Our first complaint from the neighbors

I suppose it's bound to happen. You want to make changes that are better for the environment, and for some reason it ruffles the feathers of the neighbors.

My father-in-law installed two rain barrels, one on each side of my house, this weekend. Last night, we found an index card with our neighbor's phone number on it and a "please call me" note stuck in our front door.

So we called. He said our laundry line and our rain barrels were "unsightly and disturbing all of the neighbors."

Needless to say, we were furious.

The laundry line is in the backyard. This neighbor is the only one who can see it, and only from his back upstairs window.
The rain barrels are hidden behind trees and cannot be seen from the street. They are also smaller and less offensive than our trash cans, which sit right outside with them. (All of our neighbors keep the trash cans outside.)

We are disappointed, to say the least. We don't want problems with our neighbors. We have good relationships with most of them. The hubby plays bridge with one older woman across the street, another watches the house while we are out of town, and another comes over to share the numbers for plumbers, electricians, and other handy people, or to chat about their grandchildren.

This neighbor in particular has always been frosty to us, so I shouldn't be surprised.

But as much as I like being nice to the neighbors, we are standing our ground. The rain barrels will stay up and our laundry will dry outside. I just have my fingers crossed that this is not the first in a long string of futile battles over the "green" ranch project