We all help each other.  It’s a great network; no one mandates it; no one collects dues.  We do it because we care about each other, and we know and trust each other; know we can count on each other in times of need (and especially in fun times).

One morning, Loud Debbie (I’m Quiet Debi) mowed five yards ’cause she was pissed at someone or something – none of us remember why now.  Oh yeah, and she had a cast on a broken foot – she’d fallen off a curb trying to rescue a crippled bird.  (She didn’t mow my yard since I had mowed it the evening before – darnit).

A single mom with some health issues used  to live on the west side of me, and I mowed her yard for years.  Now Erik and Jenny live there (they’re a 10+ on the neighbor scale), and Erik mows the west side of my yard when he mows his.  He installed a sprinkler system and waters my west yard.  And then helps himself to whatever homebrew I have in the keg in the beer fridge in the garage.

Terry, my neighbor of 26 years across the street, occasionally cooks breakfast for half the block – yum!  He has a goose, and when she’s laying, I get a half dozen eggs every other weekend – best quiche I’ve ever eaten.

Several years ago, late one evening, one of my daughter’s friends parked in my parking place in the driveway – even though he had been told repeatedly NOT to do so.  I was so furious that I threw my truck in reverse and screamed my tires back for several yards.  In my rage, I was oblivious to the fact that I backed into Terry’s yard and mowed down a 6′ tall dwarf yaupon holly (yep, it had grown out of the dwarf category).  Two or three years later a group of my neighbors told me (over several beers) of my criminal act of cutting that plant down in its prime (they were all witness that night across the street in the dark sipping their toddies). Talk about embarrassing.  As a testament to Mother Nature’s superiority to humanity and all our toys, the holly survived, but it’s definitely a dwarf again.  That’s it on the right in the pic – the little ball of green on the spindly trunk.  Oh, shame on me!