OT - Neighbor Issues

caliking

Nobody wins in neighbor disputes. Unless one of you is moving shortly, in which case there is a LONG list of passive aggressive things you can resort to. 

UplandEgger

Ignore it, nothing you can do about her and nothing she can do about you except wind you up. 

Leaf blowers are annoying but they’re a necessary evil living in established neighborhoods with yards of any size.

GrateEggspectations

Make no mistake - This is not about you nor your activities. You are, in this instance, simply an outlet. Recognizing this is the first empowering step to letting it go. 

First, were she to take a step back and evaluate what you’re doing objectively, she would realize that you’re taking care of your property. Not only are you preserving the aesthetics of the neighbourhood, but extrapolating upon this act, you’re probably also a neighbour who is likely to take good care of the property in other respects, such as home maintenance, which helps keep property values up. 

You couldn’t possibly have known about her headache (and likely not about her family gathering - which may or may not have violated Covid protocol, depending on the group size and your jurisdiction), so her using these as a basis to guilt trip you about your leaf blowing is irrational and illogical. Besides, even were you to have known, she has no basis upon which to expect accommodation on either front. 

She is struggling with something, but it’s not your leaf blowing. There’s no fix to this situation because this situation is not the problem. You handled the exchange as politely and diplomatically as you could, even asking permission to finish (which was kind of you, but established her authority to dictate that you only had two minutes left).

Let it go and she will come to her senses. If not now, then years from now, when she realizes she was an unhappy person who used trivial issues to project repressed anger about other issues in her life.

Kill her with kindness - sounds like she could use it, if only to teach her by example in being the bigger person. Refraining from imitation truly is the best revenge. 

Enjoy your leaf-free yard, and may the rest blow away like a leaf in the wind. 

(Years ago when I was a younger lad, I spent one unhappy year in a semi-detached home, the other half of which was inhabited by a curmudgeonly woman and her equally-curmudgeonly daughter. When we first moved in, I introduced myself with a smile while simultaneously offering to trim some of my tree branches overhanging her property. She would not shake my hand nor introduce herself. From that moment, everything we did was a problem for my new neighbour - from the brief hammering of hanging paintings, to our lighting and the sound of our soft music. The interactions detracted from our enjoyment of the home significantly enough that we listed the place for sale after only one year and we were willing to take a loss to get out. We then learned from neighbours that she took issue with all former residents of the home, of which there had been many for short-term periods, which was a big hint in and of itself. The problem was not us. After we sold - luckily, at a small profit - we learned that the new owners planned to open a daycare in their home, which can only have caused our former neighbour a great deal of upset. Karma is a b!tch.)