New neighbors, sort of

I have to tell you about the new owner of the house next to us, because I find the whole situation ridiculous.

The house next door to us, which has an identical floor plan and very similar front and back porches, went into foreclosure and has been vacant since November, so we were quite surprised when a few weeks ago, suddenly the For Sale sign was gone and a For Rent sign was in its place. As I was poop-scooping (since those dang dogs don't have opposable thumbs!) the new owner drove into the driveway and introduced herself. She told me about how this house was their 'nest egg' and they owned 5 other houses in town. 

At this point I need to mention that since the house has been empty and we have three cars, we've been parking in their alley space. The lady (I will keep her name anonymous) asked if I knew whose car it was, unto which I explained why we had been parking there and that now that the house was sold, we would park our third car on the street. She said we could continue parking there until she rented the house.

From here she explained that they wouldn't 'just rent to anyone', were 'very particular' who they rented to, and NEVER rented to people with pets, because they just didn't take care of things. I looked pointedly at the shovel in my hand and bucket-o-poo at my feet and smiled.

Last week she tore out the beautiful rose bushes out of the flower beds lining the walkway in the front yard. I cringed with each snip of the pruners. Granted they were a little worse for wear, not having been watered or pruned all summer, but they could bounce back. The previous owners had babied these roses and they were gorgeous, each bush a different, vibrant color. She later told my sister that she just didn't think that a renter could keep up with them. At this, I wondered about her comment about her requirements for renters, because if I were picky about my renters I'd find someone who could water and occasionally prune some roses. 

Yesterday, I watched her little cronies pull out the rocks that lined the front fence and dump them in the gravel space in the alley (the space that we usually park in). I watched for a little while, thinking that was a crappy job and I was glad I didn't have to do it, since the rocks are fairly good sized (think softball to cantaloupe-size). I laughed my butt off when I got home from work last night when I found out that they had just dumped them ON TOP of the gravel, without digging down to make everything flat. I discovered this when a pickup was trying to back off of them and was sliding all over. I came into the house laughing and telling Dustin what I had just seen and he told me "Yah, she told me I could still park there" to which he had rightfully snorted and said, "Umm... No".

The front yard. Note the dirt patches where the flower beds along the walkway and the rocks along the front fence used to be. In her defense, the grass was dead before she even bought the house, since the realtors didn't bother to have it watered all summer. And yes, she did restain the front and back decks, so that looks nice.

This is the part that makes me laugh. Look at those HUGE rocks that just got dumped in the driveway. Please, tell me how Dustin is supposed to park his Chrysler Concorde on these suckers when a pickup (the regular size, not the huge ones) was sliding around on them. Also note the color difference in the two lawns. We have a patch of grass that keeps dying because the lawn next door is sucking away the water from our sprinklers. Grr...