When I was shopping for a home, I never considered the neighbors. I just wanted to find "the house". Neighbors were not part of the shopping equation. Occasionally they should be!
Our first homeownership experience with neighbors was probably the worst. We had a 40 foot wide lot. Yes, 40 feet with a house in the middle of it! That put our house 5 feet from the property line. That's mighty close if your neighbor is not friendly or is protective of their space.
Our first clue should have been the white picket fence on THAT side of the house, but we thought it was for decoration. We met the husband and adult son and they were both wonderful people. We didn't meet the wife until a year after we moved in. She was civil but unfriendly.
The fence was on the property line with almost 2 feet of grass between the fence and our 18 inch sidewalk. I thought the 2 feet of grass was an ideal place to plant a flower garden and a couple tomato plants. It would look great against the fence and would prevent our having to trim the fence and hit it often with the mower. I would weed my perennial garden and the fence alike. Tulips went in, daffodils, hyacinths, daisies, black eyed Susans, those purple spiky things I can never remember, some glads, and later the mums. The little tomato plants thrived and grew in the late spring. I was looking forward to the garden's bounty.
Occasionally as the summer progressed, I would notice a branch of one of the flowers was broken off and had fallen. I thought animals had been after them. But in late July when the tomatoes had bushed out and were full of various sizes of fruit, I came out to find the entire row of tomatoes had been pulled up and dropped on the sidewalk. I couldn't figure out what had happened until the neighbor from the other side came out to tell her juicy story. The owner of the white picket fence was the destroyer of my plants! She had methodically pulled each plant that touched her fence! I was floored. I was appalled! I moved my garden!
March 31, 2006 - More to the Story
The additional info about this particular neighbor was worse. My husband had propped the old style storm windows against the fence for cleaning and left for a short phone call. She pushed them off the fence and a couple were broken. We later discovered she had had severe cancer and had changed during the surgery and subsequent healing time. Prior to that she had been very friendly, etc. I was saddened by this news. I also felt bad for the son and husband as her actions really embarrassed them. We took it in stride after the first year and very carefully avoided any contact with the fence and property line.
Posted by: Bonnie Erickson | December 31, 2006 at 11:14 PM
March 31, 2006 - Neighborliness
Goodness. Sounds like she had issues. A blog (not RE) I read yesterday had an entry about neighborhoods yesterday. To the blogger neighborhoods need to have sidewalks... he almost bought a house in an area without sidewalks and is relieved in retrospect that it fell apart. He is in a walk to everything area now and is thrilled with his neighbor four doors down being a bar! I would bet his lot is 50' wide, sidewalks, bar mixed in with residential so he is thrilled to have a bar 150' away? There's a neighborhood for everyone. And probably a neighbor or two like yours in each, luck of the draw unless you interview the neighbors.
Posted by: Maureen McCabe | December 31, 2006 at 11:13 PM