Rear French Doors
It's extremely hot and humid in Minneapolis. (85+ with humidity to match at 10 PM.)
Last night I looked out my Marvin designer custom-french-doors with the hand-painted periwinkles, onto my elegant gardens and noticed my neighbor, dressed in a windbreaker with a hood and long ankle pants of the same rip-stop-nylon fabric - wearing what appeared to be asbestos gloves, burning unidentifiable objects in his Walmart portable fire pit in his backyard on his bricked crop-circle-style mini-patio not far from his wife's miniature fairie-village situated under their luscious, honeysuckle-laden, white-patinated picket fence.
He must have seen me because he immediately dashed back into the house, only to emerge moments later, looking very cool in a t-shirt and plaid shorts. I poked my head outside while he had disappeared and could smell what seemed to be a strong acrid chemical odor. Something is going on.
To be continued...
Hum ... Rear Window themed a la Alfred Hitchcock? I wonder ... 😮
ReplyDeleteMy cat will play the Grace Kelly role.
DeleteWho plays the part of Raymond, the rascally bunnies who are eating up all of the arugula in your green garden? Gonna be interesting ...
DeleteOh ! Terry ! I am so happy: will you be writing serial snippets of dangerous small neighborhood events ? *phew*. that would be so great. Like Dickens used to do, in the little newspapers....
ReplyDeleteif so, I could stop butting my head against the wall re: the nuttiness everywhere.
I sit in my little house, windows and doors open, and listen to the neighborhood: mostly the little children, having summer fun. I draw or knit. I have a nefarious neighbor, or three. If you need further inspiration, let me know.
I shall do it! Thanks Consolata.
DeleteRear Window??? Gladys Kravitz is more like it!
ReplyDeleteIs this guy married to the broad who is bi-polar???
Perhaps he was using insecticide and was protecting himself. We had an infestation of bag worms(sounds like a personal problem, sir!) and we had to spray the arboviteas and burn the bags. You were supposed to wear protective clothing and my neighbor and her kids wore nylon track suits with a handkerchief over their mouths..they looked like a train robbers out for a run. I wore a t shirt and shorts and was breathing in the stuff as it burned, which didn't concern me until later....
I love Rear Window..but come on..Jimmy, you are going to resist Grace Kelly at her smoking hottest??? And I always wanted a maid like Thelma Ritter...(though she broadened her acting skills here as a home nurse..) sitting there having a brown drink and a ciggie and rolling her eyes.
Maybe he was spraying my ivies?! Yes, he's married to the psycho.
DeleteI'm glad you didn't begin with "It was a dark and stormy night" because that would have undermined the verisimilitude, as it would then have been difficult for your neighbor to burn something. Good start! (Is the woman with the fairy village the same temperamental person you wrote about recently?)
ReplyDeleteOne and the same.
DeleteHonestly: this thing about neighbors and greenery ! I still get upset when I see where my 'neighbor' ( Nefarious !!!!!) cut all branches from my lovely little trees and large dogwood, that over-lapped his 'property line' once I voiced my 'no' vote to giving him a variance at a town council meeting. He just flipped when he did not get his own way, it was and remains a frightening neighbor experience. He continued, for years, to blame me for so many things, that eventually I called the police - when he ranted and called me a b**ch etc who ruined his life.
ReplyDeleteWhen he comes to town (luckily not often anymore - he lives elsewhere and cannot sell his place next to me) I Move My Car to another street, hiding it, and me. This is, btw, a handy solution to a myriad sort of issues, hiding out. People think that if Your Car is at a place, You must be there. At one time he was a Methodist minister...in Minnesota. *sigh*.
what can I say ? People just get....crazy.
Sounds like a jerk. My neighbors complained that my lilacs touched their garage roof and over hang the alley - so I keep them trimmed. No overhang-no touch.
ReplyDeleteAhh...but Terry, if not for this stressful experience...I would never have begun to hide my car a few streets over....in front of a synagogue, always around 1-3 a.m.: whence I began to come upon "wild" (townies) rabbits: opossums: night-owl cats: owls: once, at 4 am, I spied a small doe, calmly walking away from the Susquehanna River, in the middle of an alley...
ReplyDeleteI feel such sadness for God's wild-er creatures. lost in the midst of our destructions of habitat: crazy drugs in the water: et al.
also: I love the old, dilapidated synagogue, I finally got to step inside recently...so lovely....
No one is about at that hour. I love it. I can visit Our Lady of Grace, just up the street, and leave flowers.
See, how God makes new even onslaughts from wicked people -
and in my loneliness and isolation here, now I can spot others like me, who before would have been hidden from my sight.
I lurve you consolata! Do you want me to come and beat that guy up for you? Terry will have my back!
ReplyDeleteMack: God was listening, too: while watering my parched myrtle/periwinkle/vinca minor tonight (arguments abound over its naming) a nice man came up to me, and shook my hand: the mean man had just driven him north to live in his empty house....and he is a ....newly revert Catholic ! I have a Catholic neighbor ! a 'reformed' gay man: ( what IS the term ? am I being awkwardly non-pc ?) I had to sit on my stoop in shock. We had a spiritually sympatico chat. Oh ! Oh ! I know: You & Terry put the bug in God's ear, didn't you ? Thanks !
ReplyDeleteI am off, now, at 1:50 am for my nighthawk wanderings. I will bring special flowers for the little statue of Our Lady. No doubt the rabbits lie in wait....
This post made my day...looking for the Kleenex now..,
Delete