I feel sorry for the kids in your story...I hope they grow up more slovenly than their parents (lol).

Fritz we have a neighbor who is a yard perfectionist across the street from us. First let me tell you how we met. We were moving in, he and his wife came over to introduce themselves when another neighbor was already there doing the same. The two of them then started talking with each other complaining about a neighbor who has been airing out her camper in her driveway for days now! This was the first neighborhood we ever lived in that had a homeowners association, and when deciding to move in we read over the contract to make sure it wasn't crazy. I didn't want to live in a neighborhood where I couldn't keep my garage door open for an afternoon for example. So I was immediately put off by these neighbors coming to greet me and instead of chatting nicely we were picking on a neighbor just airing out her camper!!!! Needless to say right then I decided to stay at a polite distance from these people. I later met my neighbor to the right of me and we were fast friends and have the same mentality. Like you we keep our lawn fertilized, I have nice plantings, we keep our lawn mowed. This neighbor across the street does have a beautiful lawn, he mows it at least twice a week. Every weekend he washes all three of his cars then hand dries them. Then he sweeps and washes his driveway!! He works from home, and often in the morning he will come outside with his coffee go out on the street and just gaze at his house. I swear he's looking for some inperfection that he should work on that day! Looking back I'm kind of glad I decided after our original meeting to keep a polite distance from these people, as if we had become fast friends its likely he would have ended up telling me of flaws of my own yard. Like you, I do the basics, but I'm happier to spend my Sunday off with my family rather than washing my driveway!

We've moving soon (only two miles from our current place), and all the threads on various forums about bad neighbors scare me to death! I currently live in a triplex, with a family with three kids and two dogs next door. Common wall is cinderblock, so I can hear the occasional sounds but never unreasonable or at crazy times. Neighbors in the single family home on the other side are the kind who pop over randomly for coffee, we have dinner together occasionally, etc. I can't relate to the bitter property line disputes I read about because we don't even know where the line is and neither of us cares. We use their water to fill our hot tub faster than just using ours, and they put their trash in our can to avoid hauling their out...just little neighborly things like that.

We do have one "outlier" family on the block with dogs that bark for literally hours and a total disregard for others in many ways, but thankfully they're a few houses down from us. We also have a new family who apparently doesn't understand that grass needs to be mowed, but given all the horror stories I've read, that's practically paradise.

I'm so spoiled with our current neighborhood that I'm having all sorts of scary thoughts of ending up with the neighbors from hell in the new place (another town home). We've moving for space and better expressway access, but there's no way to tell the character of the neighborhood because it's brand new construction. I visit every day, and the people I've met so far are all very nice, but I'm still a worry wart. I already know parking will be a challenge because of the way things are set up. We'll have a garage, but it may be hard to get in/out with the way the alley is set up. Oh well, our side yard is extremely private, so as long as we don't have insanely loud crazies next door that pump bass through the common wall, I think we'll be okay.