Noisy Neighbours

Yes I think you are being unreasonable,Caramel.
Do you expect your neighbours to let you know when they are cutting their lawn in case you want to sit in your garden?
Do you let your neighbours know if you are going to cut your lawn?
Why should it upset you anyway?

Reading the different comments, I am so pleased I live where I do, with nice neighbours either side and opposite.

Sorry if this sounds smug. Just makes me thankful really.

I suppose that there's far more potential for neighbours to get on each other's nerves - with lockdown.

Here, it's constant DIY, building work, new garage and drive installation - and lots of screaming kids.

I wouldn't complain about gardening, and it wouldn't occur to me to delay lawn mowing, just because the people next door are sitting outside.

We have a next door neighbour who thinks it is fine to open her back door and back windows (the design of the houses means her back door and windows very close to ours) and to then embark on very loud phone conversations and to play music so loud that even if we close our back door and windows we cannot hear our radio or television. Sometimes she goes into her garden (the gardens are small) and more very loud phone conversations and very loud music. To request she is quieter would only meet with shouting and aggression. Added to this there is a house in a parallel street which regularly has parties that begin on a Saturday afternoon and go on until Sunday morning and the music, shouting, etc which goes on is so loud it can be heard in neighbouring streets. Lockdown meant this didn't happen for a few weekends but has started up again the past two weekends. We go out of our way to be quiet neighbours, as do all our other neighbours, but our next door neighbour really is a nightmare because of the noise and her overall attitude. On one occasion my husband was unable to trim the top of our front garden hedge because of a shoulder injury and she put a note in the door threatening to report us to the council (it's not a council property) or to come into our garden to rip up the hedge and dump it on our doorstep. We paid someone to come and cut in back but would have done so as soon as my husband's shoulder recovered anyway. Her own front garden is a complete tip ! We think about moving.....

It's not unreasonable to feel annoyed if you wanted peace and got noise. It must have been very disappointing as you didn't get what you were looking forward to - life is a bummer and all that... But then I am sorry to say neither was it unreasonable of your neighbor to have planned to mow the lawn at that exact time too. Presumably they had no advance notice that you'd be in your quiet outdoor time and didn't know till they'd already planned their mowing session. I am afraid this is the sort of conflict inherent in living close to neighbors.

I think many people would say that is a bit selfish of you.

Better they keep their garden nice than let it get overgrown and untidy.

Wow you think thats bad try having students next door it has got so bad at times that I ended up with health problems and the land lady just says she doen't care
More lawsare needed to protect residents from people turning good houses into student lets'

Really?
Can't believe that you even bothered to post this tbh - unless you were hoping that maybe a lot of people would agree with you!
Sorry, but I can see no problem with neighbours mowing lawns etc on a Bank Holiday. It's annoying if you are sitting outside to some extent but unless you know that they were deliberately doing it to annoy, you really can't complain.
Try living between a family of 4 smokers that don't smoke inside the house and can light up at any time of the day or even night (yes really) and someone that once it gets past 8.30 am , seems to have a compulsion to use a circular saw, drill, sander etc seven days a week - now that's annoying!

I don't understand what the problem is. People need to now their lawns and strim them. You cant now a lawn when it's wet or damp so obviously people will do that in sunny day weather. I do think you are moaning about nothing.

Of course they didnt do this to annoy you.
Im blaming this on the lock down ,we are all more sensitive at the moment .
Chill.

Only want to say that I agree with others on here and that Yes, YABU. Maybe you weren't feeling very well when you made your post caramel and feel better now. Hope so!
Personally, I love the sound of a mower and you can't beat the gorgeous smell of newly mown grass.

Your very lucky to have a garden to sit in. There are thousands who will swap with you, regardless of the mowing and strimming, it puzzles me how self absorbed people are. Mowing the lawn is perfectly acceptable, Life's about choice, move if you don't like it! Some don't have the option.

I think the issue here is nobody has any respect for people’s space and lives. I unfortunately live next to a screaming loud pain in the butt who has been partying every night since the lock down high and drugs and the more he drinks he thinks he is on the very loud version of Britain’s got talent with his mates joining in sounding like a pack of wolves with a sound bar in the garden to add it turned up full blast!!! I think it’s gone to the point that anything he does now irritates me although it’s annoying for you I wish it was only the grass he was cutting oh and to top it all off his kid try’s to scream a conversation over the loud music and talking oh and least we forget the attempted singing!!!

They can’t have been mowing all day, is the garden the size of a park? It’s a little normal every day noise for a limited time. If it was a dog barking all day, exceptionally loud music every day etc. that’s a different thing. We all have to get along or at least try to. Maybe you were just feeling exceptionally sensitive during these difficult times...try and just forget about it.

My neighbours continue to have extended family & their friends in their back garden. Smoking (can get high on the fumes sometimes), BBQ, drinking, shouting, very loud music hence the shouting, dogs barking, children shouting & screaming. Just an ordinary day here now. No way I can escape & cannot complain being old, disabled & alone. So turn my music up & deafen my poor cat. Karma will get them one day, I hope! Batteries run out? BBQ dies. Never mind it will be winter again soon ?

Yes you are being unreasonable. The coronavirus doesn't stop the grass growing. If they had an overgrown garden no doubt you would be moaning about that! Sorry if you think I am being harsh but we are both key workers and have to do the garden when we can. I didn't have the luxury of being off on the bank holiday much as I would have liked to.

I think mowing and strimming, etc. are reasonable activities. Anyone who has a garden needs to do that.

I wouldn't dream of moaning about neighbours looking after their garden. Its par for the course if you live next to someone. Our neighbours have no grandchildren but tolerate the noise ours make when they visit. They even dig out toys that belonged to their now adult children. Be kind, live and let live.

Not a well thought out comment.

It was only cutting the lawn and it doesn't last long at the end of the day so don't think unreasonable at all. I don't go and ask my neighbours if they mind when I cut the lawn and wouldn't expect them to ask me when they cut. I would far rather a neighbour cut their lawn instead of leaving and becoming a jungle.

However, I spent a lot of time in Germany and when I was there the local council allocated a set time on a set day for people to cut the lawn and you weren't allowed to do it on other days or you were fined. What happened when it rained on allocated day I can't remember!

I know mowers and strimmers can be noisy (especially petrol ones), but, unless your neighbours have a stonking great field to mow, it's not going to last too long, is it? There has to be a little give and take, so yes, I think YABU over this. If your neighbours were brawling, swearing, holding parties with music bearing out for hours on end, then you'd have good reason to be upset, but they weren't, were they? What are they like generally?

Shysal what would you prefer an overgrown garden or a neighbour who looks after her garden?

Sometimes I wish people would cut people some slack, I have neighbours who have constantly complained about my garden: slightly overgrown although I was doing What I could to maintain it whilst working 6 days a week. Complaint was foxes living in my garden had attacked there cats and I'm unapproachable! That is why I let them in to look for said cat. Now they have hacked 3 trees down when they only needed to cut down 2 of them. People only care about themselves!! Now having the time I'm revamping it but I need a bit of music to go with that!!

I would think many of you should thank your lucky stars that you don't live next door to whinging neighbours.

Woodburners are the bane of my life when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I sit sneezing my head off and end up totally exhausted with a runny nose and sore eyes and feel unwell too. The smoke/fumes seep into every nook and cranny. I have to endure it ! No choice.

The above is far worse than any noise, especially mowing which I love the smell, a far cry from those horrible chimneys.

Some of the gardens round us have huge lawns so mowing can take all day! You just have to put up with it. Wish that firms could invent a quiet or even silent mower! (Ditto hairdryers while we're about it.)