Good fences make good neighbors...

It was late last winter when I first met the wife of the couple who bought the house next to the microwave tower. This fence separates their property from the church yard. They are probably our closest neighbors on this side of the highway as the crow...
err... vulture flies.
No.... no.... turn to your right... you're headed in the wrong direction. Uhhh... on second thought, let's don't follow the vultures. At least 5 more vultures showed up, and they all swirled around for a few minutes. I couldn't get myself arranged fast enough to take a photo of them all before they floated away off over the woods in a large swirl.
And there would be the straight flight path from the microwave tower to the telephone pole by our back porch. At any rate, moving right along. Our son found their dog's collar in the cleared area (well, it used to be the cleared area) under the power lines that are strung across our field, also visible in the above photo. The dog had likely gotten caught on some brush, jerked to free itself, and the collar broke. The tag announced that this was Blackie, an appropriate name for a black Lab. I called the phone number that was engraved on the tag and Blackie's person, a woman in her 70s (I'm guessing), came and picked it up. She seemed nice, and I thought I should try to get to know her better. But I didn't follow through with that. I did get to know Blackie a bit better, however. He chased my car down the road one day not too long after he got his collar back.

The man came into the church a couple of weeks ago during Sunday school and said he was planning on redoing the fence line. He wondered if we (the church) would mind if he cleared the trees and brush away from the fence? We (the church) said we didn't mind. Well, I minded, but I didn't say anything.

Richard and I didn't realize that they also own the land that borders our field. Most of the fence was either on the ground or sagging badly because of rotted fence posts, so he hired some guys to put in a new fence. For about 2 weeks off and on, there was a lot of ...
rummmmmm.... RUMMMMMM.... rummmmmmmm... RUUMMMMMM from the chain saws... and clanging.... and banging as they drove the metal posts.

And then once that commotion died down, we got to smell lots of smoke as large piles of downed trees and brush were being burned...

and burned.

And a few days ago she knocked on our door and said she was very sorry, but the guys who set the fence discovered they had made a mistake. She said her husband had called out a surveyor to confirm the property line and they were 13 feet across the line on our land. So, they redid the fence, and more banging and clanging commenced. Had they not told us, we probably never would have realized the mistake, at least until we went to sell the land.
Our pond is somewhere on the other side of those trees. And I was wondering if they had done something to it.

We were now rather anxious to see the fence line, so Richard fought his way through the brush to the bridge over the wet weather creek, but was stopped by the poison ivy, which he is horribly allergic too. Yep, there is a bridge there, and if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see it.And the other path I used to take to get to the pond when our son was younger (note the rusting hulk of our old satellite dish) is impassable without some serious trailblazing activities.

However, yesterday morning I put our son to work clearing the brush and lo and behold, a bridge.

Once the poison ivy dies back, maybe we can fire up the gasoline-powered brush cutter and get out to the pond and see for ourselves. I remain curious to see whether our new neighbors are going to ask us to pay for half the cost of putting up the fence.