An arrow, a complaint, and a box of chocolates

I always dreamed I've live so far out in the country I'd have no neighbors to complain about.

It turns out I like having neighbors, I feel like they keep an eye on my animals. I always loved the German saying people post in their gardens, "The dear Lord sees everything. The neighbors, even more." (Until this week when I learned it actually refers to Germans' overwhelming tendency to snoop, interfere, and complain. Oh well.)

When we had our hay field dragged last month, the tractor guy found an arrow and gave it to us. A really nice arrow.

Our neighbors on the far side of our pasture, the fir grove, like archery. They have a variety of fake animal prey set up and every Saturday you can hear the thudding of arrows connecting with targets.

It always makes me uneasy when I'm out there cleaning poop and they're shooting. And I imagine my horse standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This arrow was really nice. It seemed made of oak with a blunt metal tip and feathers.

I wanted to do the right thing so rather than tossing it I drove around the neighborhood and found the house I assumed belonged to the shooting grove. I twirled it around like a baton waiting for someone to answer the door and handed it to the man when he finally came. He was thrilled, he said they'd searched (but obviously respected our fenceline, or perhaps the fact that it's an electric fence?).

***

We have some very, very bad neighbors who live directly next door to us. Chickens, barking dogs, blaring country music in the yard, and a teenage boy who yells at his computer every night so loud our neighbors up the street can hear him. The husband is a cop and very nice. The lady is a bitch. It's funny how over the last 11 years we've finally gotten the news from other neighbors that it's her, not us. She's the crazy one. At our favorite turkish restaurant, the owner confessed to us, "She's not normal. She yelled at me for picking walnuts out of the grass when she could have spoken politely."

In 11 years she's never rang our doorbell, and I've given up on giving them extras from our garden.

So it was a huge surprise to see her standing in our driveway today.

As is her style, she was more rampage than courtesy. She told us that the rain pipes on our house are draining water onto her property (that's how close they are, that's how much misery their chickens caused us).

Our rain down-spouts? We've not done anything to them in 11 years. True, it's not ideal to have your rain water just pour down next to your house (those little concrete troughs that exist in America do not exist here).  But she was going off. "This is not acceptable!"

My husband was surprised and she said, "What do you mean, you're surprised!" Um, just that. It's been that way since 1930 when that addition was built onto the house.

I told J later, I understand getting hormonal and stressed about potential water damage. But I do not accept her attitude. If I were to confront a neighbor about something like this, I'd do it with politeness and even apologetically cuz it may end up costing that neighbor thousands of Euros in renovation. I joked, "It's time for us to lawyer up!"

I know there are worse neighbors on this Earth. I really appreciate the good ones.

***

My doorbell rang this afternoon and there was the bow & arrow man. He smiled and handed me a box of chocolates. I explained, "I just thought, if it were something valuable, I'd want it back. So, how much does such an arrow cost?" He told me 10 Euros and thanked me again. Wow.