Tolerating neighbors

[pinkytoe]

Allow me to vent some aggravation...I don't know if I am just becoming cranky in my old age or if I picked the wrong house. Every single day of the growing season, the three neighbors across the street are using some sort of loud lawn machine - blowers, mowers, vacuums etc. One is a large commercial mower which is extra loud. If I go in the backyard, the smell of neighbor's dryer sheets from both sides is overwhelming so I stay inside when that is going on. The two neighbors behind us are pot-smokers so the nauseating skunky smell (at least to me) is a frequent thing. We don't have AC here so I can't just close the windows. I lived in closer proximity to neighbors in my last house but never experienced an assault to my senses like at this house.

[herbgeek]

I will join you on the neighbor ranting. :)

I am glad my neighbors across the street bought a summer house that they spend most of their time at. The husband starts up his mower/blower often before 7am when he is home. I find that incredibly rude. The neighbor 1/4 mile down the road has an untrained pit bull mix, and he used to let his dog run wild. That dog would often run into my garden and destroy plants. I think someone may have said something or called animal control because I haven't seen it run loose in the last year (but I still see the dog in the owner's truck hanging out the window). The same neighbor is also somewhat deaf and when he won a wrongful termination lawsuit, he bought this ginormous stereo that I can hear 1/4 mile away. Well I can't really hear the music, just the boom boom boom of the bass.

Luckily next door neighbor and diagonal neighbor keep to themselves and I have no neighbor to my left (an undeveloped piece of land, and then state park property).

[iris lilies]

We have a tiny house causing consternation in our neighborhood. I heard about it at the board meeting last night. So far it appears that it can be there legally, but that is difficult to believe, but maybe, who knows. i will snap a photos of it soon and post it.

It is kind of an exciting controversy, I must say. I drove by it today and it is a legitimate tiny wooden house on wheels.

The man who owns the property is—colorful. Sometimes volatile. A little scary. But not only because he wears dresses.

[frugal-one]

Neighbor behind has a fire pit. Our whole house smells like smoke if the windows are open.

Neighbors next door have mangy dogs who continually bark at everything.

Neighbor rant of the day for me too.

[JaneV2.0]

I share your pain regarding endless assaults from mowers, blowers, pressure washers--add in float planes, personal watercraft, and miscellaneous noisemakers...There seems to be an unwritten rule that no two of the power tools can operate at the same time, so it's pretty much a constant noise barrage all summer. Global warming seems to be helping, though--the less rain there is, the less need for machines. I knew there was an upside.

[iris lilies]

Jane,

I’ve been thinking of you every morning for the past three days because there is an giant truck sitting at the corner of our block cleaning out a sewer and it has that mechanical noise that just groans on and on and on. I cannot fathom what they are doing but DH says “why, they are cleaning out the sewer!” as though I am stupid. But I have never seen this operation before. And it goes on and on and on and I’m sick of it.

[JaneV2.0]

Jane,

I’ve been thinking of you every morning for the past three days because there is an giant truck sitting at the corner of our block cleaning out a sewer and it has that mechanical noise that just groans on and on and on. I cannot fathom what they are doing but DH says “why, they are cleaning out the sewer!” as though I am stupid. But I have never seen this operation before. And it goes on and on and on and I’m sick of it.

Ha! That's probably another offender! I'm always trying to figure out what another noxious noise is...

[razz]

We are assaulted with noise with all the gadgets, aren't we? The trimmers, the blowers, the mowers, the street sweepers, garbage truck, delivery and on and on....

[Yppej]

I have neighbors with bad or nonexistent mufflers on their cars who come and go at all hours of the night. I don't know how they pass the state annual inspection.

