My house is between two foreclosures. They have been in foreclosure forever and will never be sold. I am looking forward to the day, decades from now, that they fall in on themselves and turn to dust. But for now, we're stuck with them.
We aren't the type of neighbors who would just watch as the grass grows 5 feet tall. Cul de sac, remember? Even when people move out, we're still all up in their business.
Someone's been mowing the lawns, which is wonderful. And the one house has nice landscaping bones that are established. It's OK by the date palm that the sprinklers haven't run for awhile.
But house number two is closer to me. They are what I look at from my front window. They had already disassembled their landscaping for some reason when they moved. And now its just a bunch of weeds in the little beds. But the weeds are neat enough, no eyesores here.
The beds are calling to me none the less.
How involved should I get? Am I overreaching? Or am I just paying the yard back for the little purple plants I keep transplanting into my beds? How irritating will it be to the new hypothetical neighbors that the Flower Crazy Chick next door was digging in their garden?
And what if they pull the plants out? Will it make me sad? Will I hold it against them? Will I plant Vinca in the beds in the dead of night just to get them back? (Yes.)
Who am I fooling? I've already been strategizing about what grows best under oaks. It's going to be done. Hope the hypothetical neighbors like Coleus and spider plants.
Why isn't there a show on HGTV or DIY about this? "The Foreclosure Next Door." Guerrilla Gardening at it's finest.
Funny thing happened two summers ago. We had renters behind us. They did not spend one single minute on yard maintenance. The weeds, all 20 plus varieties, started to reach stratospheric heights. I had enough and took it upon myself to mow, trim and edge their yard. Half way through, the renter gets home. He looks puzzled, comes to me and asks if I was the owner. I told him I was his neighbor and had decided to do his lawn for him. He hurried into his house, grabbed me a bottled water, and apologized. He didn't offer to help funny enough, and left. When I was wrapping up the front of the house, the mean old neighbor two houses down spots me, and with an intentionally loud voice cries over to his wife. "About time that guy took care of his lawn!"
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