Instead of being loads grateful.
Neighbour and his wife moved in a few months ago, weeks after I did (I moved in with DP…he's been here ten years). Neighbour is very much a Victor Meldrew type although not nasty (an odd combination of gushing, over friendliness and over sincerity with being anal and nitpicking). He is the type to worry about the minutiae of others lives when it does not affect him at all. e.g. when he moved in, he asked if he could look at our guttering as he was bored! He did clear it and we thanked him (he also made two holes in our outhouse roof doing so, and the rain got in on our washing..but we are both laid back, and just patched up the roof and thanked him and didn't say about the holes)
We have a loose tile and he is obsessed with it. He mentions it every time we see him… I think it is actually making him quite ill that we do nothing about it! I should say that neither DP and I are slobs in any way shape or form..but like most of our neighbours we are more laid-back about living in rustic falling apart old cottages and don't lose sleep over it.
His wife is Hyacinth Bouquet Mark 2 and never talks to anyone if she can help it. I often catch her rearranging her large pot plants outside and marking out 'boundaries' (we are in a row of cottages, with no fences/ boundaries) with them, she moved one too near to us once and nearly had a fit when my car hit it (it was dark , I had no idea she'd moved it!)
Anyway to get to the main point of my story….. gardens are in bad arrangement here i.e. they are 'staggered'. We are first in the row of cottages and most of our garden is at the back of their house. i.e. from their lounge they look out on most of it. To sit in their garden, they have to go to their other next door neighbours, and so on.
You know when someone offers to do you a favour but you know it's really about them? Well that's how this is IMHO. We know for a fact that the wife hates looking out on our garden. TBH it's not even a proper garden. It's more of a scrubby back yard. DP has never really used it (we also share it with Dp's colleague who lives above back of our cottage in a bedsit). He never uses it at all. (we live out in the sticks, surrounded by fields in every direction, so if we want solitude and somewhere to go we'd just go into the nearest meadow, sit on the nearest log etc, where it's more peaceful) It wasn't a total eyesore, not like DP used it for a junkyard or anything. Basically it had a patch of concrete (NOT a patio!) and a patch of grass. There were a few old buckets by the back door but no actual rubbish outside. Bits of broken up concrete here and there. Not any actual 'litter' , which DP and I would never do. Mowing the grass is a vile task as all the neighbours cats have always used our garden as a toilet. When the neighbours moved in , we were aware they didn't like looking out on our garden, so DP mowed the lawn. It was disgusting, full of semi prehistoric cat shit , including possibly ones from our cat though he's been an indoor cat for years due to his age. We liked our semi wild yard with its flowers and wild raspberries etc. Anyway… DP cleared it up a bit because of these new neighbours. As it's been a nice summer, I did take to sometimes sitting out there but I gave up on account of hating her looking out at me burning holes through me and him always coming through the gate making me jump out of my skin and wanting to chat about guttering, roofs , tv aerials etc etc, most of which I could not answer, as I had only just moved in too ( i should point out that DP and I are both very approachable, friendly and v laid back! we don't go out of our way to avoid anyone! but i'd be sitting out there relaxing with just say a long baggy t-shirt on and no bra, and didn't want this man to keep popping thru the gate all the time - it was literally every time…. one time he even followed me into our backdoor and into our outhouse ! very thick skinned)
We knew the wife had been nagging him (and would never approach us herself) as a few weeks ago , the neighbour approached me (again bursting into the garden) and asked if he could clear our garden (for free) as he knew we were going away. I was surprised but said well sure if he really wanted to, but it wouldn't be the most fun task! He grabbed both my hands excitedly and said we'd be doing HIM a favour as he's always so bored in day times (as his wife works and takes their car…he's retired and bored shitless…. we're many miles from any public transport so he's stuck here in day time) and that he was desperate for something to do. Anyway, for a quiet life I said he could , there just didn't seem any point explaining that we don't even use our garden (and part of that i.e. me not using it, is down to them!) I thanked him several times (felt put on the spot) and we left it at that.
We were away all last week and got back two days ago. So , he has done a good job and it's very tidy with the grass mown and bits cleared up e.g. the old broken concrete. He's also swept our front porch out and the gravel outside our front door, which is kind of weird as no other neighbours do except them (it's flat and windy, as soon as you sweep, more leaves blow in - when they get too piled up , I do clear it!) It's almost as if, our unswept gravel offended them! (I should explain, all the cottage fronts are the same…no drives, just gravel (as the road is also gravel) and no boundaries// just gravel right up to the front doors. So in the row of houses, it's now only us and them with swept fronts! (and the gravel is there for a reason… don't need it swept…it's too muddy underneath it and gets v boggy at times!) We've only just had swallows vacate our porch, and he'd cleaned up all their mess… which I am grateful for… but I didn't expect him to… thought he was only doing out back…. (it wasnt really that bad though…I had poured boiling water over porch before we went away)
So far we've not seen them and not been round to say thanks. I wonder if i should knock or just stick a thank you card through their door. even if it was for their benefit Yes it does look nice, yes he did it well…but we didn't ask for it and it didn't look either good or bad.
Other thing is that our very elderly and frail/senile cat vanished when we were away. (guy we share garden with who lives above, was seeing to him as has done for years). I'm pretty sure that our cat would have been freaked by a stranger out in the garden on his territory not to mention me and DP both being away (he's v used to DP being away, but it's only been this year he's deteroriated, and I was always here when DP wasnt…before I moved in here, I would stay here for the cat whenever DP was away with work, which is v often) But this is the first time DP and I were both away together. I know it's definitely not the neighbour's fault but I do wish I hadn't agreed to the garden clearance. It could've contributed to cat going away , and we think he was either killed by foxes or died naturally then foxes had the remains..we have searched everywhere and can't find a trace..he was v arthritic and couldnt go far. But really, we may never know what happened :-(
So adding this all up…. AIBU to not be entirely grateful (mainly because i know neighbour didn't do it for us and was under duress from his wife) and also I hate to feel we are in someone's debt. Do we maintain the garden/ yard now, so as to not be disrespectful to the work he's done? (DP works crazy hours, and i'm just not gardening minded….I've always liked things wild….hence i go and sit in the meadows here) Or let him do it again, if he offers? I wish we had just said no and not got into this, but i was trying to keep the peace and thought if it made them happy to look out on a changed view, then so be it. He was so emphasising that we were doing him a favour rather than the other way round but it just makes me feel uncomfortable. So am i being rude , but also BU to feel uncomfortable by it too? I can imagine her being most put out we 've not thanked him yet