MonkeyPants

Good Fences Make Good Neighbours?

So there has been MAJOR DRAMA with the fence. I know,  don’t blog the minutiae. But, honestly. You learn stuff about your neighbours when they build stuff, it seems.

The previous fence (badly rotted because Next Door put planter boxes on it, and then watered them copiously for four months a year) was a waist-height thing, and we could chat amicably over the fence. But this fence? The new one? Is a six-foot-high solid plank one.  I have been paranoid all day thinking I have offended Next Door somehow. Did I weed the side bed wrong? Ask the wrong container gardening questions?

My landlord, who assumed it would be the low kind of fence, went to talk to him about it. After all, my landlord had agreed to foot half the cost.  It turns out Next Door wants the tall fence because (get this!) our house is ugly.

Our house is a century-old Craftsman, cedar shingled affair. The paint is old and faded.  Some of the shingles are cracked. In short, it’s a character house that needs a paint job and a couple of shingles. Next Door lives in a pink stucco duplex box.  The irony is choking me like kudzu.

I was kind of depressed about the fence until my landlord pointed out that a) we could grow vines on it and b) I wouldn’t have to look at the pink stucco box any more.

Even the woman who lives in the front half of Next Door’s duplex thinks he’s being antisocial. I mean, we’re kind of densely packed around here, but this is just rude.  Even if he is very anal about his space and neatness and stuff (and he is), this is like a slap in the face of the rest of us, who (even with diverse needs and desires) want to be part of a community.