The Mending Wall

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast..."

but like Mr. Frost, I say
"good fences make good neighbors"

Privacy is a huge issue for me. Maybe having 4 brothers and, yes, a room to myself, but not much else. Especially since moving from a town that had a lot of green space where everybody had a yard you could have a touch football game in more or less; to a town where the lots were a wee bit bigger than a postage stamp.

Well, in our current yard we had a 40 foot row of hedges that had been left untended by the previous owner. Overgrown on top was a tangled mess of grapevine leaves. To my country soul, I loved it. It was a home for the bunnies and protected the birds in winter. They had overgrown somewhat into my neighbors yard. We have opposite tastes on what to do with our postage stamps. She is not a gardener and likes her space flat and green. She said "I will put up a fence if you take the hedges down." We took them out 2 weeks after her proposal; 4 months later no fence. So all summer I didn't use my deck because I felt like I was on stage when I was out there, as if the neighborhood was watching my every move. Rationally, I know that they had better things to do with their time.

Finally, I could take it no more and hired a nice carpenter, Dave, to put up a "privacy screen" on the end of our deck. Boy does this piece of wood make me happy. I think it makes the puppy happy, too.