My Neighbour

We live in a neighbourhood of Leidschenveen, in the outskirt of The Hague. The short lane to our house only have 4 houses and all the four houses share a common gate which is situated on the bridge over the canal. My house is right at the very end, no 4. Naturally I have to pass their houses in order to go to my house. I know all my neighbours, even though we rarely meet on everyday basis. Two of the couples are quite elderly, whereas the other couple are perhaps in their forties. 

Below is Marion (I think that is how it is spelled, anyway). She and her husband Henk live at No 1 house, so their house is the very first house you see once you go through the gate. Both of them are very nice. Every week Henk takes my rubbish bin from outside the gate and brings it to my own gate. You see, rubbish collection is once a week, so every Monday night, my DH would push the bin and leave it outside the gate for collection the next morning. Most of the time, Henk would push the bin back to my house after the rubbish has been taken. He does that to all neighbours, "It's the neighbourly thing to do" he said one day when I told him he need not take my bin from outside. I'm surely blessed with having good neighbours who help me with rubbish and they happen to have the same first name!!! Read about the other Henk who was my neighbour in Amsterdam here.

 

Marion and our visitor Jas, in front of her house

Anyway, Marion is also nice and friendly. One day she called up to me when I came home from picking DS from school, just to show me a type of fragrant flower that she claimed only blooms for 2 weeks. 

The other day when I met Marion at the other neighbour's party read here, she told me one very interesting and amusing fact. She said that all my visitors who came to my house, seemed to like photos of trees. Apparently, she has been observing from the quietness of her house the antics of my visitors. It amuses her to see them going from this tree and that tree and taking pictures (with them in the picture of course). Some trees according to her did not even have leaves !!!

I laughingly said that we come from a rainforest country and naturally we love trees and nature :D The sight of beautiful flowers blooming on Dutch trees are so beautiful we just have to take pictures of them. And in response to the "no leaf tree", I said that they (my visitors that is) have never seen trees in winter with just empty branches and no leaves, after all in our country we have greens all year round.

Her statement caused me to recall all the many visitors we had with their cameras practically hanging on the necks clicking here and there in front of the neighbours' houses :D  The photo above was taken just after our visitors Jas and Jak and also my DH been taking photos in front of her house and naturally she couldn't resist and came over to say hello and cheekily mentioned the very same fact :D