a vacant house

There’s a house across that street that is look­ing like it’s turn­ing into a vic­tim of the cur­rent mort­gage fiasco. The owner bought at the top of the home val­u­a­tions and prob­a­bly expected prices to keep growing.

House for sale

House for sale

When no one had seen the main owner for weeks we were start­ing to think that things weren’t quite right over there. A month ago a mort­gage broker’s sign appeared in front of the house, then some­one with the city came by to shut off the water. See­ing all this hap­pen­ing con­firmed our worst fears.

Since life here in the desert can’t exist with­out sup­ple­men­tal water, the last time a house sat vacant on our street one of the neigh­bors kept it watered while another mowed the lawn. With that sit­u­a­tion fresh in John’s mem­ory, he cor­nered the neigh­bor across the street and struck a deal. Between the two of them they’d tend the house until a new owner could move in, doing what they can to keep up the neighborhood.

Parking strip, mowed

Park­ing strip, mowed

At some point the water got restored to the house, and so the yard was get­ting water. But no one was tak­ing care of the mowing.

Enter John and the neigh­bor. Now, when­ever one of them has a mower out, the park­ing strip along the side­walk gets a quick haircut.

Gone to seed

Gone to seed

Unfor­tu­nately, the yard inside the gates is going feral, but at least we can’t see it so eas­ily. This was difficult-to-maintain land­scap­ing put in by non-gardeners and only tended by hired help. Once the gar­den­ers left, entropy started to claim the inner yard. (John’s and the neighbor’s com­mit­ment to keep­ing up the neigh­bor­hood for free go only so far. And by now you may gather my gen­eral shrill atti­tude towards main­tain­ing expan­sive lawns in the desert…)


The last word is that the house has been sold. Who bought it, when they’ll move it, who they are–all that’s still the grand mys­tery that these trans­ac­tions so often are. These deals can fall through any time.

After you live in a neigh­bor­hood for a while you get to expe­ri­ence good neigh­bors and neigh­bors from the other side of hell. The last ones in this house were some of the good ones–personable, friendly, inter­est­ing and tol­er­ant, and we’re sad to see them go. As we head in for another round in this game of new neigh­bor roulette, we’re keep­ing our fin­gers crossed for rea­son­able ones again.

July 26 2008 05:09 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • •

One Response to “a vacant house”

  1. Greg on 27 Jul 2008 at 9:36 am #

    Wish­ing you green-loving neigh­bors with good hear­ing(one of ours is deaf–the other day I learned a great new way to cook arti­chokes while I was water­ing the garden…from HER tele­vi­sion, inside, across the street!).

    Good of you guys to take care of what you can for the new peo­ple. Per­haps t’will make them feel wel­comed and grateful!

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