Neighbors?

[Gordon]

I own a house in an urban area, very close to downtown, where I work. The neighborhood is a little run-down, and tired. The people who live here are generally not earning a lot of money, and the hundred year old+ houses are not kept up as well as they should be.

My neighbors are fairly nice, but a little weird. One very recent example is, I set out for trash in the alley next to my house, a tied up bundle of cardboard boxes I had broken down and folded up. The next morning, I noticed the boxes had been reassembled and stuffed with grass clippings, and other yard debris. Just odd and strange, and a little creepy and disconcerting, to me.

How do you feel about your neighbors? Do you trust them? Are they considered friends, or just neighbors?

 

[SweetSassy]

I'm close to my both neighbors on each side. On one side, their a very church oriented family. She home schools her kids. She was my babysitter for approx 4 years. Then I took the buyout from Delphi, so now I'm a stay at home mom. Our kids play together all the time.



On the other side, their a older couple. Their nice people but very nosey and always telling me how to do my yard. She tells I need to plant flowers, which I never do! LOL. Can't afford it. Theyalways telling meabout my one tree that hangs over in their yard very little. They want me to cut it down, but it's my shade tree. I figured if they want it cut down, they can pay for it. I get them trimmed every fall. The husband retired from ABF trucking, they can afford it. They put a corner flower area in the corner my trees at, then want to complain. Don't make sense..... But I do Like them. LOl. and so do the kids.

 

[gingers_giants]

I just recently moved a few months ago. So I havent really talked to my neighbors. My fiance has talked to one or two of them and he says they are really nice.
I sometimes see them watching me though the windows or while they are out in my yard. esp when I down with the rabbits messing with them. Granted I know Flemish Giants draw attention but i still get a little weirded out when I catch them looking my way. lol. My dad told me that its good to have neighbors that watch because then they will look out for things while you are away.
My neighbors are quiet, so I dont think I will have much trouble living next to them

 

[Gordon]

gingers_giants wrote:

 
 I sometimes see them watching me though the windows or while they are out in my yard. esp when I down with the rabbits messing with them. Granted I know Flemish Giants draw attention but i still get a little weirded out when I catch them looking my way. lol. My dad told me that its good to have neighbors that watch because then they will look out for things while you are away.
 My neighbors are quiet, so I dont think I will have much trouble living next to them

I personally cherish my privacy, and even though I live in a very densely packed neighborhood(the houses are right next to each other, because cars didn't exist when they were built), I still expect people to mind their own business. I want them to be alert to crime, but other than that, I don't want them in my daily routine.

 

[SweetSassy]

Gordon wrote:

gingers_giants wrote:

I sometimes see them watching me though the windows or while they are out in my yard. esp when I down with the rabbits messing with them. Granted I know Flemish Giants draw attention but i still get a little weirded out when I catch them looking my way. lol. My dad told me that its good to have neighbors that watch because then they will look out for things while you are away.
My neighbors are quiet, so I dont think I will have much trouble living next to them

I personally cherish my privacy, and even though I live in a very densely packed neighborhood(the houses are right next to each other, because cars didn't exist when they were built), I still expect people to mind their own business. I want them to be alert to crime, but other than that, I don't want them in my daily routine.

Guess you wouldn't like living in my situation. LOl. I live in a plat, the houses are close but not real close. I like being friendly to my neighbors and watching out for our homes. Peoples like to get into your cars around here and steal your pennies if they can. it's pathetic!

 

[degrassi]

My mom has lived in our neighbourhood for 50+ years. When my mom and dad got married they moved a block away from my grandparents. So my mom knows pretty much all the older people in my area. We also know a lot of families in the area because of us kids having friends growing up and playing sports.

Our neighbour to the left of us is a nice old woman. She' lived there since we were kids and we are really friendly with her. She notices when our garage door is left open or calls to check on us if she notices the cars haven't moved in a while.I'd watch her dog if she needed me to. I kind of thought of her as a second grandma. The sad thing is she had to move out and into a senoirs place. So now the house is up for sale. Who knows what kind of neighbours we'll have now. Its weird to see the neighbourhood changing. It used to all be older people and older families with kids my age(i'm 25 so all the kids are grown). Now with all the older people leaving, younger families with young kids are moving in. Its weird seeing the transition.

On the right side is a different story. Its a rented house and the current tenants have a heavy metal band. They practice all the time, sometimes up untill 11pm. Its so loud we can hear it inside our house, even in the basement. The base thumping is so annoying. They also go outside on the porch and smoke and are so loud out there. So we've been fighting with them and have even had to call the police about the noise. I think my mom has struck a deal with them about setting a practice schedual as they haven't been playing as much anymore.

