Just Your Everyday Summer Protest

As most of you know we live in the house I grew up in. When my parents owned it they bought the lot behind our house and landscaped it so that it we had a beautiful big backyard. When we bought the house from my parents 5 years ago my Dad sold that back lot to some friends who were building a home on the lot next to our back lot. The way they built their home left little to no yard on their lot, so they bought our back lot as a nice side yard. They also agreed to give us access and kindly honored their word. A few years ago they sold their home to a really nice young family who we really enjoy and has continued the kindness by allowing us access to their yard and often even mows our little backyard. They have decided to put a pool in their yard and therefore need to fence in their yard. I can't tell you how sad this makes me. Because the lot is sort of terraced and we're at the bottom, we'll still have a lovely view of our mountains, but we will now have an ordinary little yard. My kids have loved running up and down the little hills and we all the love the big tree. Very sad.

We broke the news to our kids the other night when they saw someone out there measuring for the fence and pool. They were devastated. They've always felt a sense of ownership and been a little bugged with our neighbors' presuming to use their yard. After all, "It's ours too, Grandma planted all those plants and flowers!" You can imagine their feelings regarding this latest affront. There were a lot of tears and angry resentful words, but the drama has died down in the last few days and I haven't heard them talk about it.

Today Anna's friend was over and they were discussing ideas of what they should do. Next thing I knew they announced they were going out back. I was sitting at the computer when I heard them chanting loudly. I went out to see what all the commotion was about and this is what I saw:

You can't tell from the picture, but the signs say, "No more fence!" I felt a little conflicted about what to do because on the one hand it was dang cute and I was kind of proud of their civil little protest (and frankly, I share their dislike of the impending fence), but I didn't want to create any bad blood with our neighbors. It didn't look like they were home, so I just told the kids to please not be quite as loud and decided to let them have this harmless little protest. Then they came in asking for sidewalk chalk. I assumed they were going to write more protests on our patio which would never be seen by our neighbors. When I checked on them a few minutes later I realized they had written their anti-fence messages on the neighbors' driveway. At that point, I told them they had gone too far and needed to quickly wash off their message and bring their signs in. Anna said, "Mom, we're just trying to express our offence of them doing this!" I explained that even though we are all upset, they have every right to do this and that we needed to be good neighbors. They grudgingly washed off the driveway off, gathered their signs and came in for a Popsicle.