'd invited you, you would have been there to corral the dog!

[Jeannie in NJ]

Stacie, that is such a funny story, I had to read it to my dd.

 

That's what they get for not invinting you to the wedding!

[Tree House Academy]

I am a good neighbor now that I don't have neighbors. When I was young and lived in apartments in a college town I was ALWAYS calling the cops about something...loud music, parties at 3am, druken kids knocking on my door, you name it. I am so glad to not live in apartments in a college town anymore.

[newbie]

We have some of those kind of weeds too. We kind of left that area on purpose or we'd be mowing the whole five acres.

 

Can you have a back forty with 5 acres? Because we sort of do. I guess you could call it our meadow or a naturalized area. Yeah, that's it! We're even encouraging milkweed for the Monarch butterflies.

 

I actually startled a pair of fawns there one day while walking the dog. Their mother must have seen it as a safe place to leave them. Can't get much more "naturalized" than baby deer in your yard! :D

 

We do have paths mowed through it, which is fun for the kids when they get out the go-kart.

 

We have the same back forty/five acres. I did have a neighbor comment that our property looks very rural natural.

[Lara in Colo]

At our last house, the back yard was actually HOA property that we paid $30.00/month for the privilage of mowing it ourselves. I didn't water it, or take care of it in any way except to mow it when it got high enough to lose the dog. The dandilions were out of control. One day the retired next door neighbor was out with his leaf blower-(I'm guessing) on reverse and was sucking up the seeds.

Then there was the time when I owned a condo and got suck across town in a snowstorm. I asked my mother to let the dog in, she did this and also decided to turn on the water to keep my pipes from freezing. The sink was plugged. She flooded the downstairs people.

 

In this house we have a heavily forested backyard (lots of scrub oak and chokecherry bushes). You really can't see it in the summer. The children decided it was too far to come inside to go pee, so they made a "bathroom" (toilet paper on a stick, with a hole surronded by rocks with used paper in it) I discovered this "place" while walking though the yard with the neighbor. (by the way the children had drug this poor 77 yr old woman from her house so that they could show her the ratty fort they had built in the yard)

 

Lara

[KidsHappen]

The neighborhood kids are always in my yard and they can be loud somtimes. They also leave garbage on my porch which sometimes blows into the yard before I get them to pickit up. There are bikes, scooters, skates, balls and vasious other sports equipment everywhere, all the time. I am also the person who is consistantly late in taking down the holiday decorations.

 

Also, I am extremely introverted to the point of social anxiety so I don;t socialize with the neighbors as much as everyone else.

[lionfamily1999]

We didn't get our Christmas lights down till March this year :eek:; we actually got an anonymous note about it (yes we deserved it - but couldn't they have the decency to sign their names :glare:).

Lol! Santa is still on the porch. He is facing in though, so it appears he's a peeping tom. Someone gave him to us for Christmas and we have (literally) no where to put him.

 

 

 

-----------------------------

I suppose it would depend on which neighbor you asked :p Dh has lived here for twenty-five years (in this house) and I'm sure the folks who've been here as long can give you a nice long accounting of unneighborly acts he perpetrated.

 

For me, the newer neighbors probably dislike my yard quite a bit ;) but I help when asked and do try not to see people running out in their skivvies. We have cats (left behind by other neighbors) so I guess they bug people too. Dogs, who're usually well behaved, until the girls a block over go into heat.

 

Eh, I think I'm an alright neighbor. Great if you need anything, but lax in my landscaping.

 

OH! I forgot. I refused to join their new HOA. I guess that puts me in the "bad" catergory.

[AuntPol]

So no one admits to actually having the overgrown weeds/bushes? And I'm sure that no one here has yards so bad the neighbors on each side actually pitch in and trim bushes and weed. And no one of course has been humiliated by the neighbors actually weeding, mulching, and planting new plants in part of their yard.

 

Maybe we should rename the board The Well Trained Yard?

 

:leaving:

 

 

Our yard is constantly an eye sore to the community. I have to CONSTANTLY harangue my husband to at least attempt to try not to make us look "low rent". The yard needs to be mowed twice a week because my DH cuts it high but it tends to get cut every week and a half. He will only cut the back yard once a month when I start screaming about snakes and child safety. I usually end up doing about half the mowing that gets done. Then we have this weedy side of the house that drives me nuts. My husband will also clean out his car and leave everything on the side porch for over a month until we get a citation from the HOA and I end up having to clean it up.

Edited May 5, 2010 by AuntPol

[LostSurprise]

We are the embarrassment of the neighborhood I guess (town of 1000 people, lots of retired folks).

