Meet the neighbours while sweeping the gutters

If you've been reading for a few months, you'll know I have an ongoing issue with the road gutters outside our house. You can go back and have a look here and here to refresh your memory.

Then last week, when I had a house full of sickies, I dashed out to grab my bicycle for a trip to get lemonade at the shop and there is my neighbour sweeping my gutters again. Embarrassing, but what could I do?

I was fuming about it all a bit because I'm not really into what seems like non-essential housework and it just seems a bit of keeping up with the neighbours - see who can get to it first! And I have plenty other things to do with my time.

But yesterday we had a nasty storm before breakfast (yes, weird!) and then heaps of wind -  because we're coming to the end of autumn this meant heaps of leaves. And even I can see that that mess needed cleaning up. So, when I returned from taking child three to school I saw an unusually tidy pile of leaves in our gutter. It seems that our neighbour was at it again, leaving subtle hints around.

So, as I had the time, I immediately went to work.

Last night as we returned from the school's Christmas performance, we noticed that the strong wind all afternoon had produced more leaves. So this morning, I hustled outside mid-morning and started sweeping. An extra bonus was that David had gone to do some car-related errands, so I could get to the car port too.

I must have made enough noises as I left because my youngest son came out and joined me, helping with the broom and shifting heavy concrete blocks. 

First one neighbour (not the hyper vigilant one) came out and hopped in her car and left, not without noticing and commenting on my cute helper. I hadn't even noticed, but my freckled five-year-old had his 'Santa' hat on.

Then our other neighbours came out, applauding our work (that was pretty gratifying). They too were impressed with my 5 y.o.'s work and hat (maybe in that order too). They even inspected the gutters after my son levered the concrete blocks out of the way and pronounced them "not too bad".

Then they gave me some pruning advice on one of our small trees out the back and lent us a some long-handled pruning shears to do the job (no getting out of it now). Apparently our elderly neighbour had climbed the fence between our two houses in the couple of months of vacancy that preceded our moving in, just to do some pruning. (There is not enough room for an average sized adult to walk down the side of the house from the street to the garden.) They're pretty keen about gardening! His wife didn't think he should be climbing fences any more though, and I'd have to agree, they must be at least in their 70s or 80s.

So now I feel like I've made a little bit of progress in gaining the acquaintance and favour of our neighbours. No mean feat in Japan. Perhaps there is meaning to sweeping gutters, after all - meeting the neighbours.

And I also know that we 'caretake' a Japanese crape myrtle tree, which should produce some lovely white flowers in spring.