My next door neighbor is an elderly man whom my wife and I just love. He’s a real great guy. He loves to talk … about anything, really. He spent time in the military as a paratrooper so some of his stories are about the follies of his youth. Sometimes he talks about his family. Most of the time though it’s the gossip du jour on what’s happening in the neighborhood. Every neighborhood has one of these types of people, right? They chat with anybody and everybody and love to share the rumors with anyone with an open ear.
During the winter while I’m out shoveling the snow from my sidewalk and driveway, I’ll take some time to do his as well. He reciprocates in the summer by spending a few minutes to edge my lawn every couple of weeks. We’ll also do small neighborly-type things for each other. I’ll carry his 40 lb. dog food into the house for him after he’s been shopping. He’ll loan some tools for some projects we might be doing around the house. You get the idea. We do little tit-for-tat service for each other.
About six months ago a new family moved into the house next door to him. There are maybe four or five kids that live there and they can be pretty loud and bothersome at times. The kids aren’t the most polite and have occasionally hit or thrown things at his dogs. So when the weather got warm enough my neighbor decided he would put up a privacy fence to provide some security for his dogs, but also to keep from having to see them all the time.
It has been a process of a month or so. Partly due to some unkind weather in the past weeks, but also because he’s been very methodical on how he wanted the fence to go up. He planned and engineered it and when he was done I would help him with whatever he needed. Well, this past week the fence went up. We were so pleased at how the whole process went and how great it looks. I wanted to share some of the pictures with you.
Enjoy your holiday weekend!
Posted by hardierworker 