But besides them, I love my neighbourhood. Everyone is nice and friendly. We have a nice crescent/park right in front of my house. I'll probably be like my mom nad just move down the street from my parents, lol.

 

[Sabine]

Neighbours used to make my life misery but thankfully that's a thing of the past. They used to show now respect for our privacy or property. If I planted a bush it was ripped out, if i painted the wall it would be graffitied on, if a gate was put up kids would straight away try and kick it in - that sort of place! If I had dared to have rabbits there they would have surely tried to harm them as they destroy everything: Every new tree planted was ripped out, animals tortured and rubbish thrown all over the place.
I moved out two years ago to a quiet suburb and lived in a fantastic place where everyone minded their own business and our next door neighbour has rabbits herself.
We moved again two months ago into a much more well-to do area. People seem rather nice and a few came over to say hello but the house and garden are really exposed and I don't feel safe all the time. I constantly fear a recurrence of the situation in our old house and when I see a kid just looking into our garden or a group of teenagers just chatting nearby I start panicking waiting for some sort of verbal or physical attack. i think it'll take me a while to actually feel safe in any neighbourhood with people around

 

[kirsterz09]

eerrrmmm not got a nice thing to say about the lot of them! They are all nosey interfearing people! The ones next door complained about my car when I first got it and how I parked it OUTSIDE MY OWN HOUSE!!! because their grandaughter loves to park outside our house! she now parks it right up behind my car and she is always trying to get as close to it as poss I'm terrified she'll hit it one day! and another time they complained about the rabbits banging in the night! Which they only do when the fox is about and which is hilarious when they own a dog that nearly attacked one of the other neighbours and which, barks all the time and tried to attack my fiancees dad Dave through a gap in the fence that he was trying to fix who, is slow in movement due to dementia and could of been easily hurt! So basically I hate them (not like you would of guessed lol!)

 

[mardigraskisses]

I used to live in the Hispanic ghetto and the neighbors were nice, but now I live in suburbia. I go outside and people shout "white power in the neighborhood" at me.

But I'm white. I just look Hispanic. The Cuban parts of my family are so intermixed with everything else, I can't honestly claim to be anything but 'American'.

:expressionless

 

[irishbunny]

I don't really have neighbours, well I have one kind of. I live down a private, dead end road and there is another woman that lives on it down the road a bit. Then my closet neighbour after that is a 5 minute walk away and then the next house is about 9 minutes away, where my best friend lives. All my neighbours are pretty nice, very nosey though lol!

 

[SunnyCait]

On the one side lives a guy with his two kids, really great guy, friendly and nice, mows our lawn for us and vice versa.

On the other side lives a relatively nice older lady, except she is deathly afraid of dogs. And we have 4. So we've had some issues because of that. But other than that I suppose I can't say anything mean about her.

 

[BethM]

I've only been in my house for a couple months, so I don't really know my neighbors. Haven't spoken with them much, anyway.

When we first moved in, an older guy stopped and said he was a neighbor and welcomed us to the neighborhood. That was nice. I think he's the closest house to me in the back, but since our yard is so big, it's hard to think of him as a neighbor.
We're on a corner, and we have a lot and a half, so we're not super close to anyone.

The house next to me, they have two dogs. They let the dogs out to run in their back yard, even though they don't have a fence themselves. Last weekend, I was in the front yard planting some hostas, and he let his dogs (black labs) out and they both came running over and immediately trampled on everything I had just planted. I don't like dogs to begin with, and this makes me like them less. Luckily, we have a fence that surrounds our back yard, so at least they can't get into the back yard. I have noticed that those neighbors do allow their dogs to do their business in the yards of the people on the other side of them, and don't clean it up. So I pretty much hate that guy.
Will be checking prices on fences next spring. Just want to put up a fence along the property line in the front, from the back yard fence to the street, so those stupid dogs will stay out of my yard.

The house across the street in the front has two beagles. They put them outside in the evenings, and the *!@# things howl the whole time. I swear, it sound like those beagles are being beaten.

The neighbors across the street on the other side have a yard filled with junk. They have a driveway sort of thing in the middle of their back yard, which is totally covered with kids toys and bicycles, only a few of which are functional. They have 3 grills, 2 of which are broken. They also have a vintage VW Bug parked in their front yard. (Half in the yard, half in the street.) I have never seen it move. They have a guy come and mow their lawn once a week, and the lawn guy brings his whole family with him. The wife and two kids sit in the van waiting on him, and sometimes get out and stand leaning on the van doing nothing.

