Last year I moved into a new (not new, but new to me) home in a quiet, secluded neighborhood. Since I live in the mountains (Western North Carolina) the roads are all curvy and uphill or downhill, the yards all sloping every which way. Since I live in the county there are no sidewalks, no curbs, and the road edges are crumbling from decades of neglect (we are not high on the county's list of repairs). I have a corner lot. I noticed most of my neighbors who live on corners and curves have rocks and tall reflector sticks and other stuff to keep people from driving into their lawn.
I didn't need to, however, not last year. No one drove over my grassy corner...until this year when one of my neighbor's daughters graduated from college and moved back home. Suddenly someone is cutting across the corner of my yard, turning the grass into mud. Since the yard is sloped, my soil is washing out into the road with every torrential rainstorm (it's been raining 4-5 times a week here this year) & my grass is gone. So a couple of months ago I scraped 3 inches of soil off the road and defined the edge of my yard with stones. I then planted grass seed and covered it with dead leaves, which I have in abundance. Obviously I was dead meat afterwards. And it didn't work--they still drove across my yard. I put down more rocks--they still cut across. Bigger rocks--it didn't stop them one bit.
Yesterday I was going out for an easy walk, feeling none too feisty but knowing a bit of a walk would do me good. That's when I saw that they had cut deeply across the yard, leaving deep tire tracks and driving the stones into the soft muddy soil. Once again 3 inches of soil covered the adjacent roadway. This ticked me off. I didn't feel like doing it, but I gathered what strength I had in reserve, scraped the soil off the road, dug around the edge of the yard, unearthing many of my buried rocks, planted some of those brick-like edging things and reinforced them with my rocks, then I put down more grass seed.
It occurred to me that dead leaves do not tell neighbors I am trying to grow grass, so I didn't put any down, just pressed the seed into the ground with my feet. I then hauled my garden cart full to the brim with dirt uphill to my backyard where I need soil and sort of spread it out. Twice while doing all this I felt one of my "fainting" spells coming on and had to sit down and just breath until the wooziness passed. When I made it back into the house my face was beet red and it took me 45 minutes to stop sweating.
Small wonder that I woke up in the middle of the night with my back killing me. I turned on the light, puffed a bit of medical marijuna, read, and finally fell back asleep.
Today my brain wants to go buy some straw (straw scattered on the ground is the local sign for "these people are trying to grow grass") and some of those tall reflector sticks. My body wants to go back to bed. But I am hungry and have to wait for the Terminex man. It is going to rain again this afternoon (of course), I do need the straw, but...I'll see how I feel.
If all this doesn't stop them I am going to plant a 4 foot metal pipe I have on the corner--see if they try to run over *that*!!
If you have read this whole thing, God bless you and thank you for listening!
Hugggss, Kimberly :}
Hi Kimberly,
You are very patient with a heart of gold. After the second time, I would have put spikes down to pop their tires! People like this just don't care, and it's especially hard when it's your neighbor-you never want to start a disagreement. With your health though, it's not good for you to have to keep fixing it -- make the kid who's doing it come and clean it up!
Wishing you lots of luck with your inconsiderate neighbors,
Renieā„
Thank you so much for your comment. I wish I could make her come do it, but I haven't actually caught her in the act and I don't want to cause bad blood--these have been some of my favorite neighbors...except for this.
xo
Wow sounds like very inconsiderate neighbors indeed. I would definitely put up reflector signs and maybe a couple of signs. Maybe they are visiting college students who have never driven in the mountains before (I am young but unfortunately I've seen way too many people my age who CANNOT DRIVE).
Please try to get some rest and save your stress, that definitely excelerates the fibro. Hope your neighbors and visitors will be a lot more considerate soon.
Blessings and prayers
You are so right, people in my neighborhood seem to think I am weird if I talk to them! Not so in my last neighborhood--everyone was poorer, but everyone was nice and happy to pass the time of day or to help when needed.
I put up the reflector sticks, I hope that helps. Even cheap bushes are expensive and I have other places to out shrubs, places that will in time protect my privacy. No straw available at the local Lowes store, so I just stamped in the seed really good. Thank God it hasn't rained as they predicted today.
Thank you for your reply. You don't know (or maybe you do) how much it means to have people who understand me!!
Huuggsss, Kimberly :)
Thank you so much!!!
There are way too many people in this town, of all ages, who don't seem to know how to drive! Us locals say the first sign of Spring is the first Floridian going the wrong way down one of our one-way streets!
xo
Amen to that, I am stuck!! Got up the reflectors today, keeping my fingers and toes crossed!
And a big HEY to a fellow (if former) North Carolinian!!
xo