Things that make us realize how many neighbors we have.

[SKL]

Lawn mowing.  I can't believe how many times lawn mowers have disrupted my peace in the past 7 days.  I find it hard to believe I have that many neighbors.  😛

 

What else?

[Miss Tick]

The crowd that gathers around a house fire.

[Rosie_0801]

54 minutes ago, SKL said:

Lawn mowing.  I can't believe how many times lawn mowers have disrupted my peace in the past 7 days.  I find it hard to believe I have that many neighbors.  😛

This is the story of my life!

The other around here is the 6am ute parade. Every man and his ute is on the way to work at 6am, even on Sundays and apparently most public holidays.

[kathyl]

Every time I look out my windows, there are houses with windows facing mine no matter where I look.  And when I'm out gardening, I can hear the neighbors when they break out into song in their kitchens.  😅

And trash day.  Lots of racket as the giant trucks zoom up and down the road over and over.  Starting at about 8am.  We've never lived anywhere with trash pickup like this.  It's nice, but noisy.  

[TechWife]

People walking their dogs. 
Use of the pool in the summer. 

[Beth S]

I can't see any of my neighbors from inside our house, but all 12 families on our street cooperated well in the Ice Storm of 2009 when we all were without power for 14 days!

 

[Carrie12345]

I don’t have many neighbors, but sound carries like crazy around here, so I can hear dogs, lawnmowers, roosters, and all sorts of things from ridiculously far away!

[Drama Llama]

At the very beginning of covid, when everyone was worried about toilet paper, we kept finding packages of TP on our front step.  Sometimes, we'd get a text that said "I scored some TP, thought I'd share!" or there would be a note that said "Thinking of you, thought you might need this", and sometimes we'd happen to notice who was leaving it, but some we never figured out who brought it.

We got so much we distributed some to elderly neighbors, and still didn't run out for like a year.  

I think people knew that as hard as lockdown was for everyone, it came at a particularly hard time for us.  They didn't know what to do, so they brought TP.  

[TheReader]

Definitely times of trial have let us know - Harvey, the winter freeze, other various floods, the pandemic -- seeing everyone come together was incredible. Sharing things, looking out for one another, etc. 

Also, in the spirit of the original post, Community Garage Sale day. Oh.My.Word. The traffic we get on that day is insane. That and the fireworks holidays (they are legal to set off in our neighborhood). 

[Tap]

Barking dogs!!! Different directions so not the same family. Sometimes it’s a cacophony of howlers and barkers going off and on all day.

Edited April 29 by Tap

[popmom]

Leaf blowers.*** Gasoline powered leaf blowers. 🙄Almost all of our neighbors pay for lawn care, and the “pros” run their obnoxious gas powered leaf blowers for inexplicable amounts of time.

And children! Which I love. Don’t mind that noise at all! When we moved into this neighborhood in 2011, there were not a lot of children. We don’t have a lot of turnover, but what homes do sell…it’s younger families moving in. I have really enjoyed getting to know the kids and their parents. 🙂 

***We only use battery powered EGO leaf blower. Much quieter than gas powered. We also use EGO lawnmower, trimmer, weed eater…. Everything. So much quieter and works just as well as our former gas powered equipment. And we have a half acre lot with significant slope. 

[Soror]

9 hours ago, Miss Tick said:

The crowd that gathers around a house fire.

This is exactly what came to my mind. When our house burned down all kinds of people showed up for us.

[SKL]

3 hours ago, popmom said:

***We only use battery powered EGO leaf blower. Much quieter than gas powered. We also use EGO lawnmower, trimmer, weed eater…. Everything. So much quieter and works just as well as our former gas powered equipment. And we have a half acre lot with significant slope. 

The noise plus my crabby age has me wondering, do these lawn care machines really need to be so loud?  I am sure we have the technology to quiet them down.  But maybe it's like motorcycles where the loud noise is part of the charm for some users.  😛

This reminds me of the time I was trying to give a midday Junior Achievement lesson to a Kindergarten class, and the custodian started weed whacking right outside the open window.  The teacher explained, "this happens every Wednesday."  Brilliant.

(On the positive side, my neighbors can't complain about my dog barking loudly at their lawn equipment.)

Edited April 29 by SKL

[Laura Corin]

During lockdown when many people had to work from home and were only allowed out for an hour. Even though the single hours were spread through the day, it was a lot of people. 

[wintermom]

My house is at the end of the street and we don't hear a lot of noise from the neighbours (we create it withour dogs, though!). It really hit me how many houses were packed onto our street when we did Halloween trick-or-treating with the kids when they were young. We had to unload their candy bags 2 or 3 times before we reached the end of the street because they were too heavy for the kids to carry. 

[dsmith]

We've had 4 different families in the house behind us over the last 8 years. The first family was very nice, but they had religious gatherings on their front porch in warmer weather that included loud singing and guitar playing. The following 3 all had/have loud screaming matches constantly. The family before the current one was the worst - I couldn't believe what would come out of the two teen's mouths!! Quite a few of the people on the side street have really loud cars that rumble through at all hours of the morning and night. The worst offender is the police officer a few houses down with a few sports cars, my nephew at the end of the street with his pickup truck and his dad with the motorcycle. For whatever reason the garbage and recycling pickups don't wake me up, although they are usually very early and loud. I'm a night owl, so they must come when I'm in my deepest sleep. We have quite few neighbors that mow the lawn early on the weekends, and when they all happen to be doing it at the same time it gets very loud! Last year was very strange - we had trees being taken down in the houses around us constantly. It went on for about 3 weeks and would interfere with traffic and be very noisy all day.

 

[gardenmom5]

Counting up the houses on our street during power outages to figure out how long we will have to wait before crews are sent to our little street . . . (and which pieces of dirt turned into multiple houses.)
we've had a lot of tear downs- subdividing tracts into lots - and houses built.  I was actually surprised one tract was only divided into five lots (they could have divided into six lots.  three sold to a builder who has already built six houses on this street - from where there had only been two houses.  I assume the other - larger - two lots were kept by two of the children for their own houses.)   they're not the only builders to have done bought a tear down on a huge piece of dirt and built multiple houses on this street, just the most.

And how many more sirens I hear than when we first moved here - an indication of the increased development.

and how much more traffic there is trying to get on/off our street.

[Clarita]

How many cars are on my street. There are a few (single family) homes with multiple families living in them. I live in a HCOL area so these families are not all blood relations. I use the term single family as the official designation of homes in my neighborhood; I don't actually have an issue with the families living in those homes currently. I've met them, they all seem like good people.  

[bookbard]

I think there are exactly a dozen houses on our rural dirt road. We live on the property where my husband was raised, and at least half the houses are still owned by the same people. There is only one house in the whole street that causes any and all the noise - the only renters in the street, who have a bunch of boys/young men with motorbikes, as well as barking dogs and horses that never seem to get any exercise (and occasionally break loose in other people's properties).