Good Fences

What do we owe our neighbors - those with whom we share fences? What is the right mix of individuality and conformity? Is there even such a thing?
In my backyard there are 'weeds'. The 'weeds' are there because I love them. I have selected some of these plants, allowing them to group themselves in the landscape as cultivars. This act makes them 'not weeds', since a weed is a plant growing where it is not wanted. One such plant is the morning glory or moon flower. It bears a carpet of delicate pink trumpet flowers that for me is a source of pure joy. But it climbs. My neighbor on the left and I share a chain link fence on which these vines take support. But in this instance, this fence is not able to be shared - it either needs to be mine or hers. She wants a pristine clean fence with nothing growing on it -- and I would like the vines to take support and bloom there. I have made some provisions for the vine within my yard - with grids and shepherd's hooks, but ultimately these are limiting. The plant coils on itself and fails to travel the required distance in order to produce flowers. Vines must produce a certain number of nodes to stimulate budding - that's just how it is. Yesterday I went to clean up the tomato patch and noticed that the flowering vines I was training onto my birdhouse pole - my birdhouse pole in my yard - were dead. She must have tried to clean the fence and in the process, snipped the stems supporting the shoots that were winding their way up to the birdhouse. I felt the tears well up, then the anger - and then set about clearing off all the wilted shoots. By their appearance, they had been snipped less than a hour before because they were flaccid, but not yet shriveled. I finished the job, cutting down all the remaining vines and the Fence is now clean. I have been trying to transplant the vine to another area of the yard - and in a few weeks will see how successful I have been.


My neighbor on the right - the vegetable gardener, is afraid of weeds since they might harbor snakes. She is also afraid of big trees that might fall on her house and she is deathly afraid of thunder and lightening which I also love, and thankfully have no control over.
To pacify her - three large pines have been cut down in the area bordering her house and mine, and from time to time she wags her finger at the plants I am cultivating on my side of the chain link fence - talking about snakes. I have never seen a snake in my yard ever. I don't think earthworms qualify.

I am thankful for my back fence neighbor who shares my sensibility - gifting me with an unruly tangle of honeysuckle, clematis and rose vines which tumble over my fence and into my life. My vine-phobic neighbors look very sternly on that fence, but can do nothing about it.

I know that my anger and sadness over the morning glory vines have less to do with the vine and more to do with my own sense of being limited and confined in order to placate and soothe a variety of concerns in my life - some of them originating even in myself, and I am awakened to the outrage and despair of certain segments of the population whose self expression either offends or scares other people. I am still trying to figure out how far I should extend myself be neighborly, or more correctly, how much I should contain myself. What I know for sure is that my spirit soars in a thunderstorm - where not even the idea of fences makes sense.