My first chapter received a huge response – and many requests for a second. So here it is.

The neighbours who owned our house prior to us did not take care of the property. We had to work really hard to get it to look the way it does now. We bought this house in November 2016 and took possession in December. There was a lot of snow on the ground and we couldn’t see what shape the property was in.

But we loved the house, and it was well maintained so we thought the property would be too. We were so wrong. As the snow melted in the spring, the state of the property took shape before us. The back lawn (hill – more about that below) was nothing but weeds. The front lawn, which was sizeable as far as front lawns in a subdivision go, was only half sodded. We have no idea why. Who sods half a lawn and doesn’t finish? Sondra had informed us, on the very first day we met her, (yes, the pee day, see my first post here), among all the not-so-nice things she had to say about the former owners, that they had started sodding and simply given up halfway through, leaving the rest of the sod on a skid. :shrug:

When the snow finally melted in May (this IS Calgary, after all. It has snowed every month of the year we have lived here, and frost is likely until at least June), Dave and I prepared to sod the rest of the front lawn. We bought dirt, sod and tools, and finished the lawn in early June. When Sondra saw us get started early Saturday morning, her set herself up on her balcony so she could watch us, and her morning greeting was, “It’s about darn time!” Sheesh, woman, there was snow on the ground two weeks ago!

Sondra watched us from her front balcony the entire afternoon. Seriously, the entire afternoon, with a beer in one hand and a book in the other. She participated in our conversations from a distance and would even offer her opinions when we asked each other questions! I’m not kidding. When Dave went inside to use the facilities and then called outside, asking me what I wanted to drink, Sondra hollered back her order too!

She did come down toward the end of the afternoon to inspect our work. Thank you so much, what would we do without your final approval, Sondra! She pointed out a spot that we had not cut correctly, in her opinion. At that time, she informed us that the hill our backyards was shifting. We live on a hill. About 1/3 of our backyards are flat, and this is where we have our hot tub, our patio, and our trampoline. The rest is a hill, which I mentioned above, was nothing but weeds at the time. Sondra told us that the hill was shifting and that our fences were moving as a result. Dave works for the Town and we were well aware of the situation before we bought the house. Anyway, I digress. At that point, I turned to Dave and I joked that maybe we wouldn’t do anything with our backyard that was nothing but weeds. I was just kidding. Because it was a hill of weeds, we had already inquired about doing artificial grass so we wouldn’t break out backs mowing it. But at the time, I just made a sideways joke to Dave in front of Sondra, because I was tired of her commentary that we had heard all day. You should have seen the look on her face!

At that time, we owned the trailer and went camping often. It was June, so camping season was in full swing. And Dave and I both have our birthdays in June, and we always went out for our birthdays. My birthday is June 24^th. We went out for my birthday weekend and came back on my actual birthday. We pulled into the house and as I walked up to the door, I see a bylaw notice stuck to the door. Yep, you guessed it. For the weeds in the backyard. On my birthday. Happy birthday to me from the Town of Cochrane. And from Sondra.

Why call bylaw for your neighbours weeds, in a fenced in backyard, in June, when it had just snowed a few weeks before, so when the weeds are not even that high? They weren’t encroaching on any neighbours property, they weren’t even spreading far on our own property. It was our first summer in the house – actually, it was barely even summer in the province!

We don’t know for sure it was Sondra. But we were pretty upset that a neighbour would “welcome” us that way. Especially since as soon as the snow melted, we had taken care the front yard, so it was pretty obvious we were intent on taking care of the property. We just needed some time.

But I’m pretty sure it was Sondra who called it in. Because she was present for the joke I made to Dave that maybe we’d ignore the backyard if the fence were going to fall down anyway. She got worried that we actually would. And because she had made cracks about how it was “about time” that we were taking care of the property. Aaaaand….because I saw her blond head peeking out through her blinds, watching me as we came home from camping and ripped the bylaw notice off of the front door, and then quickly hid as I spun around and glared at her house.

She has since called bylaw on other neighbours for various other neighbours for other “perceived” infractions, she has told me so herself. She’s also told me she has no idea why people don’t like her. Hm,  I don’t know. Maybe people don’t like a neighbour who takes every opportunity to complain about every little thing that they do? No one likes “that neighbour.”’

Just being totally honest and transparent here – following the Golden Rule, love thy neighbour as thyself, is really hard when it comes to people like Sondra. But I have to do it all the same, even though I don’t really want to. Every time I open my door, I know I might run into her, so I say a little prayer, mostly that God gives me the strength to hold my tongue.