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My neighbor has become a pest

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I think my elderly neighbor Sofie is getting worse in her stalking ways.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to find a camera in my home that she’s placed there to watch me.

I mean, she knows every time I step outside my door – whether I go out the front of the back she’s there, seemingly waiting for me!

Honestly! She’s part of the reason why I’m not getting my garden work done.

All of our backyards are fairly open with short chain link fences between them. I don’t mind this so much and I don’t mind my neighbors being outdoors using their yards at the same time I am … but Sofie … Sofie literally follows me around. I’ll be in one portion of my backyard trying to work at something and she’ll be opposite me on her side of the fence digging in the earth or spraying her plants with water. I move, she moves.

When she finally does tire she’s sit on her steps and watch me work. If she only watched me work in my garden I wouldn’t be too upset … but no, she has to ask questions. Usually it’s the same ones over and over.

Trouble is I can’t usually hear her since the traffic at the front of the house is so loud and she’s talking low. She knows I can’t hear her too. So I’ll spend some time nodding my head but eventually she’ll say something repeatedly wanting me to truly respond and I’ll have to get up from what I’m doing, go over to her to find out what she’s saying “No rain???” and then go back to my work. She does this repeatedly.

Manipulative of her, isn’t it? She knows what she’s doing and I’m certain she knows she’s frustrating me.

Last night Chris went outside at 8 pm to grill some sausages. I could hear him talking to her while he cooked. At about 8:20 he came inside to tell me that Sofie had just brought out some hamburgers and a pepper for him to cook on the grill. Yes our dinner was done. She knew Chris was cooking yet she waiting until he was finished before asking him to cook her food. Grrrr

Almost every elderly person I know eats their dinner somewhere between 4 pm and 6 pm … what the heck did she want with a couple of hamburgers at 8:30 at night? There’s no way she ate them last night.

If you ever wonder why I talk about being outside at 10 pm planting plants, pruning and watering this is why. I hide until she’s closed up her doors and gone in and then I sneak out so I can do my gardening in peace – with the stray cats that wander through my yard and the raccoons.

Of course if I hide from her too long she literally peaks in my windows! Arghhh!






Fun with sprinklers – not!

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Chris and I are both experimenting with lawn watering the other night. He was wiped out because he’s covering another persons shift at work for the whole month so he’s getting up at 5 a.m. every day. I’m still not feeling well, what else is new, and that’s made me pretty much useless as far as getting anything done outside goes these days.

So … we pulled out the sprinkler system that we have. We actually haven’t been very happy with lawn sprinklers as none of the ones we’ve purchased in the past have worked very well with our not very powerful water system.

Chris hooked up one of our older small sprinklers after work and the darn thing swung around pathetically and only watered perhaps a 6 foot diameter of lawn and garden. It’s going to be thrown out or perhaps if we have a garage sale it will be one of the items that we put out for that.

So, seeing how bad that sprinkler was and after calculating that it would take about 8 hours to water the front and back Chris got in the car and went to Home depot to get us a new sprinkler.

Miracles of miracles he actually found one that works! The new one has a good range and seems to work well with our low water pressure. It still took about two and a half hours to complete the job but considering that neither of use were up to standing outside in the garden, in the heat, for a minimum of an hour and a half we’re happy.

I still prefer to water my plants by hand. Well with a hose, but you know what I meant! This was better than not watering at all!

Have you found that they don’t seem to make really good sprinklers anymore?

The Garden is Thriving

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Yes I’m still neglecting my garden, but it truly is thriving despite the lack of care. I’ve been so ill the last few days I haven’t been able to do much more than look out the window at all the buds developing on the roses and other flowers.

Luckily I’m married. My husband has been watering the garden every few days, and other than the pruning that I so desperately need to do on half my roses, the watering seems to be all that needs to be done.

Everything is covered in buds or is blooming. Two of my clematis, well two that I’ve noticed so far, possibly there’s more, are blooming! I ate my first homegrown strawberry of the season a little while ago too.

We’re expecting rain later today, and tomorrow. Possibly thunderstorms. I’m sure the garden will be overgrown soon if I don’t get out there and start trimming.

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