The barriers, both natural and man-made, that have kept us from seeing our neighbors are almost all down.
First we dealt with the natural barriers of trees and overgrown shrubs that limited our views west.
The tree service trimmed everything down and pulled as much of the stumps they could.
The view below shows the deck halved in size and grass seeded where deck once was. The foreground is where a mass of shrubs lived.
We've had that graded along with the mound beyond the deck and new grass seeded.
Looking the opposite direction and blocking our views of the neighborhood was this massive fence.
To the right was another even longer fence.
New Hampshire folk are frugal people and when we advertised in our local newsletter that the wood was for the taking if the person took down the fence, our neighbor up the road called to say he wanted it. He need old wood to fill the gaps in his old barn and other projects. Hooray!
He tackled the front fence first. Now that it's gone, we can see our neighbors across the way.
He started on the long fence and is taking it down too.
With the fences disappearing neighbors are saying hello and chatting even more. Those fences were barriers to meeting people because the fences said "Private - Stay Out!" without even having a printed sign.