It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

When we moved into our official married couple house just before Christmas, we noticed that our cross-the-street neighbors still had pumpkins on their front porch. Since they have the most beautifully updated house on the block, keep their yard immaculate, were the first to welcome us to the ‘hood, and seem to be awesome people in general, I didn’t think much of it. I figured the pumpkins had been there so long that they didn’t notice them anymore.

One of our other neighbors, however, has apparently been very peeved by this perceived slap in the face to holiday etiquette and mailed an anonymous letter to the pumpkin house’s owners, berating them for lowering property values.

What did the pumpkin house owners do? They got MORE pumpkins and borrowed Halloween decorations from other neighbors, so when I opened our front door to pick up the paper on Saturday morning, I was greeted by smiling Jack o’ Lanterns from across the street. The neighbors were outside at the time, so I asked if it was some St. Patrick’s Day neighborhood tradition, and they explained the whole situation to me.
The simple solution would have been for the pumpkin haters to approach the pumpkin owners and say, “Hey, I noticed you still have those out there — would you mind moving them? I’m thinking of selling my house” or something similar. Ours truly is a neighborhood where people talk to each other out in the street, wave to each other, and it really would not be a big deal to approach the issue casually and in a friendly manner. Sending an anonymous letter is something that initially ticks someone off, then makes them laugh (kind of like some of the comments we get on this here blog.)
I’m just curious to know if you, or any of your neighbors, have engaged in any other oddball turf wars.