Our Neighborhood

Our Neighborhood

As I walked a circle around the house, I got more and more depressed. We bought the house mid-winter. Mid snowy winter I might add. We were gung-ho settling in, fixing up stuff, making our stuff fit and buying whatever we needed that we now had room for! After four years in a small apartment this was Heaven!

Then came the February thaw. Suddenly the snow in our lovely yard melted, and we saw the yard for what it really was. There was no grass, the bushes were very bushy, but also very weedy, if you can call a bush a weed. The encyclopedia of plants did. Even the house, minus the snow looked different. I thought it was painted a light gray, but the gray paint apparently used to be white. There was a lot of work to be done. Unfortunately, between the mortgage, the moving in and the buying stuff we could finally have in our house, we had little money left to repaint the house or redo the landscape.

The rest of the neighborhood was lovely, one of the draws to this house right from the start. But our house stuck out like sore thumb.

As I stood there, a small group of neighbors walked over introducing themselves. Finally one, Sandy, spoke about the house. “We are so looking forward to helping you get this back up to scratch, if you’ll let us help… “ she added as her husband stuck his elbow in her back. At that moment another new neighbor burst into laughter. “I’m sorry!” she said, “you don’t have to let us help, I know I can be pushy. This yard could look so good…”

“You're hired!” I yelled! Embarrassing even myself! But they all laughed. That summer our yard became beautiful. It still is.