I don’t like the man next door, who seems to live and die only for his lawn, and does things like use a leaf-blower to blow all his leaves towards my yard in order to pile them up to bag them, which inevitably sends a bunch of them into my yard. (Hey, thanks! And while you’re at it, why don’t you ever address a single word to me or even look at me? Am I limburger? Your dog likes me.)

At night, I walk laps around the block, and his motion-sensor floodlight goes on each time I pass his house. Which means every six or seven minutes. And I do either 5 or 10 laps. I notice lately he’s been shutting off the floodlight after a few rounds. (Sometimes I walk very late and I sort of hoped the stupid light was waking him up.) On Saturdays and Sundays he works on an old car, which seems to require that he run its engine in the driveway for about 20-30 minutes, and the fumes are pretty bad. If it’s warm weather, I have to run around shutting all my windows on that side or I will get sick to my stomach.

So I decided to give him a heart attack by actually doing some yard work, which I practically never do. I have one of the larger front yards on the street, because the house was built before the street was finished, I believe. The house sits on a pie-wedge-shaped lot. I have a lot more sidewalk than anyone else immediately around. Not so fun in winter.

Anyway, the heart attack. I am raking the old dead leaves out from under the bushes along the side of the house next to him, and I’ll be putting down plastic then mulch. And then I’ll do the same to the hedge. I have other plans too — I just finished cutting back some pine limbs that drape over the fence from the other side-neighbor’s yard. These branches reached the ground previously. No grass grows for at least 12’ X 4’ underneath that tree, on my side of the fence. But now I can walk underneath the branches. I thought of putting a raised-bed sort of planter there, and fill it with hostas, mint, and maybe something else that grows in the shade. I will have to do it cheaply, maybe with old wooden pallets.

The weather just turned freezing again, but as soon as it warms up I can do some more. He will not know what in the world is going on — me doing yard work.