Over the Fence

I found this hanging on the fence the other day. Couldn't miss it against the brown vine leaves.

We are so fortunate to have moved in next to very nice neighbors. We share a back fence with Joan and Frank. It's the vine covered coyote fence that runs the whole length of our shared lot line and it affords privacy -- our back deck is just feet from their front door and their bathroom window is positioned right in line with our kitchen door.

But the fence hides all, completely. We hear them, they hear us, we exchange friendly yoo hoos but we can't ever see them. And we can't get to them -- we actually have to walk all the way around the block and up one street to reach the front of their house. It's our back lots that abut.

So we use the fence. Joan put a container of homemade applesauce in a bag and hung it over the fence when my tooth hurt. I put a book she loaned me in the bag and left it hanging on her side. For two years now we have been exchanging stuff over the fence -- not often, just every once in a while.

Today the bag was there hanging on our side and in it was a cartoon clipped from the paper and a pile of aspen leaves in the bottom of the bag.

The comic is by Ricardo Cate, a Native American cartoonist featured in our paper. He's funny, riffing on Indian stereotypes and poking fun at serious issues by making you laugh. His syndicated comic is called Without Reservations.

Mostly, though it's just humor about baffled people living a normal, baffled life. Here's what the cartoon was -- a happy leaf raker unaware his neighbor was dumping leaves over their shared fence.

Ha! It's leaves from the trees on Frank's side of the fence that Jim has to rake up and ours blow over the fence to his yard when the wind is from the north and they have an ongoing thing about it in fall.

Jim put the remainder of some stale pistachios in the turquoise bag with a note that said "Nuts" and hung it on Frank's side.

I may have to put a stop to this.