<p>Miami…some folks work full time and prefer to mow their own lawns. What would you suggest? That they take a half day off while you are at work each week to mow the lawn?</p>
<p>Maybe they are mowing their lawn because they are tired of hearing you practice your foreign language outside. Just saying!</p>
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<p>Good point. The only time I ever practiced outside was for marching band practice. ;)</p>
<p>What are they supposed to do, mow the lawn inside???
A nicely manicured lawn is attractive and adds value to the neighborhood. Bad instrument rehearsals or Rosetta stone lessons do not. How are those English lessons coming along?</p>
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I think sometimes it has to do with acoustics-small echoing rooms can be problematic with some instruments- and sometimes it’s the same reason people choose to read or do other activities outside-after a full day cooped up inside at school or work it’s nice to spend some time outside. Of course when one’s enjoyment of the great outdoor interferes with the neighbor’s enjoyment of the same it’s not cool.</p>
<p>At least its not bagpipes.</p>
<p>I’m developing some curmudgeonly views as I age. I’m generally averse to regulations, but one that I would support, (if it were technically feasible) would be some type of noise reduction on lawn equipment. There is a constant din of mowers and backpack leaf blowers from about april-december, and It would be a lot nicer if the noise level could come down a few decibels. Maybe that’s not possible for the small engines, but it seems that if you wanted to lower sound levels, you could…at some price. We have a lawn service and they’re loud too, so I’m not claiming innocence here. </p>
<p>nrdsb–your comment above about marching band made me laugh! Several years ago, a young family purchased the house directly across the street from the high school football/soccer/field hockey/lacrosse field. And then conducted a vitriolic campaign against the high school because of all the “nuisance” that emanated from there. They objected to the marching band practicing daily (band members had a double period that included lunch), and to the sporting events there almost nightly, since the field served all teams for grades 7-12, for both boys and girls sports. That family wrote letters to the papers, attended school board and city council meetings and eventually filed a lawsuit–which was immediately dismissed.</p>
<p>Guess their kids weren’t in the marching band! :)</p>
<p>^^I’ve seen this happen with people who move in next to farms in my town. They buy the house because it abuts verdant open fields, then complain when twice a year the farmer fertilizes the fields. Yes, the neighborhood smells like manure for a few days a year, but how did they think those fields got so green?</p>
<p>boysx3, several years ago some very nice houses were built directly across the street from a HUGE church, which has been at that location for many decades. Of course, soon thereafter, the occupants began to complain about the traffic generated by the church. Say what?!?</p>
<p>In Dallas the issue was the in-town airport, Love Field. Residents around the airport were just shocked I tell you, that there was so much noise from take-offs and landings. The airport has been there a long time. </p>
<p>When I was in matching band we practiced on the field. </p>
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<p>Ditto. </p>
<p>My old neighborhood was very near a school which had an on-site football field. I used to love to sit outside and listen to them practice. </p>
<p>We have friends who live near Foxboro. On game days, they can open their windows, and watch on TV. It’s like being IN the stadium!</p>
<p>When I was a grad student my husband and I lived a half block from a jazz club. On nice nights I used to walk to the bus stop outside the window of the club and hang out listening to the music. It was cheap entertainment for an impoverished student!</p>
<p>I live in the house I grew up in, and there was a family who lived in the area longer than my family (my parents moved there in the mid 1950’s). They had chickens and roosters, and people used to complain about them, and I never understood why. Their house was there a long time (it had been built I believe just after the second world war), and the rest of the houses were built in the 50’s and 60’s, so these people were there first. I actually loved the sound of the roosters, and I was sad when eventually they were no more. </p>
<p>I understand what other people are saying about lawn equipment, I wish it were quieter, too, the drone from mowers and blowers and such can be very loud, and quite frankly, the muffler systems on small engines were never engineered to be all that quiet (and they can be, I had outboard motors that were dead quiet) and if enough people are doing it, it can be quite noisy in my neighborhood. I try to be as considerate as I can, if my backyard neighbors or my next door neighbors are outside I try not to disturb them, I have a chipper I use a couple of times a year to get rid of cuttings and debris and leaves and such, and it is pretty noisy to I limit the use of it and try to do it to be unobtrusive. On the other hand, there are always the people who obsess about their yards and I can understand people being upset, cut them a couple of times a week, and are constantly using blowers and such to go after any stray leavers or debris. The irony is many of the same people who are constantly cutting the lawn or blowing and such, are often the people who complain the most about other people making noise. </p>
<p>The only good news is it is likely in the near future that much of the equipment will be battery powered, they are close to getting to the point where you can cut a decent sized lawn without having to recharge, and are powerful enough to work in blowers and string trimmers, and they will be a lot quiter. </p>
<p>My D played the violin–pretty poorly. S played the trumpet. Fortunately for our neighbors, neither of them ever did much practicing. Somehow, S became a pretty proficient trumpet player in spite of himself (I think he has a bit of natural talent because he surely did very little practicing that we’re aware of). We have had neighbors who practice instruments badly, but fortunately they grow up and give it up or get better.</p>
<p>Our next door neighbor frequently plays the piano, sometimes teaches it as well, and sometimes sings along to it. Fortunately, she is a talented musician and H calls it, “Our private piano bar.” She often pays nice evening and dinner music and has played professionally. 
She’s over 90 and proud of it!</p>
<p>I’d also dearly love it if they’d find a way to muffle loud yard equipment. To me, it’s MUCH more annoying than most instruments or music and can start as early as 8am nearly any day of the week! I especially hate when they blow the leaves, grit and dirt into our yard!</p>
<p>For us, the worse was when our neighbors would go outside by the pool of their rental to smoke. It was on the property they were renting but the smoke would drift into our house and make S wheeze and me cough and all of us feel awful, even when we closed all our windows (louvers don’t shut all that tightly and that’s the main form of windows in our home). We were so glad when those tenants left. They would also go by the pool to have loud phone conversations, fights and other unpleasantness. Their pool is probably only about 50 feet from our bed!</p>
<p>Before college, DS practiced violin several evenings a week. Somehow our neighbors never complained. We must have been lucky.</p>
<p>Although he played in-doors, he somehow liked to play in the master room upstairs, where there is cathedral ceiling. The sound must project very far from there. (His teacher said to us DS tends to play louder than most of her other students.)</p>
<p>When he played the music piece, it might not be that bad. (He got into all-state every year after all.) However, his teacher also demanded him to practice some technical stuff. It did not sound good. (kind of repetitive to me.) Yes, I think he was asked to play Bartok as well because the teacher likes it.</p>
<p>When we first returned to NYC, my firm put us up at a temporary housing overlooking Rockefeller Center, where Today show was. Everyday around 7am we would start hearing the crowd and music, and on Fri morning was the worst when they had concert. The plus side was if it was a band we liked then we could hear/see it without having to leave the comfort of our apartment. D2 did complain bitterly. </p>
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That sounds lovely! </p>
<p>We had neighbors once who were both architects; their homes were adjacent with a chain link fence separating them. . They hated each others guts and were always feuding…the one had a German Shepard that barked in fenced yard and ticked off other architect with the constant barking. The architect with dog built a giant dog house that looked like exact replica of a modern-design church in area that the other neighbor had designed. When the dog started barking, the dog house had a system that played church steeple music activated by the dog’s barking. The neighbors were nuts and we avoided them as much as possible.</p>