It's late Sunday night, already dark, on the day of our big open house. I'm out in the yard, picking up cans and bottles, gathering paper plates full of half-eaten hot dogs and watermelon rinds. Suddenly there's an old man standing next to me.

"Hello," he says, his voice quiet, hesitant. "I'm Tom." He extends his hand, and I shake it. "I'm your neighbor," he says.

We've been meaning to introduce ourselves to Tom, but we've never seen him outside. I give him my name, and apologize for the noise and the mess during the afternoon. "Oh, it's no problem," he says.

For twenty minutes, we stand on the walk and chat about the history of our place (he had a chance to buy our lot for $5,000 in 1959) and his (he chose his lot instead because ours was too run-down). I tell him we're going on vacation, but that when we get back I'm taking down the three volunteer locusts, and later in the fall we'll fill the void with fruit trees. He seems pleased.

"Do you want any roses?" I ask, indicating those that we're giving away. He doesn't. His wife is allergic to them. We chat a little more and then he disappears into the night.

It's Sunday morning, and Kris is pruning the roses. Tom comes over to say "hello" to her. He explains that he and his wife will be building a new house on their property, in a spot that lies much closer to us, and he hopes we don't mind. We don't mind. (Our philosophy is: it's your property, you can do whatever the hell you want. Of course, the yard full of Lincoln Continentals (eight of them?) down the road isn't what we'd prefer our neighbors do, but we don't begrudge them their right to do it.)

He points out the hawthorn tree at the edge our driveway. "We need to take that out," he says. "The utility pole needs to go there. I hope you don't mind; it's on county property." Kris doesn't mind.

She tells me later, and I don't mind either.

On Monday afternoon, though, I do mind. I've thought more about it, and the hawthorn is a nice, old tree, one perfectly placed to screen a couple of other neighbor houses. (When I cut down the locusts, I temporarily removed additional screening.)

"Maybe I won't mind so much if we let that volunteer filbert grow. It screens the same spot," I tell Kris, but she won't have it. We already have two filberts, and she doesn't want a third.

I'm sulky. I go outside to process another vanload of stuff from mom's garage. (Only one load left now!) I look at the hawthorn. It's definitely on our side of the property line, but I don't want to make a fuss. Then I notice that it extends out into the street-area right-of-way. That must be what Tom means by county property.

Just then Tom ambles up the driveway. "Hello," he says in his quiet voice. "Say, we've got some blueberries that we're going to have to tear out. If you dig 'em, you can have 'em."

Blueberries! I love blueberries! I've already been planning a blueberry patch on the south side of our lot. "Come on," he says. "I'll show you what I've got."

What he's got is a patch of eight to twelve blueberry plants, very mature (taller than I am, and wide). They look like they're in great shape. "They're under landscape fabric," says Roberta, Tom's wife. "They might be difficult to dig."

"Do you want some grapes?" she adds.

Grapes! I love grapes! I've wanted grapes, have been working on Kris about them, and she's beginning to acquiesce. Roberta leads me to the grape arbor. These plants are mature, too. Can they be transplanted? I wonder.

"We've got Concords and Interlaken and..." Roberta begins, but she's interrupted by a sudden shower. The three of us smile at each other as our hair is matted by the rain, our clothes begin to wet. Roberta names the other varieties. Then she points out an espaliered apple. "If you could dig that, you could have it, too," she says.

Tom and Roberta lead me to sample the grapes. It's raining harder now. Roberta hands me a bunch of Interlaken, a small, round green grape, sweet and seedless. We're soaked, and even though all three of us are native Oregonians, we've had enough of the rain. We dash for cover beneath the kiwi trellis. It's not much cover.

I'm nervous about it, but I mention the hawthorn. "If there's any way to keep it, even if you have to hack off one side of it, that'd be great," I say. Tom and Roberta understand, but they don't know if it's possible.

And, to tell the truth, I don't much longer care. They've stood with me, out in the rain, and offered to give me blueberry and grape plants. They've shared the history of their place and ours. Yes, I'd like to keep the hawthorn, but it's not the most important thing in the world.

Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Good neighbors make good neighbors, too.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2003 — The Doldrums   In which I haven't much to say.