New Neighbors.

Along with the joy of moving into a new house comes the joy of meeting new neighbors. The neighbors in my cul-de-sac have all lived there a minimum of 15 years. Do they realize I was 8 15 years ago? Anyway. One neighbor in particular felt it was her duty to inform me about everything that happens in the neighborhood and all the "cul-de-sac rules" before we even started moving in. The de-briefing sounded something like this:

"Wednesday is trash day. Every other Wednesday is recycle day. That apple tree is the cul-de-sac apple tree. He sprays it, we enjoy the fruit. Your sprinkler system needs a little work. One of the heads leaks and makes a swamp in the front yard. You have a cherry tree (which you need to spray or else you will get cherry maggots [what!?]), a peach tree (which is delicious), and an apple tree. It should be sprayed every 7-10 days. The lady who used to live here wants her lace curtains back, is that okay? She was nice, but started to forget things easily so she moved to Pennsylvania with her kids. Do you have kids? No? Well, I see you have a dog! Oh, Scout? How cute. Scout, we have barbecues in the summer and you are invited! Maybe we will invite your owners. We are so glad to have someone in this house finally. Are you LDS? Oh, well if you were I was going to tell you where we have our church meetings. They (pointing to one house) have lived here 20 years and they won't hear you moving tonight, they sleep at the back right of the house. They (pointing to another house) have lived here 44 years and sleep at the back right of their house. They (pointing to yet another house) are usually up late, so late-night moving won't bother them. And we sleep at the back left of our house, so we won't hear you. We are going on a mission for a couple of weeks, so our son who lives in Springfield will be here with his dog while he has some job training. Just so you know. Welcome to the neighborhood!"

So much for figuring things out as we go. I guess it was worth enduring the long speech, she brought us yummy orange rolls. :)