[Chicken lady]

My neighbors fire off guns often. Including ones that start with letters like “AR” one neighbor plays with what I am pretty sure is dynamite. One afternoon he temporarily deafened me when I was standing between my metal barn and the shock wave. They have parties with loud music that go late into the night - but not often. Two have businesses that involve moving large trucks and equipment early in the morning and throughout the day. There are fireworks. And dogs. At least one person burns garbage. People upstream throw debris in the creek. Harvest season starts before dawn and goes past dusk.

i wish they wouldn’t burn garbage. And I could do without the dynamite. But I am so much happier here than I was in my little subdivision where other people got to tell me what to do (and mowed my grass, and complained about my kids, and still had noisy, annoying parties but basically in my backyard.) my goats scream sometimes. My rooster crows at 4 a.m. we don’t mow the county’s grass. My road gets cleared before the plows are out. And if you get stuck, somebody will help you.

[pinkytoe]

My neighbors fire off guns often.
We have thought often of moving to the country but know from friends/relatives that the same inconsiderate behavior goes on there. Guns especially.

[Chicken lady]

Inconsiderate is relative.

some places it is annoying when you don’t mow. Other places it is annoying when you do.

i will take 365 days of automatic weapon fire over two nice saturdays when I have to spend my afternoon and evening 100 ft from the party on your deck.

in my first house, we were on a hill, and the uphill neighbor had a deck that overlooked our back yard. Three weeks after they moved in, she invited me to a candle party. Dh said I should go and get to know her. So I went. And I was pleasant, and I bought a stupid candle holder thing (but not a nasty scented candle). And two days later she caught me over the fence and thanked me for coming and asked if I had noticed that the deck had a clear view of the toys strewn around my backyard and my clothesline. I laughed and said “yes, and the living room. I need to remember to close the blinds if i’m Going to walk around naked.” That was our last conversation. She left the bag with my candle thing on my front steps when I was not home.

[catherine]

We had a neighbor on a Facebook neighborhood page who was roundly made fun of for her request for quiet mowing--she complained about the loud mowers and blowers etc. None of the other neighbors shared her desire for more peace and quiet--they are all lawn geeks.

But I agreed with her. My only complaint about my former neighbor was the fact that they cut their side of my forsythia bush right off. Also, as I still own that house, I anticipate a real problem emerging when it's time for an ash tree to be cut down, because it straddles our property line.

[Tybee]

We have a range of neighbors--the renters in the mobiles across the road leave garbage out that blows into our yard, and also shoot off firecrackers that scare the dogs. But when a tree fell in our yard, the girl came over to make sure we were okay, which I thought was really, really nice.

The couple in the next acreage over are lovely, and we get together frequently and go out to dinner. You couldn't ask for better neighbors than them.

I like being out of a subdivision as we definitely have more privacy here.

[Teacher Terry]

I love my neighbors. None are especially noisy. We only have a 4ft fence on one side but there beautiful vines are plentiful and give privacy but we do talk over the fence. The previous owner of our house built a patio and then put a 6 ft fence in front of their fence so you cannot see their yard if you sit on the patio. The neighbors said they had no clue why they did that. I know exactly why. They didn’t want to look at their junk in their yard while sitting on their patio.

[pinkytoe]

I have to add, I have very pleasant/decent neighbors on my block for the most part. Just got lucky with the noise and smell makers being the closest ones. Perhaps it is not inconsideration so much as a lack of awareness/interest about other ways of doing things. Simple living actually comes into play here. A broom is quieter and cheaper than a leaf blower and allows for some actual physical exertion. One does not need smelly fabric softener in most instances. And on and on.

[jp1]

For the most part our neighbors aren't too bad. Which is good since we share walls with two of them. One has become quite proficient at playing Let It Be on the piano. They recently bought a tuba, though, and are not nearly as proficient at that...

[Float On]

We have thought often of moving to the country but know from friends/relatives that the same inconsiderate behavior goes on there. Guns especially.
Plus in the country you get a lot of dogs and litters of kittens dumped on your road. No fun.

[Teacher Terry]

Hearing gunshots or lots of firecrackers would freak me out. I sweep with a broom but DH uses a leaf blower. I do most of the leaves. I don’t smoke weed but I don’t mind the smell if people smoking.

[NewGig]

The dynamite reference reminded me of this. If you don’t know it, I recommend it. It’s one of my “I need a laugh” go to’s.

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1trx3v/i_can_tell_right_now_you_dont_know_shit_about/

or here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzabmVIU6EQ