Hating Thy Neighbor's Mess

So the hubby and I live in a pretty yellow house on Orange Street. Colorful, eh ? It is a really nice street. We and our neighbours really try to keep things nice. You know, the usual lawn mowing, flower planting, keeping our yards tidy and keeping our house value up by making improvements were needed.

Unfortunately, our back yard abuts a not so nice street that has quite a few rental properties on it. Why is it that some renters are so much less caring about how their homes look than home owners ? Don't they want to live in a nice environment , even if they don't own it ? Why is it that some renters are just plain slobs !!!!!???

This is the view from my big back deck :

What a mess ! It looks like the whole contents of a garage is dumped in the yard! It has been like this (and sometime worse!) for at least two years. The tree between us is growing which helps a little but this is the view we have whenever we use our deck. These neighbours hang out in their yard a lot, and they have a clear view onto our deck which makes me feel like I am being watched whenever I sit out there. They are also very noisy, use foul language incessantly (even in front of their kids)..... I could go on and on but that's too much rant as it is (not to mention the incriminating photo !). The noise and stuff is really hard to do anything about - they are just living their noisy lives and they do usually stop the noise by 11:00pm in the summer.... But the view ! That was something I was determined to do something about this year so I could use my own deck with pleasure and in privacy!

You can't build a twelve foot fence - maybe you can but that wasn't in the budget or the vision! The hubby and I decided on a privacy curtain - something that wasn't too permanent, didn't cost too much and would look okay from our side as well as theirs (see, we really are nice neighbours to have !) We used metal pipes screwed into flanges, a cable with a turnbuckle, some pretty outdoor table cloths cut to size and some shower curtain hooks to create this :

The next thing is to change the back of the bench to have less space in between the cross beams with means adding 2 more 1"X6"X12' to the span. That part of the project will be done tonight ! But I am happy with our handy work so far.

I finished the curtain yesterday and set to work by adding my plants to the deck. Hopefully, frosts are over ! Let the spring really begin ! I have seeded some babies in the house for a few weeks - cosmos and morning glories. I pulled our dahlia pots out of the basement where they slept for the winter. I also brought out the three year old hibiscus that graces my studio window during the winter and her new friend, the one year old mandavilla, that survived the winter indoors as well. I added a couple on pots of annuals as well, just for some color until the other stuff comes in. It still looks a little bare right now but some sun, some water and some time and my fun, PRIVATE summer time oasis will be in full bloom !

Mandavilla, sleeping dahlias, pansies

Daisy-like annuals (?) and cilantro seeds

Baby cosmos with pansies

Hibiscus with annuals