Christmas Lights

We came home on Tuesday night to find a massive amount of Christmas lights decorating a tree in our yard.

We didn't put them there.  The neighbor did. 

Gary said the wife asked (after she saw what the husband did) if it would be okay or if they should take the light-strands down.  So it appears she has some understanding of our yard as differentiated from their yard.

But there's still something uncomfortable about seeing that display.

The Neighbor Kids

A crew of boys were outside next door this afternoon.  They looked like they were having a grand time with their Airsoft guns.  I assumed they'd be in our yard part of the time, and they were.  That wasn't a problem.  But while I was washing dishes, the battle-zone changed from north/south to east/west.  Pretty soon, one of the fellows was escaping the enemy, running right through my muddy strawberry patch and asparagus patch.  I hurried to the back door, feeling like the Cranky Old-Lady Neighbor, and and hollered, "Guys, please stay out of the garden!  There's already stuff coming up out there."  They quickly scooted away and I hollered, "Thank you." 

The dad had just come out, and he witnessed this.  He called them together.  I didn't know what to expect -- if he'd be scolding them or complaining about me.  About five minutes later, there's a knock on the door.  The whole group of boys are there to apologize for being in our yard.

Wow!  I told them thank you, and that being in our yard wasn't the problem, but it's the garden that particularly needs to be avoided.  They again apologized and went back to play some more. 

Wow.  It's amazing what a little thing like an apology can do to soften the heart of a Cranky Old-Lady Neighbor. 

First Impressions and Property Lines

Our house is on the corner. We have new next-door-neighbors behind us. When the family was checking out the place, their sons (maybe age 10 or so) were running through our backyard. No biggie, I told myself, they don't know what's their yard and what's ours.

So this weekend the moving truck appeared and left and re-appeared. Yesterday afternoon, the boys came running through our yard. I told myself "No biggie; they're boys; they're playing outside; they haven't figured out what's theirs and what's the neighbors' yet; the parents are busy with moving and unpacking." But then they came running straight up to the house and onto the deck. "Oh, maybe they're coming over to say hi, to meet us, to ask to borrow something." I headed across the kitchen toward the back door to answer the anticipated knock, and before I was halfway to the door, they'd already turned in their chase-game and were jumping off the deck and careening through the yard back to their house.

Hmmm.

Now I'm recalling (from when we lived up north) the gang of kids who would raid the neighbors' berry patches. The only time they refrained was when an owner was physically present to catch them and shoo them away. Even when we neighbors would tell the kids to leave someone's garden alone, they didn't care; the kids were always gone by the time the police arrived. (Yes, the kids' behavior grew to be that big a problem.)

I don't want the neighbors' first impression of me to be a cranky old woman asking them to keep their kids out of my yard, even if I am showing up on their doorstep to welcome them with smiles and a loaf of fresh homemade bread. And yet, if we say nothing and allow it, then what? I could put a "best construction" on it when they were coming into our yard while running and playing. But halfway across our deck? They're old enough to know better. I'm afraid my first impressions of them have already colored what will show through when they get their first impressions of me.

PS: Gary says kids won't steal things like spinach and potatoes and tomatoes and asparagus. But we have grapes, apples, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries too. Hmmm. I hate it that I'm already so suspicious.

Community

Last night I was filling out a survey for some research on VCFS and its effects on the person, the caregiver, the family, and the community. When I'm asked to fill out a survey on homeschooling, I nearly always refuse to participate. I don't think it's helpful to have research that "proves" homeschooling is okay, because after all, what makes homeschooling okay is that God put children into families with parents, and children don't belong to the State. It's not the good results that make homeschooling okay (even though there are good results), and such research silently assents to the idea that homeschooling rights exist because we can measure up on the academic playing field. However, when a survey is about VCFS, and the experts know so little yet, and our family is one of the oddballs in that we homeschool and, well, "handle" the VCFS so differently than is normally advised, then I'm more willing to participate in the research studies.

Anyway...
There was a section in the survey that was asking about our family's acceptance in the community, and whether the community cared about our child's VCFS, and whether the community supported us as we raise a child with VCFS, and how involved our family is in making the community a better place, etc. I was thinking that the community doesn't care much. That's not an indictment against anybody; it's just that we haven't lived here very long and don't know too many people, and certainly don't know them well enough to be talking much about VCFS with these near-strangers.

But as I continued in the "community" section of the survey, some of the questions specifically asked about our "faith community" which was described as our church or mosque or synagogue. I answered the questions about church very very differently from how I answered the questions regarding the overall community. But the way the survey was arranged made it seem like church was part of the "community." I never thought of it that way before.

What do you think? Is church part of the community? Or is church something very different from our "communities"? Is this an "in the world but not of the world" thing? Or do I have an inadequate definition in my head of what "community" is?

Tracks in the Snow

One day last summer, we saw a small group of teenagers walking through our yard. They weren't near the house. They left the road, followed rather near the property line between our house and the neighbor's, headed across the big open spot in our back yard, and then went into the nursery that backs-up to the corner of our property. No damage. No trouble. Just some folks trying to get from the road to the nursery.

I wasn't real comfortable with it, but as far as I knew it happened only that one time.

Now there's snow. Maggie asked about the tracks in the snow that made a bee-line from the road to the back corner of the yard. She said they weren't hers. That means the incident last summer wasn't just once.

Now I'm wondering what's going to happen to the berries and tomatoes and grapes and green beans that I intend to plant out there. Will this group of interlopers trample them because my garden will be in their way when they go hiking? Will they sample the goodies I grow? Or will they just walk on past, heading to their hiking spot in the tree nursery with nary a thought of doing harm?