Thursday, April 25, 2013

Trashy McTrashpants

I will be the first to admit that our yard is not immaculate. We are not immaculate yard kind of people. We do, however, mostly take care of our yard and the outside of our house. We apparently need to try harder because we received this anonymous letter in the mail yesterday:

"I am writing to encourage you to please tend to your yard. This little place has always been a neat member of the neighborhood. It is out of courtesy and respect to and for your neighbors that you should keep your place up. As it is now, it looks like a dump site for toys, wood, trash, etc.

You are young and able bodied so get out there, clean up your yard and be an asset to the neighborhood.

Have your children help you and for goodness sake take some pride in your home.

A frequent passerby."

Lovely, isn't it? Had this letter been dated two weeks earlier, I would have wholeheartedly agreed. There was a bunch of trash in the back yard. We cleaned all of it up and have been outside doing yard work on every nice day, which have been few and far between. I guess the passerby failed to notice. 

I don't appreciate cowards. I don't appreciate a lecture from an anonymous letter. I would be happy to keep stuff more picked up had I been confronted by one of my neighbors. We've been here 10 years and I like my neighbors.

Also, how do they know that I don't take pride in my home? As of the date on this letter, the only things in my front yard were bikes and other moving kid toys. They are not trashy toys. I have kids. Kids have toys. This is their home. We are outside whenever it's nice and enjoy being in the front yard.

I do take pride in my home. That is why we've renovated the damn thing three times. This house was a smoking, cat collectors paradise when we moved in. We've gutted everything in at and have added on.

The top of our driveway IS a dump site for wood. We burn wood for heat. My husband has not chopped any of it yet this year because it's been cold and raining. The wood pile is always going to be there and whomever wrote this letter will just need to avert their eyes when they walk past.

This whole thing makes me mad. The weather has been crappy and there is very little we are going to do outside in the rain. I'm hoping this person saw the kids and I outside planting flowers today like we do every year when it starts getting warm. I have a feeling the letter writer is just pissed because there's kid stuff in our yard and there are no other kids on our street. This is the first year I've put a climber/slide and the kid swing in the front yard and find it ironic that this is the first year I've failed to take pride in my home.

Did the grumps notice all of my new tulips coming up this year? Did they notice that the siding was fixed last fall? Did they notice the new mailbox?

No comments: