The sounds of Summer!

Weekends are the only time I and DH get to do anything in the garden as we work Monday-Friday. We have no choice but to cut the lawn on a Saturday or Sunday. No strimmer or other power tools mind you.

My neighbours all live in "paved paradises" with not an inch of soil or green in view.

I sympathise totally. On Friday afternoon I was lying on sunbed toasting away nicely with my Kindle & a cool drink when my next door neighbour's gardener turned up with his unbelievably noisy petrol strimmer & proceeded to cut the hedge between us & then went on to use it on their bushes & even the flaming lawn! 2 1/2 hours later I got peace &quiet again.
I accept noise at weekends as everyone at work has to get things done then but I do hate it during the week.
The gardener is very annoying at best of times as he will try & engage me in conversation if I am out there THROUGH THE HEDGE. I totally ignore him & have asked them to tell him to leave me alone but he is very odd. I see no reason why I should make conversation with a total stranger when I am relaxing in my own space.
DH has rigged up a screen now between our patio & theirs so he cannot see through the hedge anymore.
I would be livid if my gardener behaved like that & upset my neighbours (but then mine is a lovely girl!)
It is quiet out there now so I should get a peaceful afternoon today.

I grew up in Germany, no washing on the line on Sunday, no annoying noise.

I echo all that has been said here but my worst pet hate is Barbecues and the smoke that gets on my chest and has me almost in tears, also those little garden fire things that are lit and give off smoke and fumes. Last bank holiday weekend neighbours lit one when it was so hot late afternoon, we honestly though there had been a fire when smoke billowed into our garden, when it had calmed down they sat round it most of the evening, it was so hot but we had to close our windows put all the fans on, so much for enjoying an exceptional warm Spring evening.

Humptydumty
Know what you mean. New neighbours moved in a few doors away last summer and decided to mow the lawn at 6am on a Sunday morning it didn't go down well I thought the neighbours including the ones over the back were going to linch him!! ? He didn't repeat that mistake again.

These are all Boys Toys, Phoenix. According to twenty-first century Caveman philosophy, if something is worth doing then it's worth being Bluddy Noisy about it!

This is the suburban gardening equivalent of Formula 1 Grand Prix stuff - guys roar up and down the lawn on sit-on mowers, wield strimmers and electric hedge trimmers like Excalibur and blast the driveway with the power washer as if they were using a flame-thrower.

The sounds of summer are Godawful mostly at the weekend - it's as if these guys cannot sit still if they've got access to a shed full of noisy gadgets. D'you reckon it might be some sort of addiction, a bit like computer gaming?

I'd like to try (and get away with) hacking through their testosterone levels with a strimmer......

We have the noise of visitors on the beach and the prom, although as we're set back and higher than the prom itself, it's not too bad.
However, the young man two doors away has ripped all the turf out of their garden and is laying flags all over the whole thing. He spent from 9-20 yesterday morning using a 'plate compactor' or 'whacker' flattening the hardcore he had put down on Saturday afternoon.
It's a good thing he knows me quite well, so didn't take offence when at 3-30 (after 6 hours of listening to the noise from his garden) I went and had a word about the noise. Actually I told him that if he didn't turn the 'whacker' off, I was going to bury him under his new patio,

Oh to have a garden to sit in again. I so miss having a garden I would put up with other noises.
I have had my guest house for nearly 11 years now. I make the frontage very pretty with lots of pots and baskets and a bench, but it is more for our guests to use (and often strangers passing by who think it’s a public bench).
DH and I do sit on it occasionally but but you are very much in view and often get comments like good life you have (when we have just done breakfast for 12 and cleaned or changed 7 bedrooms)
We have a bit of a space at the back but it is always cold as the house is south facing.

I understand your chagrin but do try to be grateful that people are caring for their gardens. I have neighbours who don't and the sharing of their weeds and unkempt overgrowth is hard work and somewhat aggravating. I'd settle for the noise any day.

apparently our new strimmer is the best thing since sliced bread, but I think he can forget the Poldark look

I agree with you completely, but this is the price we pay for " the simple life". Years ago it was usual to hear the old fashioned push lawn mower... not a nuisance, people clipping their hedges with garden shears. As for power washers, anything needing cleaning then was done manually ..washing the car..swilling the garden path etc. I still enjoy doing some of these things the old fashioned way. Our greatest bugbear of all, more in the autumn is the leaf blowers, worse things ever invented...talk about boys and their toys...although our local council are equally guilty for this, and at the first fall of a leaf it seems out they come one and all... getting quite carried away....bring back the broom and shovels . Doing a lot of these things the old fashioned way was much better for us health-wise...burned up lots of calories as well.

