Know They Neighbors

We’ve been living in our house for 9 months, but we’ve only really gotten to know our neighbors in the last 8 weeks. Perhaps because we moved in at the cusp of winter, when people spend more time indoors than socializing outside. So how did we finally learn who lives near us?

At the beginning of the summer, we received a note in our mailbox from the eldest son of our across the street neighbors. He wrote that he would be trying out for the high school football team in August and offered to mow our lawn for free as a way for him to get in shape. Now, we live on nearly 1/2 acre of property and were previously paying a lawn service to do the job. How could we say no to free?! Plus, this gave us the opportunity to talk to him weekly and learn about his two younger siblings and his parents. It also gave us an excuse to talk to his family when we saw them outside; we wanted to tell them what a good job he was doing mowing our lawn.

As a thank you for his hard work, we bought him a gift certificate to a local sporting goods store and took him on a field trip to the Air Force Base where my husband works, as he mentioned an interest in planes. The day of the excursion, his father and brother stopped by with handfuls of tomatoes and cucumbers from their garden. In return for their generosity, the next day we brought over a container of homemade salsa made with the tomatoes. And that is how that relationship began!

We met our next door neighbors because we were planning to build a fence to contain our small Maltipoo in the backyard and wanted to know if they were interested in splitting the cost with us for the fence that would divide our two properties. When we knocked on the door, they invited us inside and we had a lovely conversation not only about fences, but about what each of us did for a living and about their children. Turns out they were more than happy to contribute to the fence fund, and are now planning to use the same company to fence in the rest of their yard at a later date.

Perhaps we would have met the neighbors sooner if we had children the same age as theirs, but because we are a bit younger than both, we had to look harder to find things in common.

Do you have relationships with your neighbors? If so, how did they develop?

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