Other than that house, and the dogs, it's an ok neighborhood. Most of the houses were built in the 50's, and most of them have ok yards, and seem to be kept up. Seems like mostly older people, so there's only a few kids.

Next year, I plan on putting in a veggie garden in the back yard, and starting on some landscaping in the front yard.

 

[undergunfire]

Call me terrible or whatever....but I don't care to make friends with neighbors. I have heard way too many "nosy neighbor" stories once you start talking with them...I'd rather not, lol.

I want to do what I want, when I want in or around my house and I don't need "friendly neighbors" knowing all about me, lol.

In the house we live in now there is an old man across the street. He is always out in his yard picking up every random stray branch and rearranging his rock lawn with his hands (LOL??). We only say hello to him when we walk across the road to get our mail and he is outside. The neighbors on the other side of us are right next door (like a school bus distance away)...but their house is built up high and on the hill..., so we never really see them or hear them. It is weird how their house is. THEN...on the other side of us is a open "field"....and the neighbors across the field are like never home it seems.


LOL...is it bad that I am getting all frazzled over just the thought of making friends with a neighbor? HAHA.

 

[Baby Juliet]

Gordon wrote:

My neighbors are fairly nice, but a little weird. One very recent example is, I set out for trash in the alley next to my house, a tied up bundle of cardboard boxes I had broken down and folded up. The next morning, I noticed the boxes had been reassembled and stuffed with grass clippings, and other yard debris. Just odd and strange, and a little creepy and disconcerting, to me.

What a good neighbor to recycle your trash.

 

[Luvmyzoocrew]

well i live around alot of farm land, so i have no neighbors to the left or right or behind me that i can see. Across the street i have two that i can see, i say hi and i have talked to but i care to keep to myself. Other neighbors on the street have get together breakfasts once a month that we go to in the winter , it is nice to meet some neighbors that i dont see often, but if it was up to me i would never go,lol, my hubby drags me. Some of the other neighbors on the street are constantly calling me and asking about us going to their chruch functions, and church this, and church that, ugh that drives me crazy cause i am not a real church person. but they are trying to be nice i guess. i would just rather keep to myself and them keep to themselves

 

[Mrs. PBJ]

I live in a apartment so its a little different story the lady to the left of me I watch her granddaughter for her sometimes and we hang out at the poll together but outside of that nothing much. We both have dogs and she addors storm we pet sit for eahc other also.

The apartemnt nxt to me is empty and I use to live in the one next to that. So that empty. Then the one next to that like to call animal controle on everyone so we dont get along.

I dont really know the rest of my neighbors. across the way there all college kids we had drink with one during the fourth of july while everyone bar b qued. And he helped us move in our new couch.

But other then that a hi and by is what the rest of my neighbors consist of I have about 23 neighbors the way my apartments are set up but most of them are still under construction from the Storm

 

[Gordon]

I've really had a nice time, and a few real laughs reading the responses here.

Whoever it was that said their neighbors objected to her rabbits banging all night, really cracked me up.

 

[Maureen Las]

Baby Juliet wrote:

Gordon wrote:

My neighbors are fairly nice, but a little weird. One very recent example is, I set out for trash in the alley next to my house, a tied up bundle of cardboard boxes I had broken down and folded up. The next morning, I noticed the boxes had been reassembled and stuffed with grass clippings, and other yard debris. Just odd and strange, and a little creepy and disconcerting, to me.

What a good neighbor to recycle your trash.

In our neighborhood you can not place any yard waste (grass and branches etc) in with the garbage but have to place it in a big brown paper bag that thw garbage men people recognize as yard waste.

I would guess thatyour neighbor was tring to hide his grass clippings etc in your carboard boxes because he didn't want to go get large paper bags to do it correctly..
That is pretty much the behavior of a jerk...

 

[Gordon]

angieluv wrote:

In our neighborhood you can not place any yard waste (grass and branches etc) in with the garbage but have to place it in a big brown paper bag that thw garbage men  people recognize as yard waste.

I would guess thatyour neighbor was tring to hide his grass clippings etc in your carboard boxes because he didn't want to go get large paper bags to do it correctly..
That is pretty much the behavior of a jerk...

The idea about the paper bags for yard waste has been proposed here, but not passed yet. This neighbor of mine is just a rather unusual character, and he does things that are sort of odd.

 

[Baby Juliet]

Don't know if yard waste paper bags is a good idea.

1. Does government save at least the 25 cents it cost to buy the bag? It would have to have a separate truck and driver to pick up the yard waste to take to a different dump. What does it cost to dump a bag of garbage?

2. Does composting yard waste make up for the trees that goes into making those bags?

3. Is yard waste in land fills bad for the environment?