It could be worse, folks - there are people who get up at 6 in the morning and take the opportunity to cut the grass!

We live next to a fairly busy road so that can be a bit off putting for sitting in the garden. But the worst thing is the pub with a beer garden over the road! All summer and quite a lot of the winter the noise at weekends in particular is horrendous. Why do people feel the need to shout at their mates sitting next to them (usually obscenities)? We knew the pub was there when we moved in but they have done up the garden area, got an extended licence for the weekends and set out to attract the "younger crowd" with bands, cheap booze etc. The L.A. flats where we live are for over 60's (not sheltered) and we have communal gardens that we cant really use in the summer. And dont get me started on being able to have the windows open when its warm!

It's reasonably quiet here when we sit in the garden. We hear ducks and geese from the canal, which is rather lovely.

Our area is getting more poncey by the minute, not a good thing, but the advantage is that many of our neighbours have gardeners so they don't make a noise with power tools at the weekend.

I agree about the nuisance of Sunday afternoon noise but I suppose many hard working people have a lie-in on Sunday morning.
The noise that really gets me in summer is the pounding music blasting through open car windows!

While|I realise that people who work have to cut their lawns at the weekend and at the evening I rather thought that the power tool, the noise of which we had to sit through all Sunday afternoon, was a bit much.

Thanks for making me laugh out loud all of you with wonderful descriptions of your husbands in sexy overalls and goggles! I needed something to make me laugh this morning, having sat in the garden for TOO long yesterday drinking TOO much wine and I feel horrible as a result!!!

DH and I sat on the patio yesterday and after a few minutes it became apparent that there was absolute silence, I asked him if we were missing something important on TV because it was uncanny. A normal Sunday would be lawn mowers and power washers with dogs barking.
Noise of any kind is not allowed during the afternoon in Germany. Last summer my GC were visiting my sister in her block of flats and they were told off by a resident for not walking quietly enough up the stairs and for not keeping silent in a communal area

Living in a holiday resort all summer long the beauty and fresh air were constantly marred by mainly inconsiderate visitors
........why does every car have at least 10 slamming doors?Barbecues that give off the vilest smells?
Traffic move at a rate of knots ALL hours God gave us?People in general talk across one another and in a few octaves higher than at home?
Why do they allow their dogs foul just anywhere and everywhere when away from their home?
Why do they totally disregard the folk whom actually LIVE in an area?
Believe me the list is endless...............

So we moved to what is best described as a pastoral green belt in the heart of the country with just cows and sheep as neighbours..............we then find...........
Tractors that hold up streams of traffic?
These high velocity machines that rumble past at all God given times of night?
Manure spreading being ever so "fresh" and pungent?
Sileage making always co -inciding with the day you have visitors hoping to show them the "Peace and quiet" of country liv ing?
If its not hay making with its noise.......and fumes,it is potatoe setting or potatoe picking......and droves of people arriving to the sound of high pitched chatter?
Again it goes on and on.

There is no place offering perfect peace I don`t think!!!!

Merlot Yes, it’s only other people who are annoying isn’t it, I have noticed that.

Am on holiday at the moment and the plaintive cries of seagulls are adding to the sounds of Summer ( they begin at dawn, a bit unreasonably) also some chattering magpies.

Thank goodness we don't have neighbours. I was strimming for over an hour this afternoon while DGS cut the grass with the ride-on. Between us we were making a fair old racket.

With a poorly DH still fighting a serious infection in hospital it's all hands on deck to keep the mother ship afloat in his absence.

I do agree with the above posts though. I hate other people's noise.

I think I heard a cuckoo this week too.

I do love to sit out and listen to the birds - and agree that strimmers et al can be a pain. There is a paddock behind us and a neighbour next door with a huge lawn and they seem to mow them one after the other - it would be better if they did it together and get it over with!!!

But.......the birds in the wood behind the paddock give them a run for their money as far as volume is concerned.

I've been hearing a cuckoo the last couple of days. There should be courting pheasants soon.

Heard first cuckoo this morning too

I too hate the sound of a strimmer. I sat outside earlier, to the sound of a couple of strimmers, a dog barking, a kid crying, and someone's BBQ stinking the place out.

Now, at almost 1/4 to 9, everything is quiet...only birds singing. Everyone else has gone in! Time for me to sit outside until it gets too dark...