 

*apparently owning a VW campervan (running, licensed) and keeping it in your driveway is illegal. We were dragged to city hall on that one. I guess no one is allowed a vehicle in their driveway unless they drive it every 10 days.

 

*when we let the air out of the tires and drove it into the garage we had to move the garbage cans and recycling to the side of the house. Guess what we got a call about next?

 

*apparently having your kids drop their bikes in the side yard makes your yard "look like a garbage pit" according to the city planner. Thankfully the nice police officer just kind of looked and said...'uh...looks okay to me.'

 

*according to our back neighbor we have rats?? (seriously I think he saw a possum) in our compost pile and when I had a 3 month old sick baby I wasn't raking quickly enough. He put up a foot high chicken wire fence to keep the leaves out.

 

*This is the real one. My husband has difficulty finishing things. Often I don't see it (unless I get out of the house) or I'd fix it. So we have things like toilet plungers in the driveway (he was bleaching them) or enormous piles of garage stuff in the yard for a few weeks because he's cleaning in there. The kids leave their nerf guns, bikes, and scooters all over the yard. We also use old dishwasher racks and unbrella ribs for plant climbers. Thankfully our backyard is surrounded by arbor vitae so I just have to check the front yard periodically in an attempt to keep us respectable.

[Heather in the Kootenays]

Their dogs and kids run wild in my yard and in return, when my dead tree crashed into their yard (missing kids, dogs, and anything else of value, thank heavens) the dad just got out his chain saw, bucked it up, and asked where he should put my new firewood.

 

This just happened yesterday and I still feel bad about ever muttering about his kids and dogs.

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

And mess? Yes. We have been those neighbors that have a couch on the porch and Sanford & Son in the front yard...:tongue_smilie:

 

 

Mine's even worse, I have a neighbor with a painted, wooden Throne on their front porch. It is very large and painted in bold colors. :glare:

[myfunnybunch]

I'm a bad neighbor because, despite my lovely neighbor's assertions that she really does enjoy my ROWDY boys and her invitations to send them over, I don't send my children to visit her often enough.

 

She's lovely. She's elderly, she's a little lonely, and she loves children. I feel guilty because my belief is that we should make personal relationships with others a priority, but I let our lives get so busy with coming-and-going that I forget about checking in with her.

 

I really really should check in with her more often myself AND send the boys over to visit.

 

Cat

[2cents]

So no one admits to actually having the overgrown weeds/bushes? And I'm sure that no one here has yards so bad the neighbors on each side actually pitch in and trim bushes and weed. And no one of course has been humiliated by the neighbors actually weeding, mulching, and planting new plants in part of their yard.

 

Maybe we should rename the board The Well Trained Yard?

 

:leaving:

 

Well generally our yards back and front are pretty trim but for some reason the flower pot under the mailbox never gets done and the HOA gives us little reminders occasionally. I 'planted' fake flowers one year and that kept the HOA happy for awhile until they faded and blew away.

[6packofun]

Well, our house probably looks like it's both neglected AND overrun with children. Which it is. LOL It's a rental and much of the actual house stuff is the landlady's responsibility. But we don't try too hard sometimes because we're just busy.

 

The old lady across the street has called the city on us/the landlady because of some peeling paint and our garbage cans were visible on the *side* of the house and not in the garage or backyard. ?? (Not overflowing or anything, in large, neat rolling cans.)

 

I think I'm probably not a good neighbor as well because I don't hold in my dramatic coughing, wheezing and choking when the one neighbor is out smoking on his front porch and it blows into our kids' bedrooms, my yard, etc. :D

[newbie]

Hmmm, I need a come back for my next door neighbor, who never talks to me, and I have tried several times to talk to her.

 

She had the gall to send an email today. Verbatim saying. Hear you are moving, give me your agents number so I can buy your house. The end.

 

I feel like saying yeah its for sale, for you one gazillion dollars, have a nice day. What a witch.

[mama2cntrykids]

We live in the country, but still have neighbors. One is about .5 mile away, one .75 miles away and one about 200 yrds away. Anyway, the one that's 3/4 of a mile away has a horse type "ranch" thing, lol. Last summer his country music was blaring so loud that it literally sounded like it was coming from our own house. How sad it that? I sent dh over there to ask him to turn it down a notch and the guy was getting ready to hook up ANOTHER speaker. Are you joking me?! I could hear every word of the music from 3/4 of a mile away and he was hooking up another speaker. Crazy!

 

That's the only real complaint I have. Other wise, we're good!

 

We used to live next to a bar though and that was a BAD DEAL. I thought it would be ok because it was a tiny bar and I didn't know I was pregnant when we moved in (found out 4 days later). The d.j. and the bass on the weekends (right outside my bedroom window from 8pm-2am) was enough to make me call the cops a couple of times.