Living on a corner has it's advantages and disadvantages.
If my children went to public school, an advantage would have been that the elementary bus stop is right in front of our house. It would be good on those cold or rainy mornings when you could wait inside until you saw the bus coming down the road.
Since we home school, this advantage does nothing for us.
It's actually a disadvantage due to the fact that we get lots of trash left in our yard and kids are constantly climbing on the trees. Well, I think that's pretty rude to allow your children to climb, pull leaves, and possibly damage someones personal property just because it is at the bus stop- which technically the road is the bus stop, not my yard.
One of my little magnolia trees just isn't handling the abuse well.
So, instead of going out there early one morning and discussing this problem face to face with our neighbors, we decided to nicely put out little signs that say "Please Keep Off Trees Thanks"
I wasn't sure what kind of reaction this would get, but get a reaction, we did.
Rewind back to yesterday...
The girls made the signs and Emily went out and hung them up in 2 trees during her lunch break.
When we were leaving to run our errands, I saw them from the street view and started to laugh. They are placed so every car and walker that came by could clearly see them. They looked like the signs were meant for the squirrels or birds.
Now we will be known as the crazy neighbor with the signs in their trees.
Now this morning...
I woke the girls up early and from an upstairs window, we watched the reaction of the kids at the bus stop. Two boys, one school age and his younger brother, ran towards the tree and froze. The older one read the sign and just froze. The younger one ended up throwing a fit, but that may have been from the fact that his dad made him get in the stroller.
It worked!!! Success.
As we are getting breakfast ready, I could see the dad's face clearly and recognition hit me.
Yesterday afternoon, we had a man come to our front door. We didn't answer it, we never do. However, he knew we were home. How could he not? Our front door is glass plus we have 2 side lights, and the girls were in plain view. It was definitely the dad who came to our door yesterday.
Now I wish I had answered my door. Did he stop by out of guilt knowing it was put there for the benefit of his children? Was he going to apologize? Was he going to rail at me? I do not know.
I saw him come back, pushing the stroller and take a couple of pictures of the above tree. Was he laughing or agitated, I couldn't tell.
So, the girls and I start school at the table and go on with our day. Jay goes to work, or so I thought until I get a text from him saying "Look out front! Police!" There were 3 police cars in front of our next door neighbor's house, just standing there talking.
Jay gave me a hard time saying that they were there discussing my keep off the trees signs.
I don't think so, but it was an interesting start to our day.
