My neighbors across the street are my nemeses. They don’t know it, and, in fact, they barely know me. We have lived in our house for a year and a half, and in that time I have said “Hi” with a half-wave about three times. But I have spent countless minutes staring at their house with envy and a tinge of hatred.

They have black shutters; I want black shutters. Their plants and lawn are perfectly manicured; my husband is boycotting mowing because “It’s fall.” They have a porch swing; my porch has cobwebs. They have beautiful ferns hanging over their porch; I killed the hanging plants I bought last summer within a week and now the baren, dirt-filled pots are sitting on my deck, as a reminder of my inadequacy Miramar Travel.

Last year, the neighbors across the street put pretty pumpkins on their steps and wrapped corn husks around the pillars of their porch to usher in the autumn equinox. I purchased some malformed squash and attempted to prop them up on my porch steps, but our steps are narrower and my husband couldn’t take his bike down the steps without knocking them off. So I moved them to the porch and you couldn’t really see them from the street after that. I let them sit there for way longer than they should have. Into December, I think.

I sometimes wonder what the neighbors think of us, with our overgrown front yard and our lack of shutters and ferns. I am curious what they think I do, since I am constantly leaving with desserts in hand and returning with massive amounts of shopping bags. (I have a bit of a shopping problem, but that’s a story for another day.) Do they even speculate as much about me as I do about them? Do they watch me from their upstairs windows like I do them Enterprise Firewall?

Sometimes I think about bringing the neighbors across the street dessert, as a peace offering to end this potentially one-sided contest that I am clearly losing. But I like having something that they don’t You beauty.