Hay!

As it turns out, I'm the white-trash neighbor.

This whole summer I've watched with barely passing interest as the little patch of weeds between my house and my neighbor's house turned into an alfalfa field. I wondered why my neighbors had landscaped their whole yard and left that little strip between our houses undone. My landscaping was done by the builder before I moved in, so why would they leave that little strip? And one day a couple of weeks ago when the NNG was giving me another long lecture on ground water, he wandered over there to look at something and to see if it was my property. He didn't think it was, so I continued to blissfully ignore it. Then a few days ago DeLaina disturbed my reverie by casually wandering over there and pointing out the stake in the curb. "This," she said helpfully, "marks your property line."

Well, duh. Of course I knew that. It's just that walking to the VERY edge of my property and looking down hadn't yet occurred to me. I barely visit that curb when I'm taking my garbage cans out. Plus, it just didn't make sense that the builder would leave a three-foot wide strip unlandscaped. Who does that???

My young neighbors couldn't be nicer. Tonight the husband came over just to see if I knew that was my little piece of heaven. He thinks the builder should have fixed it and I should hold their feet to the fire. Either that or he's getting a goat and is looking for feed for it.

I guess I should be happy. I've just acquired three more feet of property I didn't know I had. I'm practically a tenant farmer with a hay field ready to harvest. Now I just have to figure out who to feed and what the hell to do with that big pile of builder debris, rocks, and junk left there.

Cool. I'm only working until 10:27 every night. I needed a project right now.