Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Fences and neighbors

We are putting up a tall fence. One of our neighbors, a lovely elderly woman who likes to stop and chat over the 4-foot fence we are replacing, reportedly commented to the fence-building crew that our planned fence is "unfriendly."

We are not TRYING to be unfriendly, but we are definitely building the fence with privacy as a big priority (another big priority being that Toby's Houdini-like escape adventures be permanently and categorically thwarted, and a smaller priority being that random folks quit hopping our fence and crossing our yard to get to and from the creek trail behind us). I am a little fretful about facing opposition from this neighbor, and sort of fretting about whether to invite neighbors that aren't actually also our friends to the wedding, since it's going to be in our backyard and sort of obvious, although less obvious with our new fence. There are so many truly important friends that I want at the wedding, and the necessity to keep the guest list small is so real and concrete, but I also want to maintain good neighbor relations in our little neighborhood. This is hard. I think for starters I need to bring the chatty neighbor a pie, but after that my diplomatic strategy runs out.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah, this is tough... I just put in a 6ft tall fence on the one side of my yard, too (the other side already had a 4ft tall chainlink side) and tried to make it very clear to that neighbor that the fence is a dog-escape deterrent only. And I make sure to stop and chat with her when we're in the front yard... but still...

By the way, thanks for stopping by and commenting on my old post about bitter melon. My friend who supplied me with the original moved to North Carolina this past winter, so unfortunately I have had no more to enjoy. :( I'll need to fix that with next spring's seed order!

Mayumi said...

Yeah, blame it on the doggy.

Jennica Goo said...

i think the pie idea is good. but, i don't think that her mentioning how it's "unfriendly", should give her an inviation to the wedding. it's good to have privacy, so don't feel you have to apologize to